THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: Short Stories, Novels, Poems & Essays. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Nellie looked at me as if I were speaking to her from a distance.
“We used to say so — and I suppose we used to think so — some of us. But we know better now. These people are not compelled to come to our country, but if they come they know what they have to do — and they do it. You may have noticed that we have no ‘steerage’.”
I had noticed it.
“They have decent surroundings from the first step. They have to be antiseptically clean, they and all their belongings, before entering the ship.”
“But what an awful expense!” I ventured.
“Suppose you keep cattle, John, and knew how to fatten and improve them; and suppose your ranch was surrounded by strays — mavericks — anxious to come in. Would you call it ‘an expense’ to add to your herd?”
“You can’t sell people.”
“No, but you can profit by their labor.”
“That sounds like the same old game. I should think your Socialism would have put an end to that.”
“Socialism did not alter the fact that wealth comes by labor,” she replied. “All these people work. We provide the opportunity for them, we train them to higher efficiency, especially the children. The very best and wisest of us are proud to serve there — as women used to be proud when they were invited ‘to help receive’ some personage. We receive Humanity — and in troduce it to America. What they produce is used to cover the expense of their training, and also to lay up a surplus for themselves.”
“They must produce more than they used to,” observed I drily.
“They do,” said Nellie. You might as well finish this thing up,” I said. “Then when people talk to me about immigration, I can look intelligent and say, ‘I know about that.’ And really, I’m interested. How do you begin with ’em?”
“When they come into Jamaica Harbor they see a great crescent of white piers, each with its gate. We’ll go and see it some day — splendid arches with figures on them, like the ones they used to put up for Triumphs. There’s the German Gate and the Spanish Gate, the English Gate, the Italian Gate — and so on. There is welcome in their own language — and instruction in ours. There is physical examination — the most searching and thorough — microscopic — chemical. They have to come up to a certain standard before they are graduated, you see.”
“Graduated?”
“Yes. We have a standard of citizenship now — an idea of what people ought to be and how to make them so. Dear me! To think that you don’t know about that — ”
“I shouldn’t think they’d stand for it — all this examination and so on.”
“No country on earth offers so much happiness to its people. Nowhere else — yet — is there as good opportunity to be helped up, to have real scientific care, real loving study and assistance! Everybody likes to be made the most of! Everybody — nearly — has the feeling that they might be something better if they had a chancel We give them the chance.”
“Then I should think you’d have all creation on your hands at once.”
“And depopulate the other nations? They had something to say about that! You see this worked all sorts of ways. In the first place, when we got all the worst and lowest people, that left an average of better ones at home — people who could learn more quickly. When we proved what good stuff human nature was, rightly treated, they all took heart of grace and began to improve their own. Then, as our superior attractions steadily drew off ‘the lower classes,’ that raised the value of those who remained. They were better paid, better thought of at home. As more and more people came to us, the other nations got rather alarmed, and began to establish counter attractions — to keep their folks at home. Also, many other nations had some better things than we did, you remember. And finally most people love their own country better than any other, no matter how good. No, the balance of population is not seriously altered.”
“Still, with such an influx of low-grade people you must have a Malthusian torrent of increasing population on your hands.”
Again that odd listening look, her head a little on one side.
I have to keep remembering,” she said. Have to recall what people wrote and said and thought in the past generation. The idea was that people had to increase like rabbits, and would eat up the food supply, so wars and pestilences and all manner of cruel conditions were necessary to ‘keep down the population.’ Wasn’t that it?”
“You are twenty years out, my dear!” I rejoiced to assure her. “We had largely passed that, and were beginning to worry about the decreasing birth rate — among the more intelligent. It was only the lowest grade that kept on ‘like rabbits’ as you say. But it’s that sort you seem to have been filling in with. I should think it would have materially lowered the average. Or have you, in this new ‘forcing system’ made decent people out of scrubs?”
“That’s exactly what we’ve done; we’ve improved the people and lowered the birth-rate at one stroke!”
“They were beginning to talk eugenics when I left.”
“This is not eugenics — we have made great advances in that, of course; but the chief factor in this change is a common biological law — ‘individuation is in inverse proportion to reproduction,’ you know. We individualize the women — develop their personal power, their human characteristics — and they don’t have so many children.”
“I don’t see how that helps unless you have eliminated the brutality of men.”
“My dear brother, the brutality of men lowered the birthrate — it didn’t raise it! One of those undifferentiated peasant women would have a baby every year if she was married to a saint — and she couldn’t have more in polyandry — unless it were
J” twins I No, the birthrate was for women to settle — and they have.”
“Out of fashion to have children at all?”
“No, John, you needn’t sneer. We have better children than ever were born on earth before, and they grade higher every year. But we are approaching a balanced population.”
I didn’t like the subject, and turned to the clear skyline of the distant city. It towered as of old, but seemed not so close-packed. Not one black cloud — and very few white ones!
“You’ve ended the smoke nuisance, I’m glad to see. Has steam gone, too?”
“We use electricity altogether in all the cities now,” she said. “It occurred to us that to pipe a leaking death into every bedroom; to thread the city with poison, fire and explosion, was foolish.”
“Defective wiring used to cause both death and conflagration, didn’t it?”
“It did,” she admitted; “but it is not ‘defective’ any more.” Is the coal all gone?” if
“No, but we burn it at the mines — by a process which does not waste ninety per cent of the energy — and transmit the power.”
“For all New York?”
“Oh, no. New York has enough water power, you see. The tide mills are enough for this whole region.”
“They solved the tide-mill problem, did they?”
“Yes. There are innumerable mechanical advances, of course. You’ll en j oy them.”
We were near enough now to see the city clearly.
“What a splendid water front!” I cried. “Why, this is glorious.”
It surely was. The wide shores swung away, glittering in the pure sunlight. Staten Island lay behind us, a vision of terraced loveliness; the Jersey shore shone clear, no foul pall of oil smoke overhanging; the Brooklyn banks were banks of palaces, and Manhattan itself towered royally before us,