THE HERLAND TRILOGY: Moving the Mountain, Herland & With Her in Ourland (Complete Edition). Charlotte Perkins GilmanЧитать онлайн книгу.
weed seeds in that soil, either.”
We rolled slowly back in the green shade. There was plenty of traffic, but all quiet, orderly, and comfortable. The people were a constant surprise to me. They were certainly better looking, even the poorest. And on the faces of the newest immigrants there was an expression of blazing hope that was almost better than the cheery peacefulness of the native born.
Wherever I saw workmen, they worked swiftly, with eager interest. Nowhere did I see the sagging slouch, the slow drag of foot and dull swing of arm which I had always associated with day laborers. We saw men working in the fields — and women, too; but I had learned not to lay my neck on the block too frequently. I knew that my protest would only bring out explanations of the advantage of field work over house work — and that women were as strong as men — or thereabouts. But I was surprised at their eagerness.
“They look as busy as a lot of ants on an ant heap,” I said.
“It’s their heap, you see,” Owen answered. “And they are not tired — that makes a great difference.”
“They seem phenomenally well dressed — looks like a scene in an opera. Sort of agricultural uniform?”
“Why not?” Owen was always asking me “why not” — and there wasn’t any answer to it. “We used to have hunting suits and fishing suits and plumbing suits, and so on. It isn’t really a uniform, just the natural working out of the best appointed dress for the trade.”
Again I held my tongue; not asking how they could afford it, but remembering the shorter hours, the larger incomes, the more universal education.
We got back to Yonkers, put up the car — these things could be hired, I found, for twenty-five cents an hour — and had lunch in a little eating place which bore out Hallie’s statement as to the high standard of food everywhere. Our meal was twenty-five cents for each of us. I saw Owen smile at me, but I refused to be surprised. We settled down in our boat again, and pushed smoothly up the river.
“I wish you’d get one thing clear in my mind,” I said at last. “Just how did you tackle the liquor question. I haven’t seen a saloon — or a drunken man. Nellie said something about people’s not wanting to drink any more — but there were several millions who did want to, thirty years ago, and plenty of people who wanted them to. What were your steps?”
“The first step was to eliminate the self-interest of the dealer — the big business pressure that had to make drunkards. That was done in state after state, within a few years, by introducing government ownership and management. With that went an absolute government guarantee of purity. In five or six years there was no bad liquor sold, and no public drinking places except government ones.
“But that wasn’t enough — not by a long way. It wasn’t the love of liquor that supported the public house — it was the need of the public house itself.”
I stared rather uncertainly,
“The meeting place,” he went on. “Men have to get together. We have had public houses as long as we have had private ones, almost. It is a social need.”
“A social need with a pretty bad result, it seems to me,” I said, “that took men away from their families, leading to all manner of vicious indulgence.”
“Yes, they used to; but that was because only men used them. I said a social need, not a masculine one. We have met it in this way. Whenever we build private houses — if it is the lowest country unit, or the highest city block, we build accommodations for living together.
“Every little village has its Town House, with club rooms of all sorts; the people flock together freely, for games, for talk, for lectures, and plays, and dances, and sermons — it is universal. And in the city — you don’t see a saloon on every corner, but you do see almost as many places where you can ‘meet a man’ and talk with him on equal ground.”
“Meet a woman, too?” I suggested.
“Yes; especially, yes. People can meet, as individuals or in groups, freely and frequently, in city or country. But men can not flock by themselves in special places provided for their special vices — without taking a great deal of extra trouble.”
“I should think they would take the trouble, then,” said I.
“But why? When there is every arrangement made for a natural good time; when you are not overworked, not underfed, not miserable and hopeless. When you can drop into a comfortable chair and have excellent food and drink in pleasant company; and hear good music, or speaking, or reading, or see pictures; or, if you like, play any kind of game; swim, ride, fly, do what you want to, for change and recreation — why long for liquor in a low place?”
“But the men — the real men, people as they were,” I insisted. “You had a world full of drinking men who liked the saloon; did you — what do you call it? — eliminate them?”
A few of them, yes,” he replied gravely; Some preferred it; others, thorough-going dipsomaniacs, we gave hospital treatment and permanent restraint; they lived and worked and were well provided for in places where there was no liquor. But there were not many of that kind. Most men drank under a constant pressure of conditions driving them to it, and the mere force of habit.
“Just remember that the weight and terror of life is lifted off us — for good and all.”
“Socialism, you mean?”
“Yes, real socialism. The wealth and power of all of us belongs to all of us now. The Wolf is dead.”
“Other things besides poverty drove a man to drink in my time,” I ventured.
“Oh, yes — and some men continued to drink. I told you there was liquor to be had — good liquor, too. And other drug habits held on for a while. But we stopped the source of the trouble. The old men died off, the younger ones got over it, and the new ones — that’s what you don’t realize yet: We make a new kind of people now.”
He was silent, his strong mouth set in a kind smile, his eyes looking far up the blue river.
“Well, what comes next? What’s done it?” I demanded. “Religion, education, or those everlasting women?”
He laughed outright; laughed till the boat rocked,
“How you do hate to admit that it’s their turn. John! Haven’t we had full swing — everything in our hands — for all historic time? They have only begun. Thirty years? Why, John, they have done so much in these thirty years that the world’s heart is glad at last. You don’t know ”
I didn’t know. But I did feel a distinct resentment at being treated like an extinct species.
“They have simply stepped on to an eminence men have been all these years building,” I said. “We have done all the hard work — are doing it yet, for all I see. We have made it possible for them to live at all! We have made the whole civilization of the world — they just profit by it. And now you speak as if, somehow, they had managed to achieve more than we have!”
Owen considered a while thoughtfully. “What you say is true. We have done a good deal of the work; we did largely make and modify our civilization. But if you read some of the newer histories ” he stopped and looked at me as if I had just happened. “Why you don’t know yet, do you? History has been rewritten.”
“You speak as if ‘history’ was a one act play.”
“I don’t mean it’s all done, of course — but we do have now a complete new treatment of the world’s history. Each nation its own, some several of them, there’s no dead level of agreement, I assure you. But our old androcentric version of life began to be questioned about 1910, I think — and new versions appeared, more and more of them. The big scholars took it up, there was new research work, and now we are not so glib in our assurance that we did it all.”
“You’re getting pretty close to things I used to know something about,” I remarked drily.
“If