THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
57
But can you not see, my friends, that when you allow in yourself, or cultivate in your daughter, the idea that useful labor is degrading, you are preparing for a moral descent in the day of adversity that may include a darker region than the one of unpaid debts.
In this brief essay the effects upon the women themselves who cherish these opinions, and are bound by these customs, have been treated. But they have a wider bearing. They reach out into all grades of life and touch every social center in the land. The discredit that is fastened upon labor for remuneration, if performed by the well-to-do women of our land, extends to the classes of people engaged in such labor, and distinctly builds rather than pulls down the barrier which exists between labor and capital, the rich and the poor. And I believe the difficulties of the labor question can never be solved ulitil this barrier has been melted away by acquaintance, knowledge and sympathy. Anything that builds this barrier, that fortifies these walls of separation, is injurious and hurtful. But those philanthropies founded upon the principle that he is my neighbor who most needs me, and which ignore the prevailing artificial conditions and distinctions, are bringing forward the day of “the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.”
Personal contact, and the love and influence that flows from one to another in the social body,is the only agency that really wins, the only key that opens hearts.
Of late philanthropic institutions have sprung up, founded on this principle, viz., that of constant and free intercourse of the favored and cultured with the more humble and less fortunate.
Hull House, in this city, is a notable and successful example. It is a house planted by two women in the midst of a foreign population, mostly self-supporting, but comparatively destitute of a social life that brings joy and hope. These women in wise and winning ways have reached out socially, and have won their way into the hearts and confidence of the people by proving themselves real friends. No superiority has been assumed, but a footing of social equality has been their aim to establish. From the needs of these people, which were many, there has sprung a system of most diverse educational facilities too numerous to mention.
Now if it is good for “homes” to be founded in less favored neighborhoods to carry social life into them, how much more may be accomplished when the natural homes that cover our land extend a helping hand to the needy and less favored?
Now it is quite common for our social life to rest on a commercial basis, receiving so much for so much, and using it as a means for selfish promotion; and interminable calling lists and crowded reception halls are some of the consequences. Wearisome these self-imposed burdens are, and often we feel that we cannot bear them any longer. How much better it would be to bestow ourselves and our hospitality on those who need us and whom we can really benefit, and not look for a material reward, but take it in the inward satisfaction such a life would bring. As Browning says: “ Give earth yourself, go up for gain above.”
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