THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF AMERICA.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIV, Issue VIII, 23 February 1895, Page 184

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF AMERICA.

THE SIN OF FALSE CHIVALRY. AMERICA is the land where women demand and receive more from men and give lees in exchange than anywhere else on the planet. They first tnrn the bulk of the male popnlation into money-slave* for their especial benefit and then despise them for being slaves. Generations of men with strangely perverted ideas of chivalry have been at great pains to teach the women here that their proper role is to stand on pedestals and smilingly receive men’s homage ; and it must be admitted that the women have learned the lesson well. European women study to be pleasing ; American women only try to shine. In Europe a bride is proud to bring her husband as dower a substantial sum that enables him to bear the added bnrden and gives him material aid at the time in his career when he most needs it; in America a busband is content to take bis life partner with no adornment save her personal charms, and take her, too, despite a trio of defects so common as to be almost national characteristics. These are : 1. Her inability or unwillingness to help her busband. 2. Her sense of superiority over her husband. 3. Her geneial discontent with existing conditions. It should be said that the above is mainly true of women who live in cities ; the choicest flowers of American womanhood being hidden away in the country towns.

First, I maintain, there is a lamentable lack of disposition among American city women to make good helpmates for their husbands. It is not that they are unwilling to exert themselves or that they lack capacity, for both in body and mind they are the most richly endowed women in the world ; but their whole early training has been wrong. It has been impressed upon them from childhood that a husband is a glorious institution created solely for loving, honouring and protecting them.it being well understood that the little word • to obey ’ has long since become obsolete in the marriage ceremony. As young ladies they have been told so often that they are clever, pretty, vivacious, tactful, accomplished, coquettish or * cunning,’ told this year after year by well-meaning but misguided men, that they have finally come to regaid man’s normal and natural position in relation to themselves as one of suppliant posture and adoration. And the men, victims of their own unwisdom, do nothing to disabuse the women’s minds of these unwholesome notions until some fine day the marital ship runs hard on one of the inevitable rocks or quicksands, and then, alas, there comes a rude awakening ! To be perfectly honest now, ladies, what do you do to help your husbands in the struggle for existence that is at all proportionate to what they do for yon ? Remember, I am speaking of the women who live in cities, their number forming probably one-half of our entire population. There are thousands and thousands of you who live comfortably in boarding-houses, at least quite as comfortably as your busbands, and do practically nothing toward lifting the common burden beyond occasional repairs in clothing. In the main you lead idle lives, don’t you ? There are many other thousands of you who live in flats or private houses, where your cares are limited to * overseeing ’ things and managing the servants. Your husbands every day do twice as much as this befoie their lunch ! I do not forget the children and the care in their bringing up that devolves upon the mother, but modern educational science has done much to lessen this responsibility, so that to-day there are thousands of city homes where the children are brought up, one may say, almost without mothers, the real bard work being done by bottles, nurses, kindergartens, governesses, schools, and colleges. You know perfectly well that this is so, and your husbands who pay the bills know it also ! Even were the wife’s duties as arduous as her busband’s their burdens would still be unequal, since he must be familiar with all that transpires in her sphere, from the baby’s new tooth up to the discharging of the cook, while she remains in darkest Africa as regards his business. Who ever heard of an American city woman being informed about her husband’s business except as to the apKroximate number of dollars it brings in annually ? Tbe usband slaves six days a week at bis cffice, comes home

worried and worn, harassed by the killing strain to ‘ keep up appearances,’ and although it is largely to satisfy his wife’s desires and ambitions that he goes thia pace, it never occurs either to him or to her to take counsel together touching hie prospects or perplexities. It is not even thought fitting she should have any precise ideas or knowledge about his daily toil. She knows he is a doctor, a writer, or a bishop ; that he trades in stocks, flour, or ribbons ; she can tell you the location of his office and whether his typewriter is pretty, and that is all she cares to know about the mystery of his down-town life. What a contrast here with the attitude of European women toward their husbands ! Nothing is more common among middle-class people in Paris than for the wife, be-

sides attending to her home and children, nut only to advise with her husband in every detail of bis business, often showing herself the guiding spirit, but to go daily to the shop when he goes, to stand at the counter or desk as he stands, and to share hour by hour tbe work he does. American women are fully content to share the profits ! It is fair to say that American men, through these same false ideas of chivalry and social pride, would, however hard pressed, be the first to protest against their wives assisting them in any such practical way, and are for the most part distinctly averse to them engaging in teaching, type-writing, dressmaking or any honourable employment. It might, forsooth, give sneering neighbours a chance to whisper: ‘Mrs So and-So has to work.’ And what of it, I say? Why, in the name of common sense, should Mrs So and-So not work ? Sooner, however, than have that happen, tbe average American husband would fail in business—or do worse !

