Marriage and Love | Page 3

of practical American life: Can the man make a living? can he
support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually
this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are not of moonlight
and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of shopping tours and
bargain counters. This soul poverty and sordidness are the elements
inherent in the marriage institution. The State and the Church approve
of no other ideal, simply because it is the one that necessitates the State
and Church control of men and women.
Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollars
and cents. Particularly is this true of that class whom economic
necessity has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change
in woman's position, wrought by that mighty factor, is indeed
phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short time since she has
entered the industrial arena. Six million women wage workers; six
million women, who have the equal right with men to be exploited, to
be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to starve even. Anything more, my lord?
Yes, six million wage workers in every walk of life, from the highest
brain work to the mines and railroad tracks; yes, even detectives and
policemen. Surely the emancipation is complete.
Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of women
wage workers look upon work as a permanent issue, in the same light
as does man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to be
independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is really
independent in our economic treadmill; still, the poorest specimen of a
man hates to be a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate.
The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown
aside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder to organize
women than men. "Why should I join a union? I am going to get
married, to have a home." Has she not been taught from infancy to look
upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough that the home,
though not so large a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and

bars. It has a keeper so faithful that naught can escape him. The most
tragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wage
slavery; it only increases her task.
According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee "on
labor and wages, and congestion of population," ten per cent. of the
wage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must
continue to work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this
horrible aspect the drudgery of housework, and what remains of the
protection and glory of the home? As a matter of fact, even the
middle-class girl in marriage can not speak of her home, since it is the
man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether the husband is
a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is that marriage guarantees
woman a home only by the grace of her husband. There she moves
about in his home, year after year, until her aspect of life and human
affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab as her surroundings. Small
wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable,
thus driving the man from the house. She could not go, if she wanted to;
there is no place to go. Besides, a short period of married life, of
complete surrender of all faculties, absolutely incapacitates the average
woman for the outside world. She becomes reckless in appearance,
clumsy in her movements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her
judgment, a weight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and
despise. Wonderfully inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it
not?
But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After all, is
not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of
it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and
homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and
reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from "loving"
parents, to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh,
the mockery of it!
Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it
ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and

put him in convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the
child? If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does
marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to