Staying Free Article 1927

8/2/2019 Staying Free Article 1927

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339Though he was only seventeen, I dont understand why

Leo hadnot unaway.Perhapshi shatred of his atherwas a morbidfascinationwhich held him a t home.I believe no one actually worked harder than Leo ; an dnoonegot esspay.Early n hemorning,on hewa ytobreakfast, I would see hi mgoing down to hestableswith that pecu liar shuffle of his, thr ustin g his rat-like faceforward at each step. Once in a long while a cramp wouldshoot hroughhis allenarches,andhe would crumple t otheground.

Xi, Bob ! he would shout upon seeing me. Hi! tothisperson, o hatperson,every lmehepassed hemthrough out his long day.

Sometimes when he overslept hls father awakened himwith a piece of ha rnes s trap .ThenLeo wouldgo feedth e mules, and bring hem o he tipple-a job the fat herwaspaid or.He would come up on the ipp le ate r o

help me with he coal ; and whenever I could I had a bagof cookies the re, for I knewhegot ittle o eat at home.Gee, he would say , th e old man wont et me have

five dollarsout of mypay o buy archsupports.Hesaysthats oo much. He glves my brother half of his pay, butI get only five dollars a month of mine. That aint much.

He was so undern ourish ed that on bitter cold hisface turned bluish color. I hated o have him work withme .Bu theaccepted it all with only hecomplaint of adeephatred of hi sfather,that ol devil.

And fter he days work on theipple,while isfather, with fat paunch and mealy toothkss mouth, ambledaround heproperty,Leo would take hemules as theywerebroughtup rom hemine, ead hem o hestable,feed hem,and inishhi sday welvehoursafter thadbegun.

Hi, Bob! Hi, Ji m! I recallhi shigh, hin volceringing in the pleasant evening

These Modern WomenStaying Free

ANONYMOUSLWe pmnt herewlth the of a seraes of anony-

mous artzcles pe r s o na l backgrounds o f a g?.oupdz s t zngur shed wath a modern poarlt of mew. n e x t

z ~ dppear in The Nation fo r 13.1I CANNOTexplainmy ifewithout aking ntoaccountthe free atmosphere which pervaded our home under theinfluence of myfathersgenuinely ibertariannature.Ourhome had in it absolutely no verbotens and our family gram-marcontai ned no impera tive. We five boisterouschildrenabsorbedhepirlt of mutualonsideratlonithout1nJunctions or commands.

Fathers arge ibrarywa sopen o u s all at an yage.We were never ordere d to bed in the mid dle of an engros-si ng book but could read ll ightong If wewishedDlckens,Brownlng,andParkmanwere nhis ibrary, ofcourse,ut so were Boccacclo, Rabelais,ndGulllverunabridged.And so wasLenaRivers.When we wantedthe Els ie books, we got them. If my brother brought homeNick Carter and Diamond Dick hey were not thrown outD thewindowbu twent hecrltica l ound of the family.When Frank Merriwellsweeklieswere iscoveredyingabout the house, my father read them aloud to us, laughingover their super-heroism but thoroughly enjoying the thrill-ing accounts of those Olympic baseball games won by F ra nkand his peerless knights. When the village Comstocks werepublicly condem ning nd ecretly evour~ngSappho ndCamille we all read them with frank appreciation .

We always lived whe re there was a fireplace and almostevery ightound us gathered roundt, stenlnyoGrimmand heArabianNlghts,JulesVerne,RiderHag-gard , Mark Twam. Father loved to read aloud, and throughthe long evenings in those ull, back-country places we wouldhear these favori tes over and over. other times he wouldread t o us fromhis idols-Tom Paine ,Ingersoll,Voltaire

Early nour iveswegotaccustomed obeingunlikeothe r people. To be an atheist in a small own n hose

dayswasno tunlikewhat t t o be a pacifist n 1917.Educationalpportunitiesnheack-water com-

munities where we were obliged to live were so slim thatour parentsweredeeplyabsorbed n heproblem of oureducation,Various emale eminarieswere ried ormysisters. By the t lme I, the youngest, came along, my fatherwas disgusted with the education he others had received.He hated the airs and graces taught them, the artificialitiesand stupidities which seemed to him so flagrant each timethey came back from one of those Institutions.He ook upon himself the as k of myeducationandcarried it through hegrammargrades.Heha dmany astrugglewit h local chool boa rdsand ruan t officers bu talways won his point by ,various methods of delay until hisbusinessmade it necess ary o move to a newcommunity.His work was mining engineering, and he was obliged ogo oany place where hecompanywished a mine devel-oped. Ever y ewyearswe piled everythingwepossessedinto a freightcaran dawaywe rekked a fe whundredmilesnto notherittleAmericanwilderness.The jobof ca rt ing five children nd ar-load of goods acrossOhio, Kentucky. and Missouri dld not interrupt my fathersenthusiastic irection o f mytudies of ar~thmet ic ndgrammarorhis nterest n my endless dventuresntohistoryandgeography.