* I don’t mind working in single harness, but I won’t work in double—not for any man living.’ That was a remark I heard a young lady make who holds a position in a New York office, where she has shown herself possessed of fine business abilities. As long as she remains unmarried she will do as much work every day as the average man and show herself none the worse for it. But as soon as she becomes the wife of some devoted American, then her hands will drop listlessly at her sides and he must take the oars for both and row away as best he can. Poor fellow, he may break his back, but he will never murmur I Thousands of unmarried American women have this idea and regard their daily tasks as an unpleasant necessity which must bridge over the time until they shall have found a busband to work for them. If American men were as clever as is said, they would utilize in their own schemes some of the fine business brain lying idle in their wives’ heads !

My second point is that a wide tendency exists among American women to consider themselves superior to tbe men, this being especially true in the better middle class. And the humiliating part of it is that in a large number of instances this opinion is justified—they are the men’s superiors I Take New York women, for instance ; look at them streaming along Twenty-third street in the shopping hours or strolling on Fifth Avenue. Are they not splendid creatures physically—clear-eyed, strong-limbed, wellgroomed ? True, one remarks an extia development of tbe bust, and an undue widening of the hips ; but that is largely their own fault, being the result of idleness and over-feed-ing. Compared with them, American men make a poor showing indeed, being for the most part round-shouldered, big-waisied, sharp featuied, piematutely bent and bald, slovenly in dress and bearing, plainly a dyspeptic and apo-

plectic lot. No wonder the women hold their beads high as they sweep past proudly I Nor are the American women of the upper and upper middle classes less superior to tbe men in refinement and polite acquirements than in physical perfections. * The finest modern advantages ’ have been showered upon them, and they have been * polished ’ and * educated ’ far beyond the poor attainments of the masculines, who read only the newspapers, know nothing but tbe dry details of their business, have no ideals beyond the making of money, are absolutely deficient in the arts of conversation, have no esprit save what they get from smoking car ‘drummers’ or comic journals; in short, are absolutely unfitted to be the companions of these goddess women, whom they nevertheless marry. And that is the worst of it! That is the chief reason why American women are so widely discontented I They look down upon their husbands ; they are the victims of too much culture ; they have been given lofty and beautiful ideals which they cannot realise; they are like the poor South Sea Islanders, who, having heard the praises of Delmonico dinners sung until their mouths water, are left to fill their stomachs with raw turtle. In this painful comparison the raw turtle stands for the hustling, money-grubbing, woman-ridden American husband I It also stands for many other illusions tenderly nourished in the American maiden’s breast only to be dispelled with advancing years. It is no kindness, but sheer cruelty to give our girls a keen appreciation of tbe beautiful, the artistic, and then make them live in selfish and unlovely surroundings. Why tell them that American women are created to stand on pedestals when it is false ? Why fill their minds with visions of soulful, high-minded men, when they are fated to pass their lives with moneygrubbers? This is false chivalry, unworthy of American men I Pity the unfortunate daughters who come back from study abroad, having breathed deeply the glorious artladen atmosphere of Paris and Rome, only to ‘ settle down ’ in a mean little Harlem flat, whose walls are decorated with newspaper chromos. Pity the women in whom have been developed spiritual and poetic natures stranded suddenly, starving in the midst of a desert of commonplace surroundings, with no hope or chance of satisfying the yearnings that consume them ! Almost better never to have emancipated them from tbe condition where they were happy chewing gum in Chicago and on state occasions singing. ‘ Oh, Fair Dove ! Oh, Fond Dove !’ What wonder, then, if American women are discontented, for to them come frequently such sad contrasts between tbe pictures of life drawn to them as girls, and the pitiful realization known by them as women. What wonder if they often grow embittered, resentful, reckless, or if some fiercer natures, feeling they have not had their deseits, burst into warring discontent and let ambition drive them on with no heed to the means.

