Ten Centuries of the Uplift

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

PERHAPS the most important factor in the making of our thirtieth-century civilization was the exclusion, in the year 2473, of all men from the privileges of the ballot and other forms of participation in politics. They had long since given up the ‘ Men’s Rights ’ superstition which had been the underlying cause of so much horror and carnage in the Male Ages. And it was believed that, while participation in affairs tended certainly to coarsen their moral fibre and to distract their attention from their natural spheres of action, — the home, the church, and the fine arts, — their presence in politics could not but act as a clog upon the wheels of progress. This was seen in its true light as the necessary result of man’s unavoidable, and indeed desirable, ignorance — or shall we say innocence? — of the sordid realities of public life.

This is not the time, after more than five centuries of exclusively feminine rule, to indulge in ungenerous comparisons of our civilization with the manmade barbarism of old. The recent destruction by governmental order of all historic documents, relics, monuments, and books of that ancient world was an act dictated by true delicacy of feeling. In another generation there will remain scarcely a tradition of the Age of Force for our modern sex-jealousy to feed upon. But it should be remembered to the eternal credit of our noble brothers and husbands that their disfranchisement was due to their own clear-sighted acknowledgment of their unfitness for public affairs, as expressed in their own free and independent vote.

Long before this there had occurred an event of almost equal importance, which cannot be considered independently of the removal of men from politics. The proclamation of world-wide prohibition in the closing decade of the twenty-second century amounted to a declaration once and for all of every woman’s right to legislate for her neighbor and to determine by the ballot precisely what she shall and shall not drink, eat, smoke, wear, and do. From that enactment, therefore, we date our modern era of Domestic Interference. For the first time in human history, it clearly enunciated the supreme moral and political doctrine of the modern world, namely, the duty of every individual to interfere in the private affairs of others.

To these two factors, chiefly, we must attribute the immense increase of legislation which is so characteristic of our age. To the final elimination of the male mind from politics we owe the gradual atrophy of the judicial and executive functions of government, which were necessary enough, no doubt, in the ruder epochs of the past, but which are now regarded as curious relics of an outgrown barbarism. The ugly and distressingly brutal phases of the ancient system of police have also been softened away, although squads of policemen are still maintained by our great cities for the same reason which actuates the state in its support of a standing army, that is, for the sake of the spectacular effect of large masses of beautifully developed men in uniform.

Out of the wreckage of the Male Ages we have saved one principle, crude, unformed, and misunderstood though it was when it came to us. Incredible as it may seem, the principle of freedom of speech was once interpreted to mean the freedom of the press! In the words of an ancient man-writer, ‘We have changed all that.’ But there must always be for us something wistfully pathetic in the thought that ages ago, in a blind and fumbling way, man laid for the modern woman the very corner-stone of her independence, namely, the God-given right to speak as she pleases about her neighbor.

The immense saving to the state in this elimination of costly governmental machinery has made possible a corresponding extension, in accordance with the spirit of our Age of Sympathy, in the field of philanthropic legislation. Only a few instances need be cited. The large state bonus for maternity has raised motherhood from the level of a despised and unpopular trade to that of an honored and overcrowded profession. The Fund for Indigent Poets publishes many thousands of volumes per year, although this fund is not supported by the State but by the Novelists’ Union. The Schoolteachers’ Retirement Fund has been made available for all men who have served in our public schools or kindergartens for three years. Respectable poverty has become one of the most lucrative forms of business activity. The prodigal waste and display in our clubs for Retired Mendicants and Voluntary Cripples has led, in some instances, to public protest. Prison-Reform, financed and supervised by the state, has progressed to a point where many of the larger penitentiaries can boast of long waiting-lists, composed of our wealthiest and most celebrated criminals.

It will be seen that the keynote of our thirtieth-century civilization is altruistic interference. Each of us has come to realize as never before that she is indeed her sister’s keeper. Our solicitude for the welfare of others extends to the minutest details of daily life and expresses itself in the making of what were called, in the ages of license and individualism, ‘sumptuary laws.’ This term, once used in a derogatory sense, is now seen to cover nearly all the laws that are really worth making. For it is a safe generalization that the modem stateswoman is not interested in the purely abstract and materialistic questions of commerce, jurisprudence, and international relations. Her interest is in things much closer to the real life of womankind — in what she eats and wears, and in all that touches the daily life of the ‘woman in the street.’ There was a time, doubtless, when these things would have been considered in the same light in which we now regard the so-called ‘Ten Commandments,’¹ that is, as a matter of taste and individual caprice. But to-day they are seen to be of paramount importance. They are highly representative of our modern spirit, and show, as the husband of Anne Hathaway would say, ‘the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure.’

It may be noted in passing that these reforms operated powerfully among the male voters of the time to induce a growing apathy toward politics. It was as if no small part of their political enthusiasm had been alcoholic in origin, and as if their presence at the polls had been made possible only by the cylindrical rolls of tobacco-leaf which were distributed, like the modern bon-bon, at election time. Thus one reform led to another, and the Uplift grew like a snowball.

There had existed for many centuries a few dietetic idealists who denied themselves the use of animal foods. Their reasons for this were more considerable than their numbers, ranging from neurasthenia and dyspepsia to poverty and lack of teeth. These now seized their opportunity, with all the fervor of religious enthusiasm. They adopted as their rallying cry and battle-chant the noble words which have served so well in many a more recent campaign: —

They had behind them the entire impetus of the reform movement. They climbed up the rising wave of tenderness and sympathy, and this finally swept them on to victory in our legislative halls. The entire civilized world had soon pronounced illegal the use of animal foods in any form.

A large body of vaporizing theorists — the tradition that there was a woman among them is certainly ill-founded — advanced at this time the absurd argument that we ought, in the interests of consistency, to prohibit the use of animal products in dress as well as in food, and especially the employment by our male milliners of birds’ plumage in the decoration of hats. It goes without saying that this pedantic and ill-willed objection was self-condemned by its invocation of so antiquated and outworn a principle as consistency. By the most lenient interpretation, the contention was merely frivolous; and even in those remote periods, a flippant treatment of the theme of Dress was looked upon as little short of sacrilege.

After the enactment of the Vegetarian Laws, we lived for centuries unaware of the agony and suffering upon which we sustained our lives. For many years it had been felt that we had thwarted the natural destiny of the grains and edible plants by subjecting them to cultivation, and that as soon as it became possible to sustain human life by other means, we should allow them to return to the condition of nature. It was barely three centuries ago that science finally demonstrated the sentient, conscious life of vegetables. It need not be said that, immediately after the announcement of this heart-rending discovery, laws prohibiting vegetable diet were promulgated almost simultaneously throughout the world.

The final success of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Minerals is within the memory of living woman, as is also the discovery of the process of extracting nourishment from the atmosphere. Throughout the lives of most of us we have been restricted to a purely atmospheric diet. The exceptions to this statement are perhaps worthy of mention. It has been found impossible to release from servitude the plants which provide us with sugar, tea, and chocolate, for the bon-bon and the ‘cup that cheers’ have become the very corner-stones, so to speak, of the body politic, although they were scornfully rejected by the builders. Certain plants are still subjected to cruel tortures in the preparation of cosmetics. No substitute has been found for cotton, linen, or wool, and the silk-worm is still in bondage. If consistency conflicts with our religion, so much the worse for consistency!

It has been a long climb from the cave-man of old, rending and swallowing huge collops of raw flesh, to the ethereal, air-fed public woman of the Age of Sympathy. Centuries ago, in the darkness of time, in the age of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, there lived a certain poet who dreamed of the dawn and sang, —