But this delightful, home-made education had its draw-backs As I approachedhiyh-school I bemn to realizethis A C,hristmas visit o an aunt iving n a large MiddleWesternclty.withhizh schools andauniversity. qax7e methe dea of going oareal school as ,coon 2s possibleandtheu o college. This dea ?rev: into a fixed determination.Althoush my desire met with no enrouraQement a t home, Tnever hough t of qivin,T it up . I borrowed the ailroadfare from my brother, dressed one of ourfattePt urkeys.packed it intoanold-fashioned elescopewithabottle ofhome-mF.de elder-flowerwineand a Tar of sausagecakes,and ook rain or he ity, ixhundredmiles away.


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The Nation [Vol. 124,No. 3221Althoughmy father was hurt bymygoingawayhewasremarkably generous about it; in lat er yea rse even enjoyedsaying that he was victim of his ow n educational methods.

During my senior year of high school, when the tim ecame in our upper-class lit erary society to select fr om thejunior class themember s or he followingyear, I wasthunderstruck o find th at a colored girl, one of the mos tbrilliantstudents of the school, wasnot even being con-sidered.When I proposed her name h e entire group dis-approvedviolently. My chumand I made so much com-motion among both students and teachers, with the staunchbacking of our courageous rincipal, that th egirlwasfinally admitted and proved to be one of the mos t popularmembers and an asset to the organization.

Fromhigh school I went o heuniversity.Therethe sorority system struck me as being not only silly butharmful to the spirit of the institution. Jewish girls werenot dmitted.Poor irls needed xceptional ualitiesnorder to ru nany chance of election. On theotherhand,dumbbells were fought over if th eir father s were wealthyor heirmothe rs socially prominent. When rushing imecame I turned down the bids I received, to the astonishmentof the whole student body, even those most discriminatedagainst.

Women at that time were not allowed to take cours esIn the medical school of the university-a holy place, sacredto the male students. My high-school chum and I were espe-cially intere sted n biology and wewished to supplementour studies with a course in bacteriology given only in themedical school. We tr ied o egiste r or hiscoursebu twerediplomatically efused. We insisted upon the ightto takeanycourse offered by theuniversity.Theauthor-ities put usoff wit h t hat pat ernal condescension wi th whichthe equests of women used be disposedof.We triedto get other girls n he biology course t o back us. Theylaughed at us. We took i t up with some of the men in thebacteriologicalclass. They welcomed us and supported ourdemand. In he endwemarchedriumphantlyntohebacteria laboratory, and since then courses in that medicalschool have been open t o all students.

Suffrage, at tha t time, had emerged from the stage ofignorant misrepresentation but was going through a periodin some waysmore discouraging-supercilious toleration.Most of our classmates were bored by the subject and ig-nored it. My chums mother had been a pioneer with Eliza-beth Cady Stanton and Anna Shaw and had passed on theenthusiasm of that experience to her daughter . One memo-rabledaywe earned th at Mrs. Pankhursthad come toAmerica. Eagerly we teleg raphed the great militant, askingIf she would speak at ou r college. Nothing can ever matchthe exhilaration of arr angin g the meeti ng for our heroine,advertising it among the tudents,andmakingher tayamong us count o he utmost for he cause. It was henthat I had my first sense of being a part of something finemoving in the world.

