Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  “Aha— ‘when the women woke up!’ “ I cried.

  “Yes, just that. It is true that their being mostly mere housewives and seamstresses was a handicap in some ways; but it was a direct advantage in others. They were almost all consumers, you see, not producers. They were not so much influenced by considerations of the profits of the manufacturer as they were by the direct loss to their own pockets and health. Yes,” he smiled reminiscently, “there were some pretty warm years while this thing was thrashed out. One of the most successful lines of attack was in the New Food system, though.”

  “I will talk!” cried Hallie. “Here I’ve inveigled Uncle John up here — and — and fed him to repletion; and have him completely at my mercy, and then you people butt in and do all the talking!”

  “Go it, little sister — you’re dead right!” agreed Jerrold, “You see, Uncle, it’s one thing to restrain and prevent and punish — and another thing to substitute improvements.”

  “Kindergarten methods?” I ventured.

  “Yes, exactly. As women had learned this in handling children, they began to apply it to grown people — the same children, only a little older. Ever so many people had been talking and writing about this food business, and finally some of them got together and really started it.”

  “One of these cooperative schemes?” I was beginning, but the women looked at me with such pitying contempt that I promptly withdrew the suggestion.

  “Not much!” said Nellie disdainfully. “Of course, those cooperative schemes were a natural result of the growing difficulties in our old methods, but they were on utterly wrong lines. No, sir; the new food business was a real business, and a very successful one. The first company began about 1912 or ‘13, I think. Just some women with a real business sense, and enough capital. They wisely concluded that a block of apartments was the natural field for their services; and that professional women were their natural patrons.”

  “The unprofessional women — or professional wives, as you might call them — had only their housewifery to preserve their self-respect, you see,” put in Owen. “If they didn’t do housekeeping for a living, what — in the name of decency — did they do?”

  “This was called the Home Service Company,” said Hallie. “(I will talk, mother!) They built some unusually attractive apartments, planned by women, to please women; this block was one of the finest designs of their architects — women, too, by the way.”

  “Who had waked up,” murmured Jerrold, unnoticed.

  “It was frankly advertised as specially designed for professional women. They looked at it, liked it, and moved it; teachers, largely doctors, lawyers, dressmakers; women who worked.”

  Sort of a nunnery?” I asked.

  ‘My dear brother, do you imagine that all working women were orphan spinsters, even in your day?” cried Nellie. “The self-supporting women of that time generally had other people to support, too. Lots of them were married; many were widows with children; even the single ones had brothers and sisters to take care of.”

  “They rushed in, anyhow,” said Hallie. “The place was beautiful and built for enjoyment. There was a nice garden in the middle”

  “Like this one here?” I interrupted. “This is a charming patio. How did they make space for it?”

  “New York blocks were not divinely ordained,” Owen replied. “It occurred to the citizens at last they could bisect those 200x800-foot oblongs, and they did. Wide, tree-shaded, pleasant ways run between the old avenues, and the blocks remaining are practically squares.”

  “You noticed the irregular border of grass and shrubbery as we came up, didn’t you, Uncle?” asked Jerrold. “We forgot to speak about it, because we are used to it.”

  I did recall now that our ride had been not through monotonous, stone-faced, right-angled ravines, but along the pleasant fronts of gracious varying buildings, whose skyline was a pleasure and street line bordered greenly,

  “You didn’t live here and don’t remember, maybe,” Owen remarked, “but the regular thing uptown was one of those lean, long blocks, flat-faced and solid, built to the side-walk’s edge. If it was a line of private houses they were bordered with gloomy little stone-paved areas, and ornamented with ash-cans and garbage pails. If the avenue end was faced with tall apartments, their lower margin was infested with a row of little shops — meat, fish, vegetable, fruit — with all their litter and refuse and flies, and constant traffic. Now a residence block is a thing of beauty on all sides. The really necessary shops are maintained, but planned for in the building, and made beautiful. Those fly-tainted meat markets no longer exist.”

  “I will talk!” said Hallie, so plaintively that we all laughed and let her.

  “That first one I was telling you about was very charming and attractive. There were arrangements on the top floor for nurseries and child gardens; and the roof was for children all day; evenings the grown-ups had it. Great care was taken by the management in letting this part to the best professionals in child culture.

  “There were big rooms, too, for meetings and parties; places for billiards and bowling and swimming — it was planned for real human enjoyment, like a summer hotel.”

  “But I thought you said this place was for women,” I incautiously ventured.

  “Oh, Uncle John! And has it never occurred to you that women like to amuse themselves? Or that professional women have men relatives and men friends? There were plenty of men in the building, and plenty more to visit it. They were shown how nice it was, you see. But the chief card was the food and service. This company engaged, at high wages, first-class houseworkers, and the residents paid for them by the hour; and they had a food service which was beyond the dreams of — of — homes, or boarding houses.”

  “Your professional women must have been millionaires,” I mildly suggested.