It is this restless, dissatisfied spirit that is driving American women to-day to usurp men’s functions in all lines, from rnnning the government down to the wearing of starched shirts. And this they do rather from restlessness and fretfulness than for any real desire for further ‘ rights.’ Do they not know in their hearts that they have long ago secured from men all their rights and more, taking with shrewd discrimination the privileges and pleasures of their husbands’ or fathers' stations in life while shirking the responsibilities? Why are women al) over the country cultivating a taste for that most unwomanly game of poker, except to show the men that they, too, can play the bluff. Why are women in our nice restaurants calling daily for cocktails and whiskies, served in teacups, if you please, and in quantities to shame their grandmothers ? Surely they do not like the stuff I Why are they betting on the races, professing deep interest in sports they never understand, affecting a slangy style of talk, smoking cigarettes, strutting about in mannish clothes, and pushing themselves forward in such unfeminine pursuits as newspaper work and reforming the slums ? They are doing these things as fads, because they have nothing else to do, and because they know there are sound reasons against their doing them. I know a wealthy girl who, almost alone in a crowd of men, followed the lectures and quizzes at the law school and finally took her degree simply beeanse someone told her she couldn’t understand so dry a subject. ‘ I’ll show yon if I can’t,’ said she, and that reply voices the end-of-the-century attitude of numberless women in American cities. ‘ Please take me through Chinatown,’ said a lovely woman of my acquiantance. I explained to her that Chinatown was a vile place, with nothing to recommend it but commonplace vice and uncommon odours. * I don’t care,’ she persisted, * I want to see Chinatown, and if you don’t take me, I’ll go anyhow.’ I said she was a lovely woman, so it ended in my taking her, and she made brave pretence of enjoying it, as she fished slimy mysteries out of a bowl with chopsticks and swallowed them, and then sat in a reeking room with black bugs crawling over tbe board walls and watched a poor white girl named Annie smoking herself to death with opium. Annie was tbe wife of a moated Chinaman. What but sheer perversity, growing out of this widespread discontent, can tempt women when travelling to insist on entering the smoking car ? Yes, and smoking there, for I have it on tbe authority of a New York Central conductor that this is not an unheard-of occurrence on their most respectable line. * The other day,’ he said, * a well-dressed, nice-looking girl went forward to the smoker and proceeded to light a cigarette. I asked her to leave the car—she refused. What could I do? Nothing; and the girl had her way, while the men stared. Another case, not very long before, was that of an elderly woman who also claimed her right to sit in the smoking car and puff away at a pipe. But the most remarkable case in my experience happened on the midnight train coming down from Albany, when a young woman on being remonstrated with by a gentleman for smoking, rose to her feet, threw down her cigarette, and squaring off in tbe attitude of a boxer, landed a good lefthander on the side of the gentleman's head. This she followed—l give you my word of honour she did—by lifting her skirt very slightly and shooting out a rapid kick that caught the man squarely in the stomach and sent him sprawling. Having asserted herself thus, the lady took out her cigarette case, lighted a second cigarette and was left unmolested, you may be sure, for tbe rest of her journey.* I admit that these are extreme cases, but a few years ago they would have been impossible cases. These smokitig

car women are marching in the vanguard of the female army of discontent I This discontent among city women taints all classes, from the lowest to the highest. In the absence of consecrated social leaders such as Europe possesses, each woman here considers herself as good as each other woman, and feels that fate has been unjust in giving to others more than she has received. The whole servant girl problem grows out of this inherent dissatisfaction. The girls who find themselves doing what is called * menial ’ labour are jealous of the women whom they serve. See how quick they are, once the day’s work is finished, to leave the house of servitude and flaunt themselves about the city in gowns and cloaks, in ribbons and jewellery, which, if lacking in the real quality of those worn by their mistresses, are at least the very best imitations their scant means can procure. There is a similar struggle going on in the breasts of type writers, shopgirls, chorus girls, and all who earn their daily bread. They are generally discontented 1 What is thus true of city women in the working classes is true of those most highly placed. It is true of all who come between. In this country there is no respect for classes, our glorious republican principles making every woman feel herself a potential Mrs Vanderbilt. The social history of our cities is so full of sudden changes, where people have jumped from nothing to everything, that there is no woman so poor but feels that she may some day have her palace on Fifth avenue. Mrs Maloney, reflecting on all this in her parlour in Shantytown, realizes vaguely that it is incumbent upon her in her present lowly surroundings to prepare herself for possible glory to come. She looks longingly through her parlour windows, sees the goat chewing the leaves of the geianinms and never moves, for it is not fitting that a prospective lady should be seen rushing out of the house in a calico wrapper to drive a goat off the front piazza. Perish a thousand geraniums rather than let Mrs Maloney violate a rule of etiquette ! As already hinted, one of the most serious effects of this general discontent on the part of women is their frequent attitude of condescension towards their husbands. The men of America worship the women, which is a fatal mistake, and are in return not infrequently despised by the women, which is manifestly unjust. Let us suppose that a woman of culture has married a man without culture for the sake of the money he can bring her. To begin with,

