Social psychology is a bit complicated. We need qualities, not only valuable for personal, but for social relation. In the growing complexity of a highly specialized organization the law of organic specialization calls for a varying degree of sacrifice in personal fulfillment. It is quite possible, indeed it is usual, to find individuals whose numerous good qualities really stand in the way of their best service to society. The best tools are not those of the greatest ‘all round’ variety of usefulness.
When the boys were grown up enough to be off her mind for many hours a day; when the house fairly ran itself in the hands of well-trained servants; when, at last, the laboratory was installed and the way seemed open; Mrs Merrill found herself fairly bogged in her own popularity. She had so many friends; they were so unfailingly anxious to have her at their dinners, their dances, their continuous card parties; they came to her so confidingly, so frequently — and she could never bear to hurt their feelings.
There were, to be sure, mornings. One is not required to play bridge in the morning, or dance, or go to the theatre. But even the daily ordering for a household takes some time, and besides the meals there are the supplies in clothing, linen, china; and the spring and fall extras of putting things away with mothballs, having rugs cleaned and so on — and so on.
Then — clothes; her own clothes. The time to think about them; the time to discuss them; the time to buy them; the time to stand up and be fitted — to plan and struggle with the dressmaker — a great deal of time — and no sooner is the feat accomplished than — presto! — it must be done all over.
Day after day she mounted the stairs to her long looked-for work-room, with an hour — or two — or three — before her. Day after day she was called down again; friends at the telephone, friends at the door; friends who were full of cheerful apology and hopes that they did not disturb her; and tradesmen who were void of either.
‘If only I could get something done!’ she said, as she sat staring at her retorts. ‘If once I could really accomplish a piece of good work, that should command public acknowledgement — then they would understand. Then I could withdraw from all this—’
For she found that her hours were too few, and too broken, to allow of that concentration of mind without which no great work is possible.
But she was a strong woman, a patient woman, and possessed of a rich fund of perseverance. With long waiting, with careful use of summer months when her too devoted friends were out of town, she managed in another five years, to really accomplish something. From her little laboratory, working alone and under all distractions, she finally sent out a new formula; not for an explosive of deadly power, but for a safe and simple sedative, something which induced natural sleep, with no ill results.
It was no patented secret. She gave it to the world with the true scientific spirit, and her joy was like that of motherhood. She had at last achieved! She had done something — something of real service to thousands upon thousands. And back of this first little hill, so long in winning, mountain upon mountain, range on range, rose hopefully tempting before her.
She was stronger now. She had gotten back into the lines of study, of persistent work. Her whole mind stirred and freshened with new ideas, high purposes. She planned for further research, along different lines. Two Great Ones tempted her; a cheap combustible fluid; and that biggest prize of all — the mastering of atomic energy.
And now, now that she had really made this useful discovery, which was widely recognized among those who knew of such matters, she could begin to protect herself from these many outside calls!
What did happen?
She found herself quite lionized for a season — name in the papers, pictures, interviews, and a whole series of dinners and receptions where she was wearied beyond measure by the well-meant comments on her work.
Free? Respected? Let alone?
Her hundreds of friends, who had known her so long and so well, as a charming girl, a devoted daughter, an irreproachable wife, a most unusually successful mother, were only the more cordial now.
‘Have you heard about Grace Merrill? Isn’t it wonderful! She always had ability — I’ve always said so.’
‘Such a service to the world! A new anesthetic!’
‘Oh, it’s not an anesthetic — not really.’
‘Like the Twilight Sleep, I imagine.’
‘It’s splendid of her anyway. I’ve asked her to dinner Thursday, to meet Professor Andrews — he’s an authority on dietetics, you know, and Dr North and his wife — they are such interesting people!’
Forty-six! Still beautiful, still charming, still exquisitely gowned. Still a happy wife and mother, with Something Done — at last.
