Albert Beveridge
THE YOUNG MAN AND THE WORLD (1905)
Excerpts from Chapter IV “THE NEW HOME”
It is assumed that a
young man can ‘carve out his career’ if his attention is not distracted and his
powers are not diminished by a wife and children whom he must feed, clothe, and
consider. 153
Just what is it that you
expect to do with these self-centered and single years during which you intend
so to help the race? 154
And how can you better
benefit mankind than by founding a home among your fellow men, a pure, normal,
sweet, and beautiful home? 154
It has been the races of
marrying men that have made the heroic epochs in human history. 156
I am assuming that you
are man enough to be a man—not a mere machine of selfishness on the one hand,
or anemic imitation of masculinity on the other hand. I am assuming that you
think—and, what is more important, feel—that Nature knows what she is about;
that ‘God is not mocked’; and that therefore you propose to live in harmony
with universal law. 157
Yes, and it would be
better for the country if out literary men would describe the healthful life of
the Nation’s plain people, than tell unsavory stories of artificial careers and
abnormal affections, and all that sort of thing… our public men and our
writers, too, ought to ‘get down to earth.’ 158
It is a good deal more
important that the institution of the American home shall not decay, than that
the Panama Canal be built or our foreign trade increase. 159
Begin at the beginning
and live your lives together, win your successes together, share your hardships
together, and let your fortune, good or ill, be of your joint making. 160
And one reason why his
credit was established with the money-wise old financier was the ideal home
life which he and his wife were leading. 162
After all, what is the
purpose and end of all your labor? If it is not that very home, I do not know
what it is. 163
‘Apartments’ cannot by
any magic converted into a home. 164
Live in you home; do not
merely eat and sleep there. 164
And be sure that you let
each day have its play-hour… ‘Every young many who has a home commits a crime
if he does not each day bring one hour of joy into his household.’ 165
The absence of children
is either unfortunate or immoral. 165
There is in children a
certain immortality for you. 166
But what a coward a man
is who releases in his home all the pent-up irritability and disappointment of
the day. 167
It is said that Charles
James Fox, the most resourceful debater the British Parliament has ever seen,
was so fond of his home and his wife that he would actually absent himself from
Parliament for the sheer pleasure of her presence and conversation… She proved
to be his shrewdest counselor. 171
I don’t like the tone of
the common comment of the American medical profession about the neurotic
condition of our American women… for that nation is doomed whose women have
ceased to be vital, good-tempered, and home-loving. May not the too heavy early
education of young girls have something to do with this later desperation of
their nerves? 172-3
Not to counsel with you
wife on business matters that affect your mutual fortune is sheer stupidity.
Also, it is morally wrong. From the very nature of her she is more interested
than you in strengthening the walls of your new home, in making your joint
experiment in the living of life a beautiful success. Her words are the counsel
of instinct, and therefore of Nature. 174
The care of home, the
upbringing of children, the strengthening of a husband’s character here and
there, the detection of those thousand little vices of manner and speech and
though which develop in every man—in short, the living of a natural woman’s
life—is the only method of real helpfulness of a woman to a man. 175
We Americans are a
home-making a home-loving people; and as a people we adore the American wife
and mother—the maker and keeper of the American home. So you attend to your
politics or your business and let your
wife attend to hers. 176
… the propaganda that
woman is the equal of man, and that it is all right for her to take on man’s
work in business and the professions, is due not so much to an abnormal
development in her character as it is to a decadence in our manhood. 177
This Republic is not
made up of individuals; it is made up of families. 177
Nobody denies that men
and women should have equality of privilege and equality of rights; but
equality of duties and similarity of work is absurd. 179
Creator should say… To
these men I will give the task of labor in the fields, of warfare with wild
beasts. It shall be your duty to subdue wildernesses, and to construct and
defend a dwelling-place for this other one whom I am going to make a woman. 179
It shall be for her to
create and preserve human happiness. 180
You cannot think of the
old home without thinking of your mother; and you cannot think of your mother
without thinking of the Bible. 183
ANALYSIS
A
senator from Indiana, historian and leading figure during the Progressive Era, Albert
Beveridge devoted much of his later career to advising young men about how to
cultivate domestic habits. In The Young Man and
the World, Albert Beveridge
considered the implications of masculine domesticity for ‘manliness.’ In Chapter IV, entitled “The New Home,” Beveridge
underscored the centrality of the home for the young man’s success. Beveridge derides
the notion that young men should “carve out” their careers before marrying.
On
the one hand, the family is central to the young man, just as the American home
is central to the American nation. For Beveridge, the family is a mutual
endeavor at the heart of a healthy American man and nation. The conflation of
individual and nation suggests the extent to which middle-class men carried the
torch for the teenaged American nation, or, more concretely, the values of the
middle-class became the values of the nation. On the other hand, the young man
should not expect to achieve success and sustain hardship without his wife:
“begin at the beginning,” recommends Beveridge, “and live your lives together.”
In fact, a wife is a source of pleasure and counsel for a man, and the home and
man and wife build together is, ultimately, the source of the young man’s
success, for instance, in securing credit or respect.
To
be sure, Beveridge’s manual delineates separate “duties’ for man and wife, but
the crux of his argument lies in the centrality of the home in the lives of
both man and wife. Although he cites God’s intentional differentiation between
man and woman, Beveridge asserts his belief in their equality of rights.
Indeed, Beveridge’s understanding of the family as ‘natural’ was steeped in his
expectation of young men’s Christian piety, but also in a pseudo-Atheist
promise of immorality conferred by children.
Beveridge’s
manual reflects two facets of the Progressive Era middle-class. First, when
Beveridge encouraged men to dedicate an hour a day to joy and play he seemed to
be responding to the rise of commercial leisure. Echoing T. S. Arthur’s advice
from 1856, Beveridge also warns men against releasing their work-related
irritability and disappointment into the home. Second, it is also noteworthy
that when Beveridge refers to the home is intends a detached house, not an
apartment or a hotel. As Margaret Marsh points out, Beveridge’s belief that urban life was
a direct threat to family happiness epitomizes the escapist suburban flow that
characterized middle-class aspirations at the turn of the twentieth century.
Chiara,
ReplyDeleteYou've done great work in breaking down Beveridge's manual intellectually and explaining its implications in the household. I'm still left wondering who read this and what they thought, the connection between the theory and the practice. I'd also be interested to here more about the rise of the commercial leisure class, why these men are being told to bring joy into the home.
Nice start!
Chiara -- first of all I am so impressed with your research. You always find incredibly topical sources! Great work there. I think that your analysis of this piece is excellent. It contextualizes Beveridge in terms of multiple cultural forces -- religion, the Progressive era, and the concept of the Republic/Republican Motherhood. Looking forward to the rest of your paper.
ReplyDeleteChiara-amazing find! Not only was this source very insightful but I also found it somewhat creepy in its discussion of neurotic women and the consequences of no children as well as race. I think the number of topics this source covers, including race and religion, as well as the language which the source employs will be of great use to you in your paper.
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