After the Revolution, the intimate, stimulating influence of Europe, which the earlier colonists had enjoyed, was for a time almost entirely lost. The new States became extremely provincial; and minds untouched by the larger world always tend to conservatism. Noah Webster, in "A Letter to Young Ladies," published in Boston, in 1790, declared that they "must be content to be women; to be mild, social and sentimental." Three years later the "Letters to a Young Lady," by the Reverend John Bennett, were republished in Philadelphia, after going through several London editions. He placed the qualities to be cultivated in this order: "A genteel person, a simple nature, sensibility, cheerfulness, delicacy, softness, affability, good manners, regular habits, skill in fancy work, and a fund of hidden genteel learning." Through the first half of the nineteenth century these ideals struggled along parallel with the new ideas that were everywhere springing up from the colonial forest experiences of the last two generations.
As conservers of morals and as leaders in higher ideals of life, the advanced women of America came early face to face with two outgrown abuses. One of these was human slavery and the other was intemperance. In attacking these abuses, women had to break with all the traditions that defined their position.
The wealthy and intelligent Englishwoman, Frances Wright, who came to this country in 1818 to attack slavery, found herself doubly opposed because she was a woman speaking in public. Had not St. Paul declared: "It is a shame for women to speak in the church"? Lucretia Mott, born in the Society of Friends in Nantucket, had escaped the full force of this injunction, but even she found, when she attacked slavery in public, that she had invaded a world sacred to men, and she was sternly warned back. Miss Susan B. Anthony also began her public life as a teacher and a temperance reformer. It was only when she found herself helpless, in presence of the prejudices against her sex, that she turned her attention to freeing women from all purely sex limitation in public life.
When the Civil War broke out, the women were ready to do their part. It is quite possible that the names of Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix may be remembered when Grant and Sherman are forgotten. With the establishing of new human values the historian of the future may consider the saving of life and the preventing of misery as more worthy of lasting record than even military genius. These women and their millions of helpers had not the resources of organized government at their disposal; but, instead, they had oftentimes to work against the jealousy of those in authority. At the close of the war, the Sanitary Commission comprised seven thousand aid societies scattered over the country, and it had raised over fifteen millions of dollars. Those women who remained at home, in the absence of fathers and sons for four years, faced all the problems of practical life. Who can estimate the value of training in coöperative work and organization which the Civil War gave to the American women?
In the Civil War, women directly served men; but in the great industrial reorganization which came afterward they served mainly women and children. Here the victories have been won in the press, in the legislative halls, and in courts of law. Working with men, or alone, they have perfected organization, agitated, raised money, printed appeals, and carried cases through the courts, until factories and stores have been made safer, excessive working hours have been cut down, young children have been exempted from labor, many sweat-shops have been closed, and women workers have begun to be organized to care for their own needs. Much has been done; more remains to be done; but the training of the women has gone steadily forward.
These, then, are the forces which have pushed women forward in America: European political and religious persecution, the forest necessities of colonial life, the American Revolution, the struggle with slavery and intemperance, the Civil War, the industrial struggle and the need to protect women and children from capitalistic exploitation. Possibly women have now reached a point in their development where they can turn to public service and to a full realization of their powers and responsibilities without the goading necessity of a great wrong. If not, there are sufficient wrongs still calling to lead them for many years. Intemperance is not yet banished; the negro is not yet freed from the effects of his slavery; working women and children are not yet fairly protected; disease reaps needlessly large harvests; Lazarus still begs at the table of Dives; our public education leaves much to be desired; criminals are badly handled; millions of European refugees come marching into our land needing guidance. Meantime, millions of women are content, because themselves comfortable, and there are some even willing to aid the powers of obstruction.
In these later years, marvelous changes have taken place all over the world. Even in China, official attempts are now being made to leave women free to walk by abolishing the bandaging of infants' feet. In Turkey, women are going out from the harem to participate in public life. In Germany, they are escaping from the exclusive service of the home. In England, they are repeating the cries of the men of 1776 and of 1789: "All men and women are born free and equal." "No taxation without representation." "One person, one vote." In Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden, women have all the essential civic and political rights of men.
But, as in all human progress, first the ideas of a few leaders change; they shape legislation; and the new organization slowly makes over the practices and then the deep-seated mental and moral habits, which constitute popular prejudices. These old unreasoning feelings still largely dominate us, blinding us to the facts of life and blocking each new advance by which women might pass into the world of free choice and adjustment of their lives as co-workers with men. In the next chapters we must study these present-day conditions in detail.
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