And yet —
Her next younger sister, who had lost her husband and was greatly out of health, now wanted to come and live with her; their father had followed his wife some years back and the old home was broken up.
That meant being tied up at home again. And as to the social engagements, she was more hopelessly popular than ever.
Then one day there came to see her Dr Hammerton. His brush of hair was quite white, but thick and erect as ever. His keen black eyes sparkled portentously under thick white eyebrows.
‘What’s this you’ve been doing, Child? Show me your shop.’
She showed him, feeling very girlish again in the presence of her early master. He looked the place over in silence, told her he had read about her new product, sat on the edge of a table and made her take a chair.
‘Now tell me about it!’ he said.
She told him — all about it. He listened, nodding agreeably as she recounted the steps.
‘Mother? Yes. Father? Yes — for awhile at least. Husband? Yes. Boys? Of course — and you’ve done well. But what’s the matter now?’
She told him that too — urging her hope of forcing some acknowledgment by her proven ability.
He threw back his big head and laughed.
‘You’ve got the best head of any woman I ever saw,’ he said; ‘you’ve done what not one woman in a thousand does — kept a living Self able to survive family relations. You’ve proven, now, that you are still in the ring. You ought to do — twenty — maybe thirty years of worthwhile work. Forty-six? I was forty-eight when you left me, have done my best work since then, am seventy now, and am still going strong. You’ve spent twenty-two years in worthwhile woman-work that’s done — now you have at least as much again to do human work. I daresay you’ll do better because of all this daughtering and mothering — women are queer things. Anyhow you’ve plenty of time. But you must get to work.
‘Now, see here — if you let all these childish flub-dubs prevent you from doing what God made you for — you’re a Criminal Fool!’
Grace gave a little gasp.
‘I mean it. You know it. It’s all nonsense, empty nonsense. As for your sister — let her go to a sanitarium — she can afford it, or live with her other sister — or brother. You’ve earned your freedom.
‘As to clothes and parties — Quit!’
She looked at him.
‘Yes, I know. You’re still pretty and attractive, but what of it? Suppose Spencer or Darwin had wasted their time as parlor ornaments — supposing they could have — would they have had a right to?’
She caught at the names. ‘You think I could do something — Great?’ she asked. ‘You think I am — big enough — to try?’
He stood up. She rose and faced him.
‘I think you are great, to have done what you have — a task no man could face. I think you will be greater — perhaps one of the big World Helpers.’ Then his eyes shot fire — and he thundered: ‘How Dare you hinder the World’s Work by wasting your time with these idle women? It is Treason — High Treason — to Humanity.’
‘What can I do?’ she asked at last.
‘That’s a foolish question, child. Use your brain — you’ve got plenty. Learn to assert yourself and stand up to it, that’s all. Tell your sister you can�
�t. Disconnect the telephone. Hire some stony-faced menial to answer the door and say: “Mrs Merrill is engaged. She left orders not to be disturbed.”
‘Decide on how many evenings you can afford to lose sleep, and decline to go out on all others. It’s simple enough.
‘But you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to plan it and stand by it. It takes Courage — and it takes Strength.’
‘But if it is my duty—’ said Grace Merrill.
The old man smiled and left her. ‘Once that woman sees a Duty!’ he said to himself.
GIRLS AND LAND
IF DACIA BOONE’S father had lived he would have been a rich man, a very rich man, and a power in politics also — for good or ill. He was of the same stamp as Mark Hanna, a born organizer, an accumulator and efficient handler of money. His widow was deeply convinced of this, and expressed her opinion with explicit firmness, more rather than less as the years advanced.
She expressed it to Dacia and her older sisters from infancy up; to all her friends, relatives and associates; and, unfortunately, to Mr Ordway, her second husband. He was, as she would plaintively explain, a far nicer man to live with than Her First; but he had no gift for making money — which was entirely true. He managed to feed and clothe her three Boone daughters, and the later brood of little Ordways, also to give them a chance at an education, but that appeared to be his limit.
