THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: Short Stories, Novels, Poems & Essays. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
any other form of organized labor. Wages have risen, all the work is better done and it costs much less. You can see all that. But what you can’t possibly realize is the difference it makes to women. All the change the men feel is in better food, no fret and worry at home, and smaller bills.”
“That’s something,” I modestly suggested.
“Yes, that’s a good deal; but to the women it’s a thousand times more. The women who liked that kind of work are doing it now, as a profession, for reasonable hours and excellent salaries; and the women who did not like it are now free to do the work they are fitted for and enjoy. This is one of our great additions to the world’s wealth — freeing so much productive energy. It has im proved our health, too. One of the worst causes of disease is mal-position, you know. Almost everybody used to work at what they did not like — and we thought it was beneficial to character!”
I tried without prejudice to realize the new condition, but a house without a house-wife, without children, without servants, seemed altogether empty. Nellie reassured me as to the children, however.
“It’s no worse than when they went to school, John, not a bit. If you were here at about 9 A. M., you’d see the mothers taking a morning walk, or ride if it’s stormy, to the child-garden, and leaving the babies there, asleep mostly. There are seldom more than five or six real little ones at one time in a group like this.”
“Do mothers leave their nursing babies there?”
“Sometimes; it depends on the kind of work they do. Remember they only have to work two hours, and many mothers get ahead on their work and take a year off at haby time. Still, two hours’ work a day that one enjoys, does not hurt even a nursing mother.”
I found it extremely difficult from the first, to picture a world whose working day was but two hours long; or even the four hours they told me was generally given.
“What do people do with the rest of their time; working people, I mean?” I asked.
“The old ones usually rest a good deal, loaf, visit one another, play games, in some cases they travel. Others, who have the working habit ingrained, keep on in the afternoon; in their gardens often; almost all old people love gardening; and those who wish, have one now, you see. The city ones do an astonishing amount of reading, studying, going to lectures, and the theatres. They have a good time.”
“But I mean the low rowdy common people — don’t they merely loaf and get drunk?”
Nellie smiled at me good humoredly.
“Some of them did, for a while. But it became increasingly difficult to get drunk. You see, their health was better, with sweeter homes, better food and more pleasure; and except for the dipsomaniacs they improved in their tastes presently. Then their children all made a great advance, under the new educational methods; the women had an immense power as soon as they were independent; and between the children’s influence and the woman’s and the new opportunities, the worst men had to grow better. There was always more recuperative power in people than they were given credit for.”
“But surely there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, of hoboes and paupers; wretched, degenerate creatures.”
Nellie grew sober. “Yes, there were. One of our inherited handicaps was that great mass of wreckage left over from the foolishness and ignorance of the years behind us. But we dealt very thoroughly with them. As I told you before, hopeless degenerates were promptly and mercifully removed. A large class of perverts were in capacitated for parentage and placed where they could do no harm, and could still have some usefulness and some pleasure. Many proved curable, and were cured. And for the helpless residue; blin(l and crippled through no fault of their own, a remorseful society provides safety, comfort and care; with all the devices for occupation and enjoyment that our best minds could arrange. These are our remaining asylums; decreasing every year. We don’t make that kind of people any more.”
We talked as we strolled about, or sat on the stone benches under rose bush or grape vine. The beauty of the place grew on me irresistibly. Each separate family could do as they liked in their own yard, under some restriction from the management in regard to general comfort and beauty. I was always ready to cry out about interference with personal rights; but my sister reminded me that we were not allowed to “commit a nuisance” in the old days, only our range of objections had widened. A disagreeable noise is now prohibited, as much as a foul smell; and conspicuously ugly forms and colors, also.
“And who decides — who’s your dictator and censor?”
“Our best judges — we elect, recall and change them. But under their guidance we have developed some general sense of beauty. People would complain loudly now of what did not use to trouble them at all.”
Then I remembered that I had seen no row of wooden cows in the green meadows, no invitation to “meet me at the fountain,” no assailing finger to assure me that my credit was good, no gross cathartic reminders, nothing anywhere to mar the beauty of the landscape; but many a graceful gate, temple-like summer houses crowning the grassy hills, arbors, pergolas, cool seats by stone-rimmed fountains, signs everywhere of the love of beauty and the power to make it.
“I don’t see yet how you ever manage to pay for all this extra work everywhere. I suppose in a place like this it comes out of the profit made on food,” I suggested.
“No — the gardening expenses of these home clubs come out of the rent.”
“And what rent do they have to pay — approximately?”
“I can tell you exactly about this place, because it was opened by a sort of stock company of women, and I was in it for a while. The land cost $100.00 an acre then — $30,000.00. To get it in shape cost $10,000.00, to build thirty of these houses about $4,000.00 apiece — there was great saving in doing it all at one time, the guest-house, furnished, was only $50,000.00, it is very simple, you see; and the general plant and child-garden, and everything else, some $40,000.00 more. I know we raised a capital of $250,000.00, and used it all. The residents pay $600.00 a year for house-rent and $100.00 more for club privileges. That is $28,000.00. We take 4 per cent, and it leaves plenty for taxes and up-keep. Those who have children keep up the child-garden. The hotel makes enough to keep everything going easily, and the food and service departments pay handsomely. Why, if these people had kept on living in New York, it would have cost them altogether at least $8,000.00 a year. Here it just costs them about $2,000.00 — and just see what they get for it.”
I had an inborn distrust of my sister’s figures, and consulted Owen later; also Hallie, who had much detailed knowledge on the subject; and furthermore I did some reading.
There was no doubt about it. The method of living of which we used to be so proud, for which I still felt a deep longing, was abominably expensive. Much smaller amounts, wisely administered, produced better living, and for the life of me I could not discover the cackling herds of people I had been led to expect when such “Utopian schemes” used to be discussed in my youth.
From the broad, shady avenues of this quiet place we looked over green hedges or wire fences thick with honeysuckle and rose, into pleasant homelike gardens where families sat on broad piazzas, swung in hammocks, played tennis, ball, croquet, tether-ball and badminton, just as families used to.
Groups of young girls or young men — or both — strolled under the trees and disported themselves altogether as I remembered them to have done, and happy children f rolicked about in the houses and gardens, all the more happily, it would appear, because they had their own place for part of the day.
We had seen the fathers come home in time for the noon meal. In the afternoon most of the parents seemed to think it the finest thing in the world to watch their children learning or playing together, in that amazing Garden of theirs, or to bring them home for more individual companionship. As a matter of fact, I had never seen, in any group of homes that I could recall, so much time given to children by so many parents — unless on a Sunday in the suburbs.
I was very silent on the way back, revolving these things in my mind. Point by point it seemed so vividly successful,