she should despise herself for having been a party to such a sordid bargain. Furthermore, if the man hates Wagner and mediaeval cathedrals and likes • My Pearl is a Bowery Girl,’ the fault is largely hers. For it must be borne in mind that if American men are lacking in culture, it is because they have no time or strength for acquiring it, their lives and energies being exhausted in procuring culture for their wives and daughters. The courses in art, the trips abroad, the aesthetic homes, the music, the languages, the whole modish combination of unpractical things that tend to make our best women shine at the expense of the men—who furnish these ? who slave to pay for these? who but the unenlightened husbands and brothers? By what principle of justice do the women of a land thus presume to turn the men into pack horses ? Even if false ideas of chivalry make the men content to play such servile roles, do not the women themselves see that this disparity in the attainments of the two sexes can result in nothing but mutual wretchedness ? The husbands are outclassed in culture by their wives the wives are too good for their husbands, and what then ? Shall marriage be abolished, and if not, how bridge the breach that is thus widening in many households ? These causes are producing untold evil in our national life. They are inducing hundreds of wealthy women to show their discontent by abandoning their country entirely and living abroad, where men cultivate the arts and graces and see something else worth while in life than the piling of gold upon gold. They are responsible for that strange and unpatriotic tendency so widely noted now in this land, and never noted in any other, which drives not a few American women to prefer foreigners for husbands rather than men of tbeirown country, lhey are leading large numbers of discontented wives a^er some shadowy ideal—women who are idle in their lives, over-fed and bored to death—into carrying their reckless pursuit of the unattainable even to the point of ind ulging in chance flirtations or worse. The revolting evi-

dence of the divorce courts, as blazoned forth day after day in our unclean newspapers, leaves no doubt on this point. The testimony of that sewer of iniquity, the personal column in the New York Herald, shows a condition of wide demoraliz ition. I myself, on one occasion, as an experiment growing out of a wager, inserted a personal in this curious column, stating in accordance with the prescribed formula,that * a prosperous bachelor of thirty desired to make the acquaintance of a charming lady a few years younger—object matrimony.’ I received within three days no less than fifty answers to this modest request, many of them, as I took pains to verify, coming from women who have every right to call themselves respectable, and are so considered. Of the fifty there were certainly ten of this class, in this number being included two young ladies living in good homes, three married women, one school teacher, one widow, one literary woman and, strangest of all, a mother and her daughter, who both answered the advertisement each without the knowledge of the other. Having eliminated the forty applicants whose motives were apparent and who therefore became uninteresting, I spent some time in studying the respectable ten, trying to discover what had led them into so strange an indiscretion. In every case there was the same story—an idle life, a discontented mind and a longing after something away from the commonplace, something having in it a dash of romance and ideality. And these unfortunate women could find no better way of pursuing their chimera than by risking their good names in the hands of an entire stranger. This craving for admiration among women, this deep conviction that men’s homage is their just due, this superficial culture and feeling of superiority is making it more and more difficult every year for young men to marry city girls. Such girls are too exacting, too indifferent to the value of money, too little disposed to content themselves with simple pleasures. A European girl of the middle class will be as happy as a child if her sweetheart sends her a little bunch of violets for which he spent perhaps a franc. It is the kind thought she thinks of, not the price. Here a girl of the same class, if she has flowers at all, must have the best—roses at several dollars a dozen, something that gives plain evidence of having cost money. When an American girl accepts an invitation for the evening she expects to be taken to the theatre, to have the

