The Young Woman Citizen by Mary Austin (1920) published by the YWCA
This guide to public activism begins with the sentence, “The art of living together is the first of all the arts.” I found this in the University of Oregon library, and was intrigued enough to borrow it. It is written after the First World War, for young women, shortly after the women received the vote, and it is both naïve and prescient. But what’s wonderful to see is the call to action that obviously has been aimed at women for decades. Now as we are once again called to activism, it’s educational to look at how it was framed in 1920.
The chapters cover many topics: the significance of the women’s vote, the importance of both American-born and nationalized women to participate in civics, summaries of social philosophies, an entire chapter on art, and another on social awareness. One chapter covers party politics and women’s participation, another covers labor, another nationalism, and the last chapter focuses on international issues including warnings about Germany and Japan.
I can’t cover all of it, so I’m just dipping into the parts that struck me. The first chapter mentions one reason women got the vote — the war distracting men:
“We saw how ready the response of American men can be to world stimuli in the success of women’s suffrage in the state of New York during the early months of actual warfare. Their attention being fixed on the larger struggle of the nations, their whole political outlook took on a larger sweep, and men found themselves voting for suffrage would never before thought of themselves as doing anything of the kind. But the measure lay ready to their hands, beaten out of the thoughts and convictions of American women.”
It makes me wonder whether or not that’s still a viable tactic: keeping the pressure up on the Republicans on so many fronts that they do finally give in on one or two – of course, that is the technique they’re trying on us and we will have to be vigilant.
And here’s an early section that sadly echoes today’s nationalists, showing that resentment against immigrants is not new:
“Certain sorts of ideas are easily recognized by the rest of the world as “made in America.” But we ourselves are only beginning to realize that not all the people called Americans have had a part in making them… Millions of people have come to the United States with a fixed idea that any obligation that may be in the situation is owed from America to them. They bring us nothing but their necessities, old grudges against society and vague dreams. They offer us not even the gift of understanding, nor the courtesy of learning to speak our language.”
She goes on to deride immigrant women for not knowing about US history, and yet the things mentioned (Workman’s Compensation act, mothers’ allowances and of course women’s vote) are bits of history that few could speak knowledgeably about today! It’s interesting, and a bit sad, that a book that is obviously a feminist celebration can also be clouded by misinformation and prejudice against immigrants. But there are many other sections that counteract this by encouraging women to step outside their social class to understand what’s happening to others. On page 62:
“An ideal state would no doubt recognize the need of social experience as a part of legitimate preparation for citizenship. One can imagine such a thing as a young citizen draft, working out its traditional three years in public service chosen to give the greatest possible range of awareness.”
This certainly predicts AmeriCorps and some of our other opportunities for young people.
The book advocates giving civic responsibilities starting at age 15 and for any adult woman going through naturalization (the book is focused on women). What’s different about 1920 and now is we’re always talking about rights, and before she even gets to rights, there’s a lot of pages about responsibilities. I believe that’s a balance we have to reinstate.
Free Speech and the Media
There’s a section on free speech that’s an interesting combination of a desire for middle-class comfort and “good manners”, and a feminist desire to be part of the conversation. But so much of it is still true today that it makes me wonder how long we will have to continue to argue these points. She frames the discussion rather differently – for instance, describing as “censorship” the requirements that food and medicine be truthfully labeled and not be toxic. She points to that certification of non-toxicity and adds, “but we are still very reluctant to require any certification of ideas.” (I suspect that a lot of us are beginning to desire exactly that kind of certification!)
But it’s an interesting parallel – she talks about the fact that we can only have these regulations because we have confidence in the experts of those fields. And since that confidence is breaking down today in parts of our society (somewhat due to denial and desiring profits), there is the same kind of argument against regulations as there is against restrictions to speech. In 1920, Austin concludes by saying,
“Free speech is not a right; it is a precaution. You have really no more right turn loose a bad idea in the world than you have to leave an open cesspool; but until expertness in ideas is established, you have the privilege of speech, subject to other people’s freedom of impression.”
An interesting take on freedom of speech, written back when people truly believe there was only one “good” way of thinking. And yet, don’t we all feel right now that our so-called President is violating his privilege to speak?
A few pages later, she says something that seems to be about fake news:
“But from the moment censorship departs ever so slightly from its business of informing the people, and begins to present facts and situations only in lights which are favorable to particular parties, then no matter how competent that government is, and how much it has the confidence of the people, it begins to infringe on democracy.”
She frames the restriction on lying in public as a kind of censorship that is necessary, but acknowledges that it carries the risk of going from objective news reporting (restricting speech to known facts) to become propaganda.
