A city is in many
respects a great business corporation, but in other respects it is enlarged
housekeeping. If American cities have failed in the first, partly because
officeholders have carried with them the predatory instinct learned in
competitive business, and cannot help "working a good thing" when
they have an opportunity, may we not say that city housekeeping has failed
partly because women, the traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as
to its multiform activities? The men of the city have been carelessly
indifferenct to much of its civic housekeeping, as they have always been
indifferent to the details of the household. They have totally disregarded a
candidate’s capacity to keep the streets clean, preferring to consider him in
relation to the national tariff or to the necessity for increasing the national
navy, in a pure spirit of reversion to the traditional type of government,
which had to do only with enemies and outsiders.
It is difficult to see
what military prowess has to do with the multiform duties which, in a modern
city, include the care of parks and libraries, superintendence of markets,
sewers and bridges, the inspection of provisions and boilers, and the proper
disposal of garbage. It has nothing to do with the building department, which
the city maintains that it may see to it that the basements are dry, that the
bedrooms are large enough to afford the required cubic feet of air, that the
plumbing is sanitary, that the gas pipes do not leak, that the tenement house
court is large enough to afford light and ventilation, that the stairways are
fireproof. The ability to carry arms has nothing to do with the health
department maintained by the city, which provides that children are vaccinated,
that contagious diseases are isolated and placarded, that the spread of
tuberculosis is curbed, that the water is free from typhoid infection Certainly
the military conception of society is remote from the functions of the school
boards, whose concern it is that children are educated, that they are supplied
with kindergartens, and are given a decent place in which to play. The very
multifariousness and complexity of a city government demand the help of minds
accustomed to detail and variety of work, to a sense of obligation for the
health and welfare of young children, and to responsibility for the cleanliness
and comfort of other people.
Because all these
things have traditionally been in the hands of women, if they take no part in
them now they are not only missing the education which the natural
participation in civic life would bring to them, but they are losing what they
have always had. From the beginning of tribal life, they have been held
responsible for the health of the community, a function which is now
represented by the health department. From the days of the cave dwellers, so
far as the home was clean and wholesome, it was due to their efforts, which are
now represented by the Bureau of Tenement House Inspection From the period of
the primitive village, the only public sweeping which was performed was what
they undertook in their divers dooryards, that which is now represented by the
Bureau of Street Cleaning. Most of the departments in a modern city can be
traced to woman’s traditional activity; but, in spite of this, so soon as these
old affairs were turned over to the city they slipped from woman’s hands,
apparently because they then became matters for collective action and implied
the use of the franchise--because the franchise had in the first instance been
given to the man who could fight, because in the beginning he alone could vote
who could carry a weapon, it was considered an improper thing for a woman to
possess it.
Is it quite public
spirited for woman to say, "We will take care of these affairs so long as
they stay in our own houses, but if they go outside and concern so many people
that they cannot be carried on without the mechanism of the vote, we will drop
them; it is true that these activities which women have always had are not at
present being carried on very well by the men in most of the great American
cities, but, because we do not consider it ’lady- like’ to vote, we will let
them alone?"
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