The Clare Spark Blog

Charles and Mary Ritter Beard, Amazon.com

Are today’s feminists “extremists”? Does the spate of “sex scandals” have a hidden agenda? A quick Google search reveals that feminists are linked with “progressives.” And conservatives denounce “progressive feminism.”

But were leading populist-progressives friendly to feminism? Do women have too much power in “the machine age”? I had been saving a quote from Charles and Mary Ritter Beard’s popular volumes, The Rise of American Civilization (Macmillan, 1927) because I was stunned by a passage condemning “extreme” feminism in a massive popular work that emphasized female contributions to our culture throughout. This is what I have read in wonderment for I had not connected feminism with paternalism, silly me.

[Charles and Mary Beard quote:] …Over law and precedent…women advanced toward the goal of equal rights in their children.
Having won the ballot, enlarged economic opportunities, freedom to bob their hair, wear men’s clothes, smoke and swear, and extensive powers in the domestic relation, women looked for new fields of enterprise. At this point a group of the more intransigent demanded “absolute and unconditional opportunity” in every sphere. To give effect to their doctrines, they proposed an amendment to the Constitution providing that there should be no discriminations against women on account of sex in any national or state regulation.

…the more extreme of this feminist school called for a repeal of all protective legislation not applicable to men, such as laws limiting the hours of women workers and closing to the sex the heavier and more dangerous trades such as mining and brickmaking….among the advocates of equal opportunity were those who looked forward to a day when industry would be regulated, if at all, on the basis of the common interests of men and women, whatever those might be.
…[quoting Edmund Clarence Stedman] “a united head would be a monster.”

[Clare:] It turns out that this apparent tirade by Wilsonian progressives (the Beards) was directed not against feminism as much as it was against the machine age that had displaced “patriarchal authority” for a monstrous equality in heading the family.
These Wilsonian “progressives” go on to condemn modernity/the rule of money:

[Beards, cont.:] In the new order prodigal members of the plutocracy set standards of reckless expenditure and high living which spread like a virus among all members of society, making the spending of money a national mania and casting the stigma of contempt on previous virtues of thrift, toil, and moderation.

JFK and Marilyn (alternet.com)

… the father, in losing his prerogatives, lost few of his obligations; indeed they were multiplied rather than diminished, especially for the males of the upper classes. Ever more relentlessly the increase in the number of things that could be bought with money and the rising standard of life drove him to the task of acquiring wealth. And his wife, besides defying and divorcing him, could still secure alimony if he possessed an estate or any earning capacity. The “lord of creation” appeared to be on the verge of an eclipse. (End Charles and Mary Beard quote: Vol. II, 725-727)

[Clare:] Add to the sins of “machine age” capitalism as opposed to (capitalist) agriculture: “extremism”, worship of The Almighty Dollar, the end of paternal authority in the home. So radical farmers (Populists) were virtuous (i.e., proper parents)? Who would have thought that “progressives” like the Beards were down on Progress?

Who would have thought that, if you scratched the surface of progressive feminism (in its original formulation), that an agrarian radical would emerge, or that the Beards were feminists only as long as paternalistic authority was unthreatened?

Are the recent sex scandals entirely unrelated?

Populist Weinstein cartoon, Federalist Observer.com