They moved from place to place, in search of better fortune, urged always by the uneasy mother. She seemed to feel that if he could only find his proper place and work he would do well, but as a matter of fact he did fairly well in each attempt, and never any better.
When Dacia was twenty the family had a homestead in the state of Washington, a big fertile place, lacking only a good road to the nearest station to be a profitable fruit ranch. Of this ranch they had hopes, high, but distant. For the rest they lived in a small house on one of Seattle’s many hills, and Mr Ordway worked at what jobs he could get, — as a foreman, manager, small contractor. He had experience enough for a dozen; he could handle men, he was honest and efficient; but blind to the various side issues wherein other men made money.
The two older girls were married, and using what powers they had to spur their husbands on toward high financial achievements; but as for Dacia — she worked in a store. Her mother had opposed it, naturally; but the girl was quietly persistent, and usually got her way.
‘Oh, what’s the use, mother!’ she said. ‘I shan’t marry — I’m too homely, you know that.’
‘It’s not your looks, my dear child,’ Mrs Ordway would mournfully reply. ‘There’s plenty of homelier girls than you are — much homelier — that marry. But it is the way you act — you somehow don’t try to be — attractive.’
Dacia smiled her wide, good-natured smile. ‘No, I don’t, and what’s more, I won’t. So what between lack of beauty and lack of attractiveness—’
‘And lack of money!’ her mother broke in. ‘If your father had only lived!’
‘I don’t believe I could have loved him any better than I do the father I’ve got,’ said the girl loyally. As a matter of fact, for all her frequent references to the departed, the only salient point his widow ever mentioned was that capacity of his for making money.
Dacia went to work, trying several trades, and was in a good position as saleswoman — she flatly refused to say ‘saleslady’ — by the time she was twenty.
She was homely. A strong, square, dark face, determined and good-natured, but in no way beautiful; rather a heavy figure, but sturdy and active; a quiet girl with a close mouth.
‘You certainly are the image of your father!’ her mother would say; adding with vain pathos: ‘If only you had been a man!’
Dacia had no quarrel with being a woman. She had had her woman’s experience, too; a deep passionate, wild love for the man who had quite overlooked her and married one of her sisters. They had gone back to Massachusetts to live — for which the lonely girl was deeply thankful. Also she was thankful that no one knew what she had felt, how she had suffered. It was her first great trial in keeping still, and had developed that natural instinct into a settled habit. But though she said little, she thought much; and made plans with a breadth, a length, a daring, that would have made her father proud indeed — had she been a boy.
She saved her money too, steadily laying up a little nest egg for clear purposes of her own. To Mr Ordway she gave a partial confidence.
‘Daddy,’ said she, ‘what do you really think would be the best way to develop our ranch — if we had the money.’
He had ample views on the subject. There were apples, of course; berries — all kinds of fruit. There was market garden ground, flat and rich where the valley spread out a little; the fruit trees grew best on the slopes. There was timber in plenty — if only they had that road to the station! There was power too — a nice little waterfall — all on their land.
‘It’ll be worth a lot by and by,’ he asserted. ‘And if only I could raise the capital — but what’s the use of talkin’!’
‘Lots of use, Daddy dear, if you talk to the right person — such as me! Now tell me something else — who ought to build that road?’
‘Why, there is a kind of a road — it’s laid out all right, as you know — it just needs to be made into a good one. I suppose the town ought to do it, or the county — I don’t rightly know.’
‘If they furnished the labor, could you manage it, Daddy? Could you build a real good road down to Barville? And how much do you think it would cost?’
‘Oh, as to labor — it would take—’ he scribbled a little, with a flat carpenter’s pencil, and showed her the estimate. ‘’Twould take that many men, at least,’ his blunt forefinger pointing, ‘and that long. To pay them — that much; to feed them — that much more — to say nothing of shelter. Are you proposing to go into the road-making business next week, my dear?’