  “You think so because you do not understand the food business, Uncle John; nobody did in those days. We were so used to the criminal waste of individual house-keeping, with its pitifully low standards, and to monotonous low-grade restaurant meals, with their waste and extortion, that it never occurred to us to estimate the amount of profit there really was in the business. These far-seeing women were pioneers — but not for long! Dozens are claiming first place now, just as the early ‘Women’s Clubs’ used to.

  “They established in that block a meal service that was a wonder for excellence, and for cheapness, too; and people began to learn.”

  I was impressed, but not convinced, and she saw it.

  “Look here, Uncle John, I hate to use figures on a helpless listener, but you drive me to it.”

  Then she reached for the bookcase and produced her evidence, sparingly, but with effect. She showed me that the difference between the expense of hiring separate service and the same number of people patronizing a service company was sufficient to reduce expenses to the patrons and leave a handsome payment for the company

  Owen looked on, interpreting to my ignorance.

  “You never kept house, old, man,” he said, “nor thought much about it, I expect; but you can figure this out for yourself easily enough. Here were a hundred families, equal to, say, five hundred persons. They hired a hundred cooks, of course; paid them something like six dollars a week — call it five on an average. There’s $500 a week, just for cooks — $26,000 a year!

  “Now, as a matter of fact (our learned daughter tells us this), ten cooks are plenty for five hundred persons — at the same price would cost $1,300 a year!”

  “Ten are plenty, and to spare,” said Hallie; “but we pay them handsomely. One chef at $3,000; two next bests at $2,000 each, four thousand; two at $1,000 apiece, two thousand; five at $800, four thousand. That’s $18,000 — half what we paid before, and the difference in service between a kitchen maid and a scientific artist.”

  “Fifty per cent, saved on wages, and 500 per cent, added to skill,” Owen continued. “And you can go right on and add 90 per cent, saving in fuel, 90 per cent, in plant, 50 p
er cent, in utensils, and — how much is it, Hallie, in materials?”

  Hallie looked very important.

  “Even when they first started, when food was shamefully expensive and required all manner of tests and examinations, the saving was all of 60 per cent. Now it is fully 80 per cent.”

  “That makes a good deal all told, Uncle John,” Jerrold quietly remarked, handing me a bit of paper. “You see, it does leave a margin of profit.”

  I looked rather helplessly at the figures; also at Hallie.

  “It is a shame, Uncle, to hurry you so, but the sooner you get these little matters clear in your head, the better. We have these great food furnishing companies, now, all over the country; and they have market gardens and dairies and so on, of their own. There is a Food Bureau in every city, and a National Food Bureau, with international relations. The best scientific knowledge is used to study food values, to improve old materials and develop new ones; there’s a tremendous gain.”

  “But — do the people swallow things as directed by the government?” I protested. “Is there no chance to go and buy what you want to eat when you want it?”

  They rose to their feet with one accord. Jerrold seized me by the hand.

  “Come on, Uncle!” he cried. “Now is as good a time as any. You shall see our food department — come to scoff and remain to prey — if you like.”

  The elevator took us down, and I was led unresistingly among their shining modernities.

  “Here is the source of supply,” said Owen, showing where the basement supply room connected with a clean, airy subway under the glass-paved sidewalk. “Ice we make, drinking water we distil, fuel is wired to us; but the food stuffs are brought this way. Come down early enough and you would find these arteries of the city flowing steadily with”

  “Milk and honey,” put in Jerrold.

  “With the milk train, the meat train, the vegetable train, and so on.”

  “Ordered beforehand?” I asked.

  “Ordered beforehand. Up to midnight you may send down word as to the kind of mushrooms you prefer — and no extra charge. During the day you can still order, but there’s a trifle more expense — not much. But most of us are more than content to have our managers cater for us. From the home outfit you may choose at any time. There are lists upstairs, and here is the array.”

  There were but few officials in this part of the great establishment at this hour, but we were politely shown about by a scholarly looking man in white linen, who had been reading as we entered. They took me between rows of glass cases, standing as books do in the library, and showed me the day’s baking; the year’s preserves; the fragrant, colorful shelves of such fruit and vegetables as were not fresh picked from day to day.

  “We don’t get today’s strawberries till the local ones are ripe,” Jerrold told us.

  “These are yesterday’s, and pretty good yet.”

  “Excuse me, but those have just come in,” said the white-linen person; “this morning’s picking, from Maryland.”

  I tasted them with warm approval. There was a fascinating display of cakes and cookies, some old favorites, some of a new but attractive aspect; and in glass-doored separate ice-chambers, meats, fish, milk, and butter.

  “Can people come in here and get what they want, though?” I inquired triumphantly.

  “They can, and occasionally they do. But what it will take you some time to realize, John,” my sister explained, “is the different attitude of people toward their food. We are all not only well fed — sufficiently fed — but so wisely fed that we seldom think of wanting anything further. When we do we can order from upstairs, come down to the eating room and order, send to the big depots if it is some rare thing, or even come in like this. To the regular purchasers it is practically free,”

  “And how if you are a stranger — a man in the street?”

  “In every city in our land you may go into any eating house and find food as good — and cheap — as this,” said Hallie, triumphantly.