On leaving the university, the natural step in those daysfor a self-supporting womanwas int o socialwork.There,even more han in school and college, the frank and freehome atmosphere which had been my luck proved its worth.Brought ace o acewith heugliest acts of lifeasacase worker in t he red-light distr ict of a cosmopolitan city,th e callow college graduate was ab le to maintain a scientificattitude temperedwithhumansympathy. It wasnot ongbefore I became the executivehead of one of themany

cha rit ies of th e city, all federated and super-federated intoone greatphilanthropic whole. I theangel child oa charminggroup of elderlyLady Bountiful s who adoremy dramatic reports of the misery among the special typeof poor theyhad elected t o help. Bu t themitigation osuffering, even under uchdelightful uspices,began t

Like so many others, I wanted t o go deeper.Therewas probablynever a time when theai rwa s

charged with social currents. Civic-reform leagues wereactive.Muckraking ndrust-bustinghadnotgoneoutof fashion.Single tax held a serious place in he discussions of thoughtfultudents of society. Prisoneformhad been given great impetus by the exposures of ThomaMott Osborne, and the probation system was being wideladopted.Sexhygienehadgraduated romhe tage oa hobby, and birth control was a question to be courageouabout. In this ferment of ideas my well-established hab it ointellectual hospitality led me step by step to more funda -mental philosophies. Theentrance t o this new world w5wthrou gh the home of a strong but gentle anarchist womanwhosewohildren pluckily boreeramemidheignorant jeers of their schoolmates. My thi nking was profoundly affected by hose venings athe r home withgroup of choice souls out of tha t smug, crass , over-upliftedover-settlement-housed city-a pr in ter whowould handlonly beautiful, intelligent things, using none b ut the finespaper and the most artistic type faces ; a bookseller whosshop was th e onlyplace where one could buy he

a few foreign-born workers fromthe local steel mills, vibrant,earnest dealists of the ypewho would neither scab in strike nor take part in a wara dancingeacher, resh romhe influence of IsadorDuncan,making a daring truggle orbeautyand elf-expression. I joined her classandwrote ndignant ettersto he local papersdefendingherwork when thePurityLeague and the Daisy Chainers would have driven her outof town.At hisstimulatingstageLochinvararrived, notoutof theWest utrom my own immediate milieu-theexecutive head of one of the leading philanthropic organizations of t he city. He also was realizing t he futi lity of sociapalliativesandwashaving difficulties withhisdirectorsbecause of his to o fr an k exposure of local industria landhousing onditions ndhis rdentnterestnhe nti-preparednessagitation.About his ime I waswarnedbymy lady managers that my enthusiasms were carry ing metoo ar.These official mutterings, however,did notdetereither of us.

Lochinvars difficulties inevi tably ncreased.He finallreceived an abr upt notice of dismissalandwe decided tgo o New York o live. Wehaveneverregrettedgivingup the secure ife of the social worker for he rough andtumble struggle for existence which is the lot of most selfsupporting people. My real life seemed only then to beginIt was entirely honest, it wa s a full life, and it was my ow

The country then wallowing in the war rgy. Therwere aids, rrests,mprisonment.Radicaleaderswerebeing ried for publishing a magazine, writing a book, omaking a speech. Employersassociations,with the aid ocomplaisant di stric t attorneys, were squaring old accounwith union organizers.Whether it was uildingdefense organization, preparing a gigantic protest meetingagainst conscription, or at temp ting to elect Morris Hillquimayor of New I there.


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It was the most logical thi ng in theworld that I shouldjoin in the militant suffrage activity at Washington, do mytime in Jai l, and win my badge of honor. What a gloriouscompany of emancipated women they were! There was notone of us who did not come out of t ha t experience with lessawe of policeman, judge, and established ideas and with aclearer understanding of the true natur e of authority.I did not tar ry long in the doctrina ire stage of thosewho belong to hi sor hat.After he umult and theshouting of 1916-1920 died down, it wa s possible to hin kout the fundamentals. I understood better what the printerand the bookseller and those steel-workers were aiming at.The tmostmeasure of freedom-economic, intellectual,emotional-is the qua n o n of the good life.

In he more ntimateapplication of this philosophy,eleven years of free and uninte rruptedly happy associationsurelyprove omething. We havenever elt he need to

sanctifyour union with ay or clerical ormalities.is a rare spiritua l value in th e consciousness t hat mutuadesire is th e only tie th at binds. Nor have we been willito cut down our freedom n order o ncreas e he censfigures. With childless old agenot so very ar awawe still ma intain tha t there is more genui ne companionshto be had wit h chosen fri ends of s imilar age and experiencthan with immature fledglings of another genera tion.

