‘Family values’ and the ‘sanctity of the home’ was just as much bullshit in 1909 and it is today. Malkiel on family life under the profit-system

‘Capitalism and the Home’ by Theresa Malkiel from St. Louis Labor. Vol. 6 No. 415. January 16, 1909.

The strongest of all accusations hurled at the Socialists is that Socialism will destroy the home. Our comrades have denied this most vehemently, and tried to prove that under Socialism only will the new and true home be established. Somehow it never occurred to them that, as matters stand today, there is no home to destroy. Says our friend Theodore Roosevelt in a letter on the woman suffrage question: “It is her work in the household, in the home, her work in bearing and rearing children.”

Now we all know that Mr. Roosevelt pays more attention to his utterances as they sound when written, than he does to facts. He forgets that the changes in the methods of production, and the development of many industries have removed the traditional occupation of home from the home to the factories, forcing them to neglect their home duties. According to the census of 1900 there were 4,833,630 women employed in different industries.

William Hard, who had made a study of the labor situation in the New England cotton mills, in an article in Everybody’s Magazine, says: “From 1890 to 1900 the increase of women bread-winners was most marked for married women. The percentage being greater by almost one-fourth in 1900 than it was in 1890. If a family is to enjoy a decent income, its women have to go to work as well as the men.

The same writer goes on to say that in Providence, which is a much larger city than Fall River, there were 2,998 deaths in the year 1905. Of these, 656 were children under five years of age. In Fall River during the same year there were 2,109 deaths. Out of these, 1,117 were of children under five years of age. Less than one-fourth of the deaths in Providence were of children under five. More than half of the deaths in Fall River were of children under five.

“Because,” says he, “in Providence twenty-five out of every one hundred women are at work out of the home. In Fall River forty-five out of every one hundred women are working away from the home. What can be done to check a situation of this kind?” asks the writer in despair.

What sort of a home can those women make, after working for ten or twelve hours in the factories, mills, mines and shops? What can we expect of the children who are left alone during that time? Can we blame the women for the desire not to bear any children at all? Only a mother’s heart can sympathize with them when they say: “It is better not to have any children, than to have them and lose them.” What becomes of the home whose glory was proclaimed by word and pen?

What about the millions of unemployed, who tramp the country from one end to the other? Are they the pillars of the home? Does modern society fear that a new system will destroy the homes of those tramps? Or is it the homes of the six hundred thousand women who are compelled to sell their bodies for bread, that are in danger?

The annual report of the charity organizations says that out of every four persons applying for aid there is always one able-bodied man, who would do almost anything to be able to support his family, to keep up the home.

There have been 159,000 divorces granted in the United States for the past year. Modern society does not expect those divorces to safeguard the home which the Socialists intend to destroy.

An editor of one of the capitalist newspapers says in an editorial: “What of it if there are four persons to every hundred who are seeking to dissolve their marriage ties? There are still 96 left who do not belong to that disgraceful category. Among them are the people of the Catholic faith, who cannot and never will apply for divorce, as well as a great number of other people, whose sense of propriety will not allow them to lower themselves by bringing their inner affairs before the public eye.”

The editorial writer rejoices that the country’s reputation is still safe, that the majority will always keep away from the divorce courts. But this capitalist sage never stops to think that a good many of his majority would render a greater service to their country and humanity at large if they would sever the ties which in many cases are nothing more than a conventional burden.

Which of us will call a home the place where two human beings keep on living together by compulsion? Once upon a time they probably loved each other, and made up their minds to unite, to found a home. Closer association has proved to them that their judgment was wrong, that they are not at all suited to each other, still they keep up appearances and hold to the so-called home; because, and this is not one of the least reasons, they fear what the world will say. Others consider it their duty to their children to hang on to one another, never thinking that nothing warps the children’s character so much as discord between the parents.

If all the inner secrets of family life were to be opened and everybody’s skeleton uncovered, the world would be appalled at the small number of real homes, homes in the full sense of the word, that could be found under this system. And yet, in spite of it all, we are warned against the wicked Socialists and asked to preserve the sanctity of the home.

As though anything can be sacred under a system which is founded on greed and the ability to kill. When I say to kill I mean not only to kill, to extinguish life altogether, but the ability to kill one another’s ambition, feeling, pride and honor. When homes are created for mercenary reasons, and children brought into the world as future supporters of the parents.

It may seem strange to you, but I heard more than once parents express themselves: “We will have children now while we are young and can earn enough to feed them. They are born, you put them out into the street and they grow. When they are big enough they will support us. It is as good an investment as putting money in the bank, which we poor devils can never hope to do.”

Terrible and unnatural as those sentiments sound, yet they are sentiments brought about by economic conditions of society, which at its present stage tends more and more to the dissolution of home and home life.

Do the hundreds and thousands of children in the congested districts of our great cities, who actually grow up in the mud gutter, know what home means? Unless you chose to call the dingy holes, where they turn in for their grub and sleep, a home. Have they any home environment, home influence? Some of them grow up hardly knowing their father, as the latter often leaves home before they are awake, and returns from work after they had gone to bed. On Sunday he is as a rule tired from the week’s labor and, besides, the children are shy of him, and try to keep out of his sight.

Nor have the supper classes to fear the destruction of their home; whenever the curtain over their inner life is lifted before the eyes of the world, the people are appalled at the condition they find there.

Modern society with its economical development, its great strides in science and art has outlived the old system of home life. But having failed to found a new one, it foolishly and superstitiously clings to the shadow of the old. This probably is one of the reasons why it so persistently accuses the Socialists of trying to destroy the home. Society fears that this phase of human life is slipping out of its grip and in frenzy it tries to find a scapegoat in Socialism.

The conflict between the new conception of life and the old rages in the heart and mind of every intelligent human being. Retrogression is impossible, standing still is also impossible. We can only go forward, and the quicker we go, the sooner can we reach the goal where we can rest. The evolution of society as well as that of the home is steadily going forward: its strides can perhaps be hastened, perhaps delayed, but can never be checked completely.

The conflict between our thought and our actions, between our convictions and our outward life is becoming unbearable; and it is on the future that we must stake our hope.

A long-running socialist paper begun in 1901 as the Missouri Socialist published by the Labor Publishing Company, this was the paper of the Social Democratic Party of St. Louis and the region’s labor movement. The paper became St. Louis Labor, and the official record of the St. Louis Socialist Party, then simply Labor, running until 1925. The SP in St. Louis was particularly strong, with the socialist and working class radical tradition in the city dating to before the Civil War. The paper holds a wealth of information on the St Louis workers movement, particularly its German working class.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/missouri-socialist/090116-stlouislabor-v06n415.pdf