In the quarrel earlier alluded to between the energetic Progressive
and the obstinate Conservative (or, to talk a tenderer language,
between Hudge and Gudge), the state of cross-purposes is at the present
moment acute. The Tory says he wants to preserve family life
in Cindertown; the Socialist very reasonably points out to him that
in Cindertown at present there isn't any family life to preserve.
But Hudge, the Socialist, in his turn, is highly vague and mysterious
about whether he would preserve the family life if there were any;
or whether he will try to restore it where it has disappeared.
It is all very confusing. The Tory sometimes talks as if he wanted
to tighten the domestic bonds that do not exist; the Socialist
as if he wanted to loosen the bonds that do not bind anybody.
The question we all want to ask of both of them is the original
ideal question, "Do you want to keep the family at all?" If Hudge,
the Socialist, does want the family he must be prepared for the
natural restraints, distinctions and divisions of labor in the family.
He must brace himself up to bear the idea of the woman having
a preference for the private house and a man for the public house.
He must manage to endure somehow the idea of a woman being womanly,
which does not mean soft and yielding, but handy, thrifty, rather hard,
and very humorous. He must confront without a quiver the notion
of a child who shall be childish, that is, full of energy,
but without an idea of independence; fundamentally as eager for
authority as for information and butter-scotch. If a man, a woman
and a child live together any more in free and sovereign households,
these ancient relations will recur; and Hudge must put up with it.
He can only avoid it by destroying the family, driving both sexes into
sexless hives and hordes, and bringing up all children as the children of
the state--like Oliver Twist. But if these stern words must be addressed
to Hudge, neither shall Gudge escape a somewhat severe admonition.
For the plain truth to be told pretty sharply to the Tory is this,
that if he wants the family to remain, if he wants to be strong enough
to resist the rending forces of our essentially savage commerce,
he must make some very big sacrifices and try to equalize property.
The overwhelming mass of the English people at this particular instant
are simply too poor to be domestic. They are as domestic as they
can manage; they are much more domestic than the governing class;
but they cannot get what good there was originally meant to be in
this institution, simply because they have not got enough money.
The man ought to stand for a certain magnanimity, quite lawfully expressed
in throwing money away: but if under given circumstances he can only
do it by throwing the week's food away, then he is not magnanimous,
but mean. The woman ought to stand for a certain wisdom which is
well expressed in valuing things rightly and guarding money sensibly;
but how is she to guard money if there is no money to guard?
The child ought to look on his mother as a fountain of natural fun
and poetry; but how can he unless the fountain, like other fountains,
is allowed to play? What chance have any of these ancient arts
and functions in a house so hideously topsy-turvy; a house where
the woman is out working and the man isn't; and the child is forced
by law to think his schoolmaster's requirements more important
than his mother's? No, Gudge and his friends in the House of Lords
and the Carlton Club must make up their minds on this matter,
and that very quickly. If they are content to have England turned into
a beehive and an ant-hill, decorated here and there with a few faded
butterflies playing at an old game called domesticity in the intervals
of the divorce court, then let them have their empire of insects;
they will find plenty of Socialists who will give it to them.
But if they want a domestic England, they must "shell out,"
as the phrase goes, to a vastly greater extent than any Radical
politician has yet dared to suggest; they must endure burdens much
heavier than the Budget and strokes much deadlier than the death duties;
for the thing to be done is nothing more nor less than the distribution
of the great fortunes and the great estates. We can now only avoid
Socialism by a change as vast as Socialism. If we are to save property,
we must distribute property, almost as sternly and sweepingly as did
the French Revolution. If we are to preserve the family we must
revolutionize the nation.
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