I’m not completely sure I believe this statement, but I certainly would like to:
“Men think of good breeding as manners; women know it for a manner of attaining spiritual democracy.”
Of course the next sentence says,
“If we practiced good breeding in our speaking and writing, then no criticism of the government would be made except by people who were expert in the matter under discussion, and every criticism would be made constructive.”
That’s an interesting statement from a feminist writer who earlier acknowledged that women are starting in politics – and thus could not be experts.
Austin is very critical of the propaganda in favor of World War I; she points to that as a method that
“menaced much more than our liberty of expression, one that subtly and on the highest ground, corrupted and overthrew our whole liberty of impression.”
I think she’s being naïve about what was being reported earlier, but it is true that the war effort was very much an advertising campaign and it likely consciously suppressed facts that might disinclined Americans to participate in all the hardship. But it’s interesting how she puts that – “our liberty of impression.” What she’s saying is that if we don’t get quality information, we cannot make good decisions. And that something we should be thinking about and talking about today. The reason fake news is so harmful is that we ourselves become fools making decisions based on it. I do love this one sentence because it tells me that we have a long history of political news:
“Since the American press was already thoroughly commercialized, political news has now about the same status as soap or automobiles.”
She points the finger at Americans’ love of “the happy ending”, regardless of whether or not it is the logical or true ending. So this isn’t new, either!
I almost laughed when I read this:
“There is no doubt that the American people as a whole wish to hear what they wish to hear. Just as our individual economic lives are nearly paralyzed by the enormous increase in the price of every article we buy by the added cost of persuading ourselves to buy it, so all our political thinking staggers along under the extra weight of ‘propaganda’. It is now very difficult for the average citizen to distinguish the facts of a political issue from the effect desired to be produced by the way in which the facts are stated.”
Just in case we imagined that fake news was a modern invention! It’s obvious that our problems in this area are not new, if in 1920 Austin can write,
“The situation is not observed to spring from any suppression of the freedom of statement. But it makes such suppression possible by creating a situation in which we grow accustomed to hearing only was agreeable to us to think. The disposition to persecute the unpleasant utterance is the second stage of a national habit – in art and drama and fiction – of ‘knowing what we like’ without reference to truth and actuality.”
Basically talking about the polarization of information almost 100 years ago! Journalists around the world would be pleased to hear this section:
“This raises the question whether or not news… has not a more important place in modern civilization than we have yet given it. We have recognized food, clothing, housing as primary factors in all forms of civilization. Within the last 300 years we have admitted transportation as a primary item in social organization. It seems probable that we shall next, and as an indispensable factor in internationalization, admit News... Internationalization of news then becomes a prime factor in the production of international harmony.”
Public Servants and Government
Austin’s descriptions are a reminder that the whole problem of the rich standing for office is nothing new, either. She chastises those who spend their lives making money and then attempt to cover that with good works – on page 32:
“We have a phrase, public spiritedness, which we apply to occasional acts, such as the endowment of a hospital or the bestowal of the Museum of an art collection for which the owner himself has only a limited use. But we permit the wealth which makes this possible to be acquired by a private spirit of taking every advantage that the law does not expressly forbid.”
There are so many in the current administration that this comment fits! And it’s frustrating to think that our struggle against this kind of hypocrisy is still going on almost 100 years later. She goes on to say:
“A nation that has to pull its officials into an unfamiliar frame of mind every time it requires a public service is not likely to be very well served.”
Did that sound familiar to anybody?? And this comment sounds like it could come from many progressives today:
“Political ideas and movements seldom do develop within a party. They originate in experience, are mobilized by free press, and frequently come to issue without ever being adopted by any recognized party.”
As most of us recognize, our Democratic Party often adopts important ideas only after they have taken root in grassroots organizations.
Feminism
Of course, a lot of her book is about reassuring young women that the point of view of women is especially needed in government. On page 88:
“Women have hoped to escape into politics out of the stuffy atmosphere of bedroom and kitchen, into a cool and ordered place, only to be astonished at the rather general masculine inability to discriminate between the candidates personality and his capacity for specific social gains…. Spinning between his tendency toward high individual variation and his gang instinct – voluntary surrender to a dominant personality, alternating with periods of violent recovery – this is the orbit which man repeats in every history key.”
And this is what feminists realized almost immediately upon getting the vote!
Anyway, there is much more in this book and I recommend that you give yourself a eye-opening education in the differences and similarities of our political struggles from almost 100 years ago.
It has been reprinted, it’s available on Amazon, which means it’s likely in some libraries. Check it out!
www.amazon.com/...