  Chapter 5.

  WHILE below they took me into the patio, that quiet inner garden which was so attractive from above. It was a lovely place. The moon was riding high and shone down into it; a slender fountain spray rose shimmering from its carved basin; on the southern-facing wall a great wistaria vine drooped in budding purple, and beds of violets made the air rich with soft fragrance.

  Here and there were people walking; and in the shadowy corners sat young couples, apparently quite happy.

  “I suppose you don’t know the names of one of them,” I suggested.

  “On the contrary, I know nearly all,” answered Hallie. “These apartments are taken very largely by friends and acquaintances. You see, the gardens and roofs are in common, and there are the reading-rooms, ballrooms, and so on. It is pleasanter to be friends to begin with, and most of us get to be afterward, if we are not at first.

  “But surely there are some disagreeable people left on earth!”

  “Yes; but where there is so much more social life people get together in congenial sets,” put in Nellie; “just as we used to in summer resorts.,,

  “There aren’t so many bores and fools as there used to be, John,” Owen remarked. “We really do raise better people. Even the old ones have improved. You see, life is so much pleasanter and more interesting.”

  “We’re all healthier, Uncle John, because we’re better fed; that makes us more agreeable.”

  “There’s more art in the world to make us happier,” said Jerrold. Hallie thinks it’s all due to her everlasting bread and butter. Listen to that now!”

  From a balcony up there in the moonlight came a delicious burst of melody; a guitar and two voices, and the refrain was taken up from another window, from one corner of the garden, from the roof; all in smooth accord.

  “Your group here must be an operatic one,” I suggested. But my nephew answered that it was not, but that music — good music — was so common now, and so well taught, that the average was high in both taste and execution.

  We sat late that night, my new family bubbling over with things to say, and filling my mind with a confused sense of new advantages, unexplained and only half believed.

  I could not bring myself to accept as commonplace facts the unusual excellences so glibly described, and I suppose my silence showed this as well as what I said, for my sister presently intervened with decision:

  “We must all stop this for tonight,” she said. “John feels as if he was being forcibly fed — he’s got to rest. Then I suggest that tomorrow Owen take him in hand — go off for a tramp, why don’t you? — and really straighten out things. You see, there are two distinct movements to consider, the unconscious progress that would have taken place anyway in thirty years, and then the deliberate measures adopted by the ‘New Lifers,’ and it’s rather confusing. I’ve labored with him all the way home now; I think the man’s point of view will help.”

  Owen was a big man with a strong, wholesome face, and a quizzical little smile of his own. He and I went up the river next morning in a swift motor boat, which did not batter the still air with muffled banging as they used to do, and strolled off in the bright spring sunshine into Palisade Park.

  “We’ve saved all the loveliest of it — for keeps,” he said. “Out here, where the grass and trees are just as they used to be, you won’t be bothered, and one expositor will be easier to handle than four at once. Now, shall I talk, or will you ask questions?”

  “I’d like to ask a few questions first, then you can expound by the hour. Do give me the long and short of this ‘Women-waked-up’ proposition. What does it mean — to a man?”

  Owen stroked his chin.

  “No loss,” he said at length; “at least, no loss that’s not covered by a greater gain. Do you remember the new biological theory in regard to the relative position of the sexes that was beginning to make headway when we were young?”

  I nodded. “Ward’s theory? Oh, yes; I heard something of it. Pretty far-fe
tched, it seemed to me.”

  “Far-fetched and dear-bought, but true for all that. You’ll have to swallow it. The female is the race type; the male is her assistant. It’s established beyond peradventure.”

  I meditated, painfully. I looked at Owen. He had just as happy and proud a look as if he was a real man — not merely an Assistant. I though of Jerrold — nothing cowed about him; of the officers and men on the ship; of such men as I had seen in the street.

  “I suppose this applies in the main to remote origins?” I suggested.

  “It holds good all through life — is just as true as it ever was.”

  “Then — do you mean that women run everything, and men are only helpers?”

  “Oh, no; I wasn’t talking about human life at all — only about sex. ‘Running things’ has nothing to do with that. Women run some businesses and are in practically all, but men still do the bulk of the world’s work. There is a natural division of labor, after all.”

  This was pleasant to hear, but he dashed my hopes.

  “Men do almost all the violent plain work — digging and hewing and hammering; women, as a class, prefer the administrative and constructive kinds. But all that is open yet, and settling itself gradually; men and women are working everywhere. The big change which Nellie is always referring to means simply that women ‘waked up’ to a realization of the fact that they were human beings.”

  “What were they before, pray?”

  “Only female beings.”

  “Female human beings, of course,” said I.

  “Yes; a little human, but mostly female. Now they are mostly human. It is a great change.”

  “I don’t follow you. Aren’t they still wives and mothers?”

  “They are still mothers — far more so than they were before, as a matter of fact; but as to being wives — there’s a difference.”

  I was displeased, and showed it.

  “Well, is it Polygamy, or Polyandry, or Trial Marriages, or what?”

  Owen gazed at me with an expression very like Nellie’s.