most expensive seats, and afterwards to be offered a supper served in good style at a place of maximum charges. There is no romancing about this, but sober, serious reality, as hundreds of hard-working young men have learned to their cost. The girls do not care so much for the things themselves, as for the evidence of devotion which, in their minds, must be accompanied by the spending of money. How different in Paris, where an evening’s pleasure is within reach of the most slender purse. A stroll along the boulevards, an hour in front of a caf6 watching the throng, some bocks to drink, some little cakes at a patisserie, a ride in a carriage for two francs—and the girl is so grateful, so free from that odious pedestal posing ! And the young women themselves of our cities, from the very training they have received and their knowledge of the world, are in many instances left undecided what course they shall pursue in regard to marriage. They know from the experience of others and from their own observation that without money their married lives will be full of aggravation and disappointment. On the other band, their womanly instincts bid them heed the voice of real disinterested love. They would fain have love and have money also ; but the combination is a difficult one to make. A most beautiful and accomplished young woman from the West, whom I know intimately, made frank confessions to me once of her embarrassments in this matter. * I love a young artist,’ she said, • with all my heart, and he loves me. But he has no money. An old broker down town, worth two or three millions, is infatuated with me, but I abominate him. Both men want me to marry them. If I marry the broker I shall be wretched because I despise him ; if I marry the artist I shall be wretched because I despise being poor ; so as far as I can see, I am sure to be wretched either way. On the other hand, I cannot go back to the humdrum life of my family, for that would kill me with its monotony. I crave the free existence of a great city, and yet staying here I must find some way to live.

My tastes are extravagant, far beyond what I could earn ; and yet without lovely things about me I should rather die. So what can I do ? How can I decide ? I am miserable with worrying, I am discontented, unhappy. Marriage seems impossible, home life is impossible, honest work is impossible, and what is there left ?' An everyday example of the craving for admiration engendered in our city women by the pedestal habit is to be found in their loud and extravagant dress on the street. One cannot walk through the fashionable thoroughfares of a pleasant afternoon without seeing numbers of women apparelled in such a flaunting of colours and unseemly display of silks and velvets as would make a European gentleman doubt their being respectable women, which they nevertheless are. Hundreds of them may be seen any day

on Twenty-third Street wearing white gloves, diamond earrings, a load of ribbons and feathers on the hats showing three or four glaring colours, with cloaks and skirts of rich brocades or velvets which should never be seen outside the carriage or the drawing-room, and in general presenting themselves in snch garish costumes as European ladies would scarcely dare to wear in the evening and certainly never in broad daylight. The great reason why French women are infinitely better dressed than women of America is because each one makes it her business to study her own advantages and defects and dresses with a view to bringing out the one and concealing the other. She knows what is becoming to her individually and adopts it regardless of prevailing fashions, which American women follow slavishly. On the street the French woman dresses quietly, simply, with few colours and those of deep tints, the only women in Paris who appear in the streets as American ladies do being the fashionable eccentriques or demimondaines. This is not complimentary to. New York women, but it is the plain truth. The fashions imported from Paris by New York women are not fashions of French women of the comme il faut class, but exaggerations of these, garish creations for the foreign market. The rampant spirit of discontent also leads American city women into extravagant habits. This is seen in the way they let their handsome gowns trail along the sidewalks, although the habit is ruinous to their skirts as well as most uncleanly. They do not care ; when the bottoms are frayed they will send them to the dressmaker and their husbands will pay the bills. The same spirit is discovered when one watches them lunching in swarms at expensive restaurants,

where they spend a dollar and a half or two dollars of their husbands’ money for a comfortable meal, while these same husbands meantime are perched on some high stool down town bolting a piece of pie and a glass of milk which cost perhaps a quarter. One may sum up the whole question by saying that American women ought to be the finest women in the world, tor they have the choicest natural endowment and the most splendid opportunities. But they have suffered sorely through this unfortunate determination of the men to glorify them, and been harmed by the sin of false

chivalry. They have been made unhappy and have made the men nnhappy. For years now. gentle ladies, yon have stood on yonr pedestals, and found them only breeding spots for discontent. We foolish men pnt yon there, but we cannot take you down. So why not save the situation yourselves ? Why not come down, trip down gracefully, smilingly, of yonr own accord ’ It would be better for you, better for us. better for the nation. Take a few lessons from good old Europe and everything will be lovely I What I have put down here is said in earnestness and with conviction, though portions may sound strangely to those who have not given the subject careful thought—which suggests the remark that it might be well for this country if more people in it did serious thinking now and then I Cleveland Moffett.