As I look back over our eleven happy years I feel suthatourrelat ionship would nothave been so harmonioor complete if either of usha dstr essed he conventionidea of exclusive mutual possession. A5 my ow n thinkigrows I am finding it qui te conceivable th at th er eroom in my life other close relationships. Deep humaffection is a richource of happinessnhisrabworld. Women ar e findingout hisgreat ruthandareaccepting t.

Christian Schools in ChinaBY

W I V E years ago the late President Ernest Burton of Chi-r ago went o China as chalrm an of a Christian educa-tional commission. Withunerrlngnstincthe oresaw-and foretold-that the Chr is tian colleges there would comeon days of difficulty with the educat ional forces of th e land.He recognized that ther e might be a sh ar p division betweenthose who felt hat n nstitutions e tup underchurchboards Christian services and Christian teaching should berequired and those who believed th at a more spiritual reli-gion might be imparted if optionwerepermitted n hesematters.Hisdeepest belief on thesubJectwasstated nthe last address he ever made concerni ng Christia n educa-tion in China, at a conference in New York two years ago.It is a memorable credo:I believe that we ought t o be readyomake ny

adjustmentwhatever n order toachieve he undamentalpurpose fo r which we are maintaming Christian educationinChina. . . . hope theime will never come whenwe shallhave o ace heques tion of conductlng schoolsin whichno religion can be taug ht. But Ifwe should haveto ace hatquestion,wha t would be answe r? Myanswer would be tha t would stay in Chin a; that I wouldstay and seek t o express the Christian spirit by giving themost helpful ervice could rende r t o the Chmese, evenif they efused t o let me g we hem nwordswhat heycannot and will n o t refuse me he opportunity of express-ing in life. . . . Even if we forbidden t o gr-ean ydirectChristian eaching, therefore, plead th at wemaybe ready to make any adjus tments which may seem neces-sary, norder hat we ma ycontlnue o be able t o makeour contribution-as lar ge a contrlbutlon as possible-tothe welfare of China

Within year fter hesewords wereuttered,heMinistry of Education nPeking ssued new RegulationsGoverning the Recognition of EducationalnstltutionsEstablishedbyFundsContributedfromForeigners;andin November, 1926, theKuomintang,orNationallst Gov-ernmentnanton,ssuedRegulationsorrivateSchools, whichapply toChristian schools as well as t oprivateChinese nstitutions. n heir essence, thesewosets of regulationsare dentical.Sixpointsarecovered:

1. Christian nstitutionscan no long er be recognizedas in a special class, but are given the status of privateschools andmust be so designated.This tatushas beendesired,by a majo rity of Christlan ducators ortimepast.

2. The administration must be In the hand s of ChinewAccording to th ePeking egulat~ons of 1925 a foreignprincipalmay ont~nuen schools where one is lreadyfunctioning, but in such cases Chinese vice-principal shallbe appointedand hallhavecharge of dealingswith hegovernment n ducationalmatters.Themajority of themembers of themanagingboard,wherever here is oneshallbe Chinese. TheNatlonalist equirementsare hatth eprincipalmust be a Chinese, th at he remust be alocal managingboard,and hat tschalrman, as well asa majority of th e members, must be Chinese. A fore igne rmay, nspecial cases, be invited t o ac tasadviser o headministration.3. Both sets of regulations nslst hat he curriculum,inspection, etc., shall be theame a s in ther rivateschools, theNat ~on ahs ts equ lrln g closer control of theInstitution by theeducationalauthorities.

4. Th ePeking egulations nsist hat ellgiouspropa-gandashallnot be introduced nto he eaching of othersubjects, butdo not interferewith he reedom o eachreligionand hold religou s ervicesTh eNat~onalistsbid religious propagand a in class teaching

5. Whilereedom t o teacheligionnd t o conductreligious exercises is permitted in both sets of regulations,both state clearly that (students cannot be required to aclasses n religionor required oparticipate n eligiousexercises.

6. Th ePeking uthorities ave ot nnounced nyIntention of compelling schools toegister.TheNation-alists announce that all pr ~v ate chools not ye t registeredshallapplyfo rregistrationwithin heprescribed period.For KwantungndHunanrovinceshe period endsApril 1, 1928.

When the Peking regulations were issued, opinion wdivided mong the dminis trator s of Christian collegThis was made very evident at Conference of ChristiColleges held in Shan ghai n Febr uary , 1926. Some of teducators regarded the terms offered a s reasonable, perha


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Staying Free Article 1927