She grinned and shook her head. ‘Not next week, Daddy. But I like to know. And you are so practical! If you had the men — and the County let you — you could build that road and be a public benefactor — couldn’t you?’
‘I could indeed. There’s good road metal there too; a stone crusher could be run by that waterfall — or we’d burn the wood for it. Just advance me a hundred thousand dollars or so out of your wages, and I’ll do it! But what’s the use of talkin’!’ he repeated.
‘Lots of use,’ she answered again, ‘if I talk to the right person — such as you!’
Then she said no more on that subject, though he joked her about it when they were alone, and devoted herself to another branch of tactics. She frequented the YWCA, the Social Settlement, one or two churches, and after some months of quiet inquiry found the woman she wanted, a woman with a high enthusiasm for Working Girls’ Clubs.
Dacia was interested, became very friendly, said she could get together quite a number, she thought. She brought to this woman the kind of help she needed, earnest capable girls who saw the value of the work, and inside of two years there were established a whole chain of ‘R & P Clubs,’ self-supporting, and very popular.
R & P? Rest and Pleasure, of course.
With a first group of one hundred girls, paying 25 cents a week, they were sure of $100.00 a month for their rent and furnishing. The same number, paying 20 cents a day for lunch, found to their surprise that half of it fed them, and the remaining half, $60.00 a week, paid for the extra fuel and service, with $10.00 left for profit. When two hundred came to the same place for lunch they laid up $50.00 a week for their sinking fund.
Their big rooms were open in the evening for reading and dancing, for club and class work; and their various young gentleman friends who came to see them there and paid a modest five cents for light refreshment, found it the cheapest good time in the city — and the pleasantest.
The idea spread; Tacoma took it up, and Portland, Bellingham, Everett and Spokane; the larger cities had more than one group.
Meanwhile Dacia went to her father wit
h another modest proposition.
‘Daddy,’ she urged. ‘I’ve found a nice Swede who is a good carpenter and cabinet maker. He and his wife want a place in the country. Would you be willing to have him cut some of your timber and put up a camp for us — for our clubs, that is — for a Vacation Place?’
‘Who’s going to pay him?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I’ll pay him, all right; I’ve got a Fund. But I want you really to sell him a little piece of the property — will you? Just a couple of acres or so, where the garden land is good, and let him pay for it in labor. You can make him agree to sell back to you if he wants to leave.’
This being done, and Dacia allowed to dictate the ‘labor,’ she set the man to work in good earnest, with some assistants, and soon had camping accommodations for a hundred.
Dacia’s Fund, which she had been saving out of her salary for three years, amounted to $500.00, and served to buy the necessary bedding and other supplies. For further gain, she counted as future asset, a Vacation Fund the Clubs had been saving. There were three now in Seattle, comprising well over four hundred working women, and these had been urged to set aside 25 cents a week for a fortnight’s vacation. For this $12.50 of a year’s easy saving they were to have transportation and board for two weeks in the hills.
Mrs Olsen, sturdy and industrious, had not been loitering while her husband sawed wood. She had fed him and his assistants; had established a hennery, and a vegetable garden. A few young sheep were kept within safe bounds by a movable wire fence, a device which seemed to Dacia too obvious to avoid, where there were two men to unroll and fasten it to the trees with a quick tap of the hammer, and to reel it up and move it when desired. There were two good cows, also a litter of cheerful young pigs, who basked and grew fat on the little farm.
When it was time for the first detachment of Vacationers, Dacia’s fund was all spent, but that hundred times $12.50 was in the savings deposit account of the R & P Clubs, and the girls paid their board with pride and satisfaction. Of the Seattle group of four hundred members, over three hundred had subscribed to this vacation fund; and they came, in self-elected groups, two weeks at a time, all summer long. $3,750.00 they paid in, and when the summer was over Dacia sat down with her father to estimate results of the thirteen weeks.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 166
