Women and Economics : Part 2

Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
by C. W. Saleeby, M.D.

(Page 21 of 26)

It is impossible to discuss, as we might well do, the available evidence as to the effect of external activities upon that wonderful function of womanhood which, in its correspondence with the rhythm of the tides, hints, like many other of our attributes, at our distant origin in the Sea - the mother of all living. Reference was made in an earlier chapter to this function, and its use as, in most cases at any rate, a criterion of womanhood and a gauge of the effect of physical exercise or mental exercise thereupon. The writer of "Women and Economics" has nothing to say on this subject - less, if possible, than on the subject of lactation. The menstrual function would admirably and fundamentally illustrate the present contention, but it will be better to take the great maternal and mammalian function of nursing as a criterion of womanhood, and as a test of the contention that the more freely the mother works as do the savage woman and the peasant woman, the more rightly she fulfills the "primal physical functions of maternity."

Before we consider the actual evidence (and Mrs. Gilman does not deal at all in evidence on these fundamentals to her argument) let us meet the argument about the "savage woman," who works as hard as men do, - though much less hard than early observers of savage life supposed - and who is nevertheless a successful mother. It is completely forgotten that, just as parenthood, both fatherhood and motherhood, demands more of the individual as we rise in the scale of animal evolution, so, within our own species, the same holds good. In general, the mothers of civilized races are the mothers of babies whose heads are larger at birth (as they will be in adult life), than those of savage babies. It is true that the civilized woman has, on the average, a considerably larger pelvis than that of, for instance, the blacks.

There must be a feasible, practicable ratio between the two sets of measurements if babies are to enter the world at all. But the increasing size of the human head is a great practical problem for women. No one can say how many millions have perished in the past because their pelves were too narrow for the increasing demand. Therefore made upon them, and doubtless the greater capacity of the female pelvis in higher races is mainly due to this terrible but racially beneficent process of selection, by which women with pelves nearer (e. g.) to negro type, have been rejected, and women with wider pelves have survived, to transmit their breadth of pelvis to their daughters and carry on the larger-headed races. But even now obstetricians are well aware that the practical mechanical problem for the civilized woman is much more serious than for her savage sister; and the argument that civilized women would discharge maternal functions as well as savage women if they worked as hard is therefore worthless.

Let us return now to the question of nursing capacity. "Bass voices" and "beards" are doubtless unlovely in woman, but their extensive appearance would be of no consequence at all compared with the disappearance or weakening of the mammalian function which, as everyone knows or should know, is the dominating factor in the survival or death of infancy. Now it may be briefly asserted that civilized woman, and more especially industrial woman, threatens to cease to be a mammal. If this assertion can be substantiated, and if the "economic independence of women" necessarily involves it, no biologist, no medical man, no first-hand student of life, will hesitate to condemn finally the ideal toward which Mrs. Gilman and those who think with her would have us go.

Things may be bad, things are very bad: the lot of woman must be raised immensely, because the race must be raised, and cannot be raised otherwise; but progress is going forward and not backward, Mr. Chesterton notwithstanding. Woman will not become more than a mammal by becoming less, and going back on that great achievement of ascending life. Individuals may do so, and are doing so, lamentably misdirected as many of them now are; but that is the end of them and their kind. It is quite easy to stamp out motherhood and its inevitable economic dependence, but with it you stamp out the future.

It is generally admitted that our women nurse their babies less than they used to do. It is as generally admitted that this is often deliberate choice, and we all know that it is often economic necessity: the human mother "mingles in the natural industries of a human creature," such as the factory affords, and cannot simultaneously stay at home to nurse her baby, making men - for which, as a "natural industry" of women, even as against making, say, lead-glaze for china, there may be something to be said.

But while popular preachers and castigators of the sins of society fulminate against the fine lady who asks for belladonna and refuses to do her duty, we must enquire to what extent, if any, women no longer nurse their babies because they cannot, try they never so patiently and strenuously. It is the general belief amongst those whose daily work qualifies them for an opinion, that women are tending to lose the power of nursing. Professor von Bunge, whose name is honored by all students of the action of drugs, has satisfied himself that alcoholism in the father is a great cause of incapacity to nurse in daughters. However that interpretation may be, the fact seems clear; and the change in this direction is evidently much more rapid than might be accounted for by the improvement in artificial feeding of infants leading to the survival of daughters of mothers unable to nurse, and transmitting their inability to their children. Mrs. Gilman - having ignored menstruation altogether - makes only one allusion to this vastly important subject, and we should see to what extent her sanguine assumption is justified.

According to her, "A healthy, happy, rightly occupied motherhood should be able to keep up this function (of nursing) longer than is now customary - to the child's great gain." There can be no question about the child's great gain; but what is the evidence for supposing that a mother earning her own living in free competition with men - which is what a "healthy, happy, rightly occupied motherhood" means in this connection - ca. Therefore spend her energies twice over, unlike any other source of energy known?

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York.
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley.