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Title: Educated working women: Essays on the economic position of women workers in the middle classes

Author: Clara E. Collet

Release date: July 28, 2022 [eBook #68623]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: P. S. King & Son

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDUCATED WORKING WOMEN: ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF WOMEN WORKERS IN THE MIDDLE CLASSES ***

  EDUCATED
  WORKING WOMEN


  _ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMIC
  POSITION OF WOMEN WORKERS
  IN THE MIDDLE CLASSES._


  BY
  CLARA E. COLLET, M.A.,
  _Fellow of University College London_.


  LONDON:
  P. S. KING & SON,
  ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER.
  1902.




  BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS,
  LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.




  In Memoriam.

  FRANCES MARY BUSS.




CONTENTS.


                                                  PAGE

  THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF EDUCATED WORKING
  WOMEN. Read to the South Place
  Ethical Society, February, 1890                    1

  PROSPECTS OF MARRIAGE FOR WOMEN. The
  _Nineteenth Century_, April, 1892                 27

  THE EXPENDITURE OF MIDDLE CLASS WORKING
  WOMEN. The _Economic Journal_, December, 1898     66

  THE AGE LIMIT FOR WOMEN. The _Contemporary
  Review_, December, 1899                           90

  MRS. STETSON’S ECONOMIC IDEAL. The _Charity
  Organization Review_, March, 1900                114

  THROUGH FIFTY YEARS: THE ECONOMIC PROGRESS
  OF WOMEN. _Frances Mary Buss Schools’
  Jubilee Magazine_, November, 1900                134




  “_Because precisely, I’m an artist, sir,
  And woman, if another sate in sight,
  I’d whisper,--Soft, my sister! not a word!
  By speaking we prove only we can speak,
  Which he, the man here, never doubted. What
  He doubts is, whether we can_ DO _the thing
  With decent grace, we’ve not yet done at all.
  Now, do it; bring your statue,--you have room!
  He’ll see it even by the starlight here;
  And if ’tis e’er so little like the god
  Who looks out from the marble silently
  Along the track of his own shining dart
  Through the dusk of ages, there’s no need to speak;
  The universe shall henceforth speak for you,
  And witness, ‘She who did this thing, was born
  To do it,--claims her license in her work.’
  And so with more works. Whoso cures the plague,
  Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech:
  Who rights a land’s finances is excused
  For touching copper, though her hands be white,--
  But we, we talk!_”

                  _“It is the age’s mood”
  He said; “we boast, and do not.”_

  E. B. BROWNING.--“Aurora Leigh,” Book viii




PREFACE.


The six essays brought together in this small volume, in the order in
which they were written, leave many questions, still warmly debated
with regard to working women, almost untouched. The point of view
of the writer is circumscribed by the conditions set forth in the
first two chapters, which, true in 1891, may have a narrower or a
wider application as time goes on. The position of women in the small
section of the community known as the middle classes is there shown
to be exceptional. The great majority of women belong to the working
classes and spend their youth as wage-earners, in many cases under
conditions injurious to mind and body, although the real work of their
lives is eventually to be found in their own homes. With middle-class
women the position is reversed. To those who have once realised what
a large number of them may have to be self-supporting, the constant
problem henceforth is to discover how the lives of educated women may
be made of more value to themselves and others. The cost and reward
of efficiency are therefore the two factors which in this little book
are treated as being of primary, although not necessarily of greatest,
importance.

The author begs to express her thanks to the Editors of the _Nineteenth
Century_, _Economic Journal_, _Contemporary Review_, and _Charity
Organization Review_, for permission to republish the articles which
appeared in their magazines.

  C. E. C.




THE ECONOMIC POSITION

OF

EDUCATED WORKING WOMEN.

_February, 1890._


Mrs. Browning’s advice to women, much needed as it is at the present
time, was somewhat harsh and unpractical at the time she gave it, more
than thirty years ago. At that time it would not have been possible
for a woman “to prove herself a leech and cure the plague”; for on the
one hand she was debarred from obtaining the necessary qualifications,
and on the other she was prohibited from practicing without them.
The hospitals and lecture rooms were closed to her by prejudice, and
practice was therefore forbidden her by Act of Parliament. Even had
she obtained admittance to the dissecting room and hospital by quiet
perseverance and tried ability, she could not have hoped by such
means alone to remove the obstacles which were placed in her path by
legislation. The charters necessary to empower the Universities to
confer degrees on women could never have been obtained, except through
determined agitation; and if the agitators themselves did not seem
competent to exercise the powers which they wished conferred on women,
they performed the work for which they _were_ most competent and made
the path clear for those who could not have removed the obstacles
themselves. The poet and the novelist had no such difficulties to
contend with. Such women had no greater hardships to endure than men.
If men disbelieved that a woman could write a powerful novel, she
had only to do it to convince them of the contrary. But, generally
speaking, women were prohibited from doing what they could, on the
ground that they could not if they would. It was not universally so;
in many cases girls who showed mathematical or logical power, for
instance, were discouraged from exercising it, because reasoning power
was considered undesirable in women and likely to hinder their chances
of marriage. But, on the whole, women’s incapacity for intellectual
work was put forward as a reason for forbidding them to attempt it. The
futility of forbidding women to do what they were incapable of doing
was never perceived by the opponents of the movement for the higher
education of women, who based their opposition on this ground. Nor
did it avail much to point this out. Behind this asserted disbelief
in the power of the educated woman to compete even with the average
schoolboy, lay a real conviction, that if she could do so successfully,
the more desirable it was to prevent her having the chance of proving
it. It is on record that in the days of King Ahasuerus, more than 2,000
years ago, great terror was excited lest “the deed of Vashti should
come abroad unto all women, so that they should despise their husbands
in their eyes, when it should be reported that the King Ahasuerus
commanded Vashti, the queen, to be brought in before him, but she came
not. And in order that all wives should give to their husbands honour,
both to great and small, Ahasuerus sent letters into all the King’s
provinces, that every man should bear rule in his own house.” As in the
days of King Ahasuerus, so thirty years ago it was felt that humility
in women should be cultivated at all costs, and if they became aware
that all men were not necessarily their intellectual superiors they
would break out into open revolt. Women had been told that they should
obey their husbands because the latter knew best. If that were denied,
the claim to obedience would have to rest on the possession of might
instead of right.

This reiterated assertion of their inferiority has rankled in women’s
hearts. For the last forty years it has been the source of most of
the bitterness expressed openly on the platform, and the cause of
invidious comparisons leading to mutual and undignified recriminations.
It has affected the direction towards which the efforts of educational
enthusiasts have been turned. Their one aim and object has been to show
that capacities supposed to be essentially masculine are possessed by
women also; to make it possible for women to compete on equal terms
with men and to prove that they are not always the last in the race.

That the question of equality or inferiority was a wholly irrelevant
one was not their fault; they had to answer the arguments of those
who held the keys, and they were not to blame if these arguments
were foolish. We owe much to the women who, at the risk of great
unpopularity and much social loss, fought the battles by which the
doors were opened, through which others passed without one effort of
their own. It is because their work has been successful, not from any
depreciation of its value, that I maintain that it is time to review
the outcome of the last ten or twelve years, during which women have
been free to compete with men in the College and the University, and
to take a new departure. London and Cambridge have admitted them to
examinations on equal terms, although the latter still refuses them the
hall-mark of the degree. Newnham and Girton have had to extend their
premises; Lady Margaret and Somerville have been established and have
obtained some concessions from Oxford; University College, London,
Mason’s College, Birmingham, the Welsh Colleges, and other men’s
colleges, admit women to their class rooms on equal terms with men.
London, Ireland, and Edinburgh admit them to their medical degrees;
the Women’s School of Medicine is prosperous, and they have admission
to a few hospitals. At London and Cambridge they have done themselves
credit in every branch. So far as receptive power is concerned, it
is now at least admitted that the rather-above-the-average woman is
quite on a level with the average man. So far, so good. But although
our self-respect may be considerably increased, what is our economic
position? There are not yet 800 women graduates of London and
Cambridge. Of these the majority are assistant mistresses in public
or private schools, visiting teachers, lecturers, or head mistresses.
There were in 1881, according to the census of that year, 123,000 women
teachers, and over 4,000,000 girls between the ages of five years and
twenty; and yet already this little handful of graduates is told that
it is in excess of the demand and that it must take lower salaries in
consequence. In our public high schools not one in four teachers is a
graduate; in private schools the proportion is much smaller. I do not
propose to discuss this question, and will only make two remarks on
it. The first, that after an expensive college course, which is only
less expensive than that of a man because a woman is less extravagant
in her personal expenditure, a Girton or Newnham student who has
taken a good degree may hope for an initial salary of £105 to £120
non-resident, rising by very slow degrees to about £140 to £150 a year.
Secondly, that every graduate should remember that when she accepts
a lower rate still, she is making it easier to lower the salaries of
the great majority below her. If all women graduates, and they are not
many, agreed to a minimum, less than which they would not accept, the
mass of teachers, already underpaid, could not be told as they are at
present, that graduates could easily be obtained for the sum they ask.
The teacher with a higher local certificate could hold out for her £90
a year, little enough in all conscience, because she would know that no
graduate would take less than £100.

But the head mistress engages so few graduates, not merely because of
the higher salary demanded, but because she is quite content, or rather
because the British parent is quite content, that his daughter should
be taught by less competent persons. If we look for the cause of this
indifference, we shall find that he does not attach the slightest value
to the education which she is receiving. For some unknown reason girls
seem to think it absolutely necessary to learn Latin; he does not wish
his daughter to be at any disadvantage with other girls; therefore he
lets her learn Latin. If other girls are taught well, his daughter
must be taught well; but if other girls are taught badly, he is quite
content that his daughter should be so also. He perhaps learned Latin
himself for some similar reason at school, and so far as he knows he
derived no benefit from it, and he is quite certain he derived no
enjoyment from it. The mass of parents do not wish their daughters
to be teachers; and they pertinently ask, what good are classics and
the higher mathematics and advanced natural science to girls unless
they intend to teach? A few can answer honestly, “We enjoy the study.
It is delight to us. Plato, Sophocles, Æschylus speak to us with a
more living voice than any of our modern thinkers. Mathematics is
not merely a discipline to us but an absorbing occupation, taking us
completely out of ourselves for the time being. A natural science is to
us not a mere mass of ascertained facts unrelated to each other, but a
system of interdependent laws giving a new meaning to life; its very
incompleteness is a charm, for it gives us the opportunity of being
ourselves discoverers.” A few can say this honestly; several, under the
influence of a teacher whom they adore with that schoolgirl devotion so
common in our high schools, persuade themselves that they feel some of
the enjoyment that a properly-constituted mind would feel. What they
really enjoy is the teacher’s enjoyment, which is infectious. There is
no subject so dry or so useless that a living, healthy, human teacher
cannot persuade girls to think it interesting for the time being. But
the majority of girls--and boys too for that matter--are Philistines
and care for none of these things. They do their work conscientiously
enough, because it is their work. They derive benefit from it as
from a kind of mental gymnastics, and so far as their school days
are concerned no harm is done, and they have benefited by the mental
discipline.

When a girl or boy is about seventeen, the future career is considered.
In the case of a son, the father to some extent takes into account the
boy’s natural bent, and also the chances of obtaining a post for him.
Thenceforth his education takes a definite direction. If intended for
one of the professions, the course is easily mapped out. In other cases
the boy may be sent to the University, not so much for an academic
as for a social training; very frequently he leaves school and at
once begins his training for business or mercantile pursuits. If his
father is a merchant, or large employer of labour, he will perhaps be
sent elsewhere to learn all parts of his business and then take some
responsible post in his father’s firm. If this is impossible, relatives
or friends or business connections may be able to offer him a post, and
no stone is left unturned. There is no question either of his being
content to have a low salary because he can live at home. Nor does
he, if he has any sense, deliberately choose to enter an overstocked
market, merely because the men who succeed in it are admitted to be men
of high intelligence. If he has a high opinion of his own talents, or
if he prefers shining by reflected light to earning an income, he does
perhaps become a barrister or a doctor, without much fitness for the
profession. But at least those who take up business prefer to enter a
labour market where there are comparatively few men of ability yet to
be found, and where the supply of them is not so great as the demand.

The girl of seventeen is never helped in the same way, in many cases
because it has never occurred to men that girls could be so assisted.
There are many other reasons, which I do not propose to dwell on here.
I am not addressing myself to those who do not wish women to earn
their living, but to those who, having accepted the fact that many
girls must work for a living, would be glad to help them in any way
that might be suggested; and I am also speaking to those women who
prefer, no matter what their private resources may be, to be trained
for some occupation which will call for the exercise of mental powers
which they know they possess. I am also confining my remarks to working
women educated for their work in life, and am not referring to the
large numbers of women who take up work without any other training
than the general education acquired at school. If the woman, who from
seventeen to twenty-two has been trained for her profession, cannot
obtain the salary which, as Mr. Pollard has shown, is necessary to keep
her in good health and provide for her old age, there is no need to say
that the untrained schoolgirl enters the labour market at a greater
disadvantage. Now, on what principles is a girl’s career determined?
In a large number of cases the parents take it for granted that she
will be married in a few years, and they feel they can support her
at home in comfort until then. Fortunately the girl herself does not
always take this view; she thinks it quite possible that she never
will be married, and she also sees that in that case she may in middle
life be left with an income quite inadequate and necessitating a total
change in her habits of living. If she has any public spirit, she will
not undersell her poorer competitors, and will see no reason why she
should not be paid the full worth of her services; she will be glad
to know that her services are really worth her living. But all that
she sees before her, unless she has exceptional talent, is teaching.
It is the same with girls who _have_ to earn their living and whose
parents can only afford to give them an expensive training in the
hope that a remunerative income may afterwards be obtained. They also
must be teachers; it is the only brain-work offered them, and badly
paid as it is, it is better paid than any other work done by women.
The result is that we see girls following the stream and entering the
teaching profession; after a few years, growing weary and sick of it,
tired of training intellects, and doubtful about the practical value
of the training, or altogether careless of it; discontented with a
life for which they are naturally unsuited, and seeing no other career
before them. We see others, who have a strong practical bent, giving
themselves up to purely intellectual studies, because they are the
only ones possible to them; and, on the other hand, clever girls,
who have no scholastic ambitions, are left to fritter away their
talents or exercise them with no aid but rule-of-thumb principles to
guide them. The prizes, the exhibitions, the glory are all given to
encourage scholarship. Brain-power is worshipped, and as people with
brains are not encouraged to exercise them in a practical direction,
the possession of brain-power is not ascribed to those who do not
display capacity or liking for classics or mathematics or the abstract
sciences. And the whole tendency is to compete with men where men are
strongest. And here, socially, morally, and economically, we are making
a great mistake. We are narrowing women to one kind of education,
which would cut off the majority of them from sympathy with the men
in their own class; they imbibe a false idea that culture means the
possession of useless knowledge; and because men in the commercial
world have a knowledge which enables them to perform services for
which others are willing to pay, they are regarded as necessarily
uncultured and mercenary. The leisured and professional classes take
the precedence in the girl-graduate’s eyes as being better educated and
having less sordid aims. But, fortunately for England, the majority
of men are neither leisured nor professional, and the organisation of
industry and the extension of commerce give scope for the exercise
of the highest powers. Socially, therefore, the educated woman at
present is isolated from her class and suffers in consequence. Morally
she suffers, for she is not developing her natural powers. A woman’s
emotional nature is different from a man’s, her inherited experience
is different, her tastes are different, and--greatest heresy of all
nowadays--her intellect is different. It is a common thing to say that
there is no sex in intellect. If the upholders of this theory mean
that from two given premisses the same conclusion must be drawn by
men and women whenever they think rightly, of course no one can deny
it. But this purely deductive work can be done by machinery. The real
work of intelligence is the induction which supplies the premisses,
the selection of premisses suitable to the purpose in view and the
application of the conclusion. The working of intelligence is prompted,
strengthened, and directed by interest and emotion; and here it is
that men and women differ, and always will differ, a woman inheriting
as she does, with a woman’s nervous organization, a woman’s emotional
nature. It is on this difference between men and women, amidst much
which is common to both, that I build my hopes of women’s success in
the future. I do not urge women to compete with men because they can do
what men can, but because I believe they can do what men cannot; and
I believe that those branches in which men have attained the highest
pitch of excellence are those in which women are least likely to find
pleasure or excel. Creditable as have been their performances in
the Mathematical Tripos, I am glad to see that their success in the
Natural Science Tripos is much greater. Instead of glorying in having
once in a score of years a Senior Classic, I take pride in the fact
that in the four years since the Mediæval and Modern Language Tripos
was instituted, women have always been in the front rank, and I notice
with fear and trembling that, although during the first three years
there was always a woman in the first class, and no men, last year,
although there was no deterioration in the women’s work, they did not
have the first class all to themselves. I look forward to the day, but
I hope it will be long before it comes, when the men’s colleges shall
rejoice because they have a man in the first class without a woman to
share the honours. There are many things which men are doing alone,
which could be done infinitely better if educated women helped them;
and nowhere is this more obvious to me, although probably not to them,
than in business. While there is much that can be done well by the
human being, indifferently, whether man or woman, there is much that
can only be done well by the male human being, much that can only be
done well by the female human being, and much that can only be done
well by the two in conjunction. And if men in business only considered
their daughters’ future in the same light as that of their sons, they
would find many branches of business in which they could be most
useful, and earn a good income. Girls inherit, to some extent, their
intellectual capacities from their fathers, just as boys do from their
mothers. And many a bright, clever, lazy girl would suddenly develop
a most unexpected taste for study, if she had before her the prospect
of doing practical, and to her most interesting work, as one of her
father’s managers, or as foreign correspondence clerk, or as chemist or
artistic designer in a large manufactory; or as assistant steward on
her father’s property, or as a farmer on her own freehold, if (rents
having gone down) he is unable to leave her an income. For all these a
course of hard mental training is necessary or at least desirable; and
the girl would be receiving culture on the one hand, and would have
a chance of developing her natural gifts on the other. Many a girl,
accustomed to a country life, would much prefer the occupations and
life of a farmer to that of a teacher, provided she is allowed to have
the college life and the free intercourse with other girls which is
the main attraction of Girton and Newnham. The work would be far more
interesting to her if she came to it with the enthusiasm of a scientist
with theories to be tested. What is drudgery to an uneducated person
may often be pleasurable to an educated one.

No one can study the organisation of industry at the present time
without noticing that there is great room for improvement. Good
organisers are extremely rare; and even in the internal management of
a factory, perhaps the least important part of the work of a great
manufacturer, much could be done which is rarely done at present.
The admittance of educated women to a share in factory management
should really be regarded in the light of co-operation with men, not
competition with them. A man and a woman looking at a work-room are
struck by different features, and each can be suggestive to the other.
This is especially the case wherever women are employed.

The question of capacity is a more difficult one for me to answer,
but an easier one for the individual girl, if she is not afraid
of ridicule. And it is at this point that I would reiterate Mrs.
Browning’s advice. To any really clever girl who asked me for advice as
to her future work I should say, “What do you think you could do best
if it were possible for you to do it? Whatever that is, do your very
best to get training in it, to show by capacity at one stage that you
could master the next if you had the chance. If you do this, you will
find that the men who laughed at women for thinking of doing such work
will frequently be the very ones to make an exception in your favour
and to help you over the next difficulty. If you wish to be a farmer,
and to study every department of your work and be thoroughly grounded
in agricultural science, make the best of your opportunities where
you are, attend classes if possible in the technological department
of a good college; and if the agricultural colleges are closed to
women, when you have done everything you can without them, get one of
them to make an exception in your favour. Whatever it may be that you
wish to do, prepare yourself for it, and, instead of bemoaning the
ill-treatment of women in general, persuade those in authority of your
fitness in particular. And when you have gained your end help every
girl you can who shows similar capacities.”

One effect on the economic position of educated working women of such
an extension of employment would be to enable them to measure their
value. Teachers are paid out of fixed income, and their salaries are
almost entirely determined by standard of living. If employed in
business they would be employed for profit, and if they increased
profits their value would rise, and could be measured; they would be
paid according to their worth and not according to their standard of
living. Education would be better adapted to practical needs, and
teachers would be held in higher honour accordingly. Large numbers of
clever girls would be spurred to exertion, whose intellectual powers
have hitherto lain in abeyance, because no education was offered them
corresponding to their needs. There are other arts, which women already
practise, which it would be well for them to study on a scientific
basis. Not only the future wife, mother, and housekeeper needs a
knowledge of physiology, the laws of health, and domestic economy, but
to a still greater extent the future Poor Law guardian, Board School
manager, factory and workshop inspector, and sanitary officer; and both
household manager and public officer should study the relation between
domestic and national economics. Nor can any man do a greater injury
to women in this respect than by placing a woman in a responsible post
for which she has not been proved competent. The incapacity of a man
is referred to the man himself; that of a woman is credited to the
sex. But although a man may foolishly vote for a woman to be placed on
the School Board or Board of Guardians merely because she is a woman,
without knowing anything about her, I am not afraid that he will ever
give her a well-paid post in his own business unless she is fit for
it. Women who give their services for nothing are rarely told the
truth; it will be a good thing for them when they receive, instead of
flattery and thanks, criticism and payment.

I can only touch on one point more. I may be told that the effect
of encouraging all girls, who display strength of character or
intellectual power above the average, to make themselves pecuniarily
independent, and to devote their energies to some special and definite
occupation which will call forth their powers, will be to make them
too absorbed or unwilling to enter upon marriage, and that the next
generation must suffer from the strongest and most intellectual women
holding aloof from wifehood and motherhood. Others, on the other
hand, may say that their work will suffer, because the expectation of
marriage will hinder them from doing their best. The latter objection
will not, I think, be supported by those who are acquainted with the
work of women graduates. There is much truth in the former one. Women
who have been trained for a special work, and who like their work,
either do not marry at all or marry comparatively late in life, and it
may at first sight seem injurious to the race that this should be so.
But I think this is a mistake. The men and women of the most marked
individuality do not make the best husbands and wives, especially
if they marry before they have become aware of their own character.
Although a theory prevails to the contrary, I believe that women come
to intellectual maturity later than men. They have a magnificent power
of self-deception, of persuading themselves that they think and believe
the things which those they care for think and believe--they are so
little encouraged to think for themselves that many a woman, married
when but a girl, has later on discovered that she has a character
of her own, hitherto unrevealed to herself and unsuspected by her
husband. Marriage, as George Eliot has said, must be a relation of
sympathy or of conquest. But such women, if sympathy has not really
existed between them and their husbands, are never conquered; they
may be slaves or rebels, but never loyal subjects; and history is
full of records of the disastrous early marriages of clever women.
On the other hand, Hannah More, Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, Joanna
Baillie, Caroline Herschell, Harriet Martineau, all women of brilliant
intellect, have left their mark on history as good and happy women; and
we can all of us give a long list of such bright and contented lives
from the unmarried women of our own acquaintance who have found their
vocation. If they have missed the best in life, they have always been
true to themselves. The economic independence of women is as necessary
to men’s happiness as to women’s. Their true interests can never be
opposed or antagonistic, however much those of an individual man and
woman may be. There is no hardship to women in working for a living;
the hardship lies in not getting a living when they work for it. And
the great temptation from which all women should most earnestly strive
to be freed is that which presents itself to so many at one time or
another--the temptation to accept marriage as a means of livelihood and
an escape from poverty. And if men would escape the degradation of
being accepted by a woman in such a spirit, they should be anxious to
do all in their power to make women free, to remove all obstructions
raised by prejudice; and when a woman can do anything worth doing, “to
give her of the fruit of her hands and to let her own works praise her
in the gates.”




PROSPECTS OF MARRIAGE FOR WOMEN.

_April, 1892._


A century has passed since Mary Wollstonecraft published her
“Vindication of the Rights of Women,” and Maria Edgeworth, with greater
tact and knowledge of the world, pleaded for the higher education of
women in her “Letters to Literary Ladies.” Whatever views we may hold
as to the change, there can be no doubt that the modes of thought and
of life of women in all classes have altered considerably, for good
or for evil, in the last hundred years. It is, however, possible to
exaggerate the change, and to be mistaken both as to its causes and its
resulting tendencies; and now that there are signs of a new departure,
it may be as well to take stock and consider how we stand at present.

First and foremost the question presents itself, How do women stand
now with regard to that all-absorbing occupation obtained through
marriage? Their position in industry is so vitally affected by their
attitude towards marriage, and by the attitude of those around them,
they are so constantly called upon to balance an industrial gain with
social loss, that before all things it is necessary to see on what the
expectation of marriage is grounded and the effect produced by it on
efficiency and wages. After marriage we should estimate not so much the
effect of marriage on industrial position, but rather the effect of
industry on domestic life.

In calculating the possibilities of marriage on a statistical basis,
the method is frequently adopted of subtracting all the widows from
the population and pointing out that in the remainder (the widowers
not being subtracted) there is a slight surplus of men; the moral is
drawn that every woman can get married if she will only make herself
agreeable, and not be too particular. Putting aside the practical
objection that all men are not able to support a wife, and the
sentimental one that numerical equality does not guarantee mutual
attraction, this method of calculation ignores several important facts.
One of these is the preference that men feel for women younger than
themselves as wives and that women feel for men older than themselves
as husbands. Granted an equal number of males and females between the
ages of eighteen and thirty, we have not therefore in English society
an equal number of marriageable men and women. Wherever rather late
marriage is the rule with men--that is, wherever there is a high
standard of comfort--the disproportion is correspondingly great. In a
district where boy-and-girl marriages are very common, everybody can
be married and be more or less miserable ever after; but in the upper
middle class equality in numbers at certain ages implies a surplus
of marriageable women over marriageable men. Nor do equal numbers at
the same age imply equal numbers in the same locality. Women’s work
and men’s work cannot always be found in equal proportions in the
same district; and class habits may affect the stream of migration
differently. The daughters of working-men go out to service or
emigrate, while the daughters of well-to-do people stay at home; while,
on the other hand, the percentage of sons of professional men who go to
the colonies or to India is probably much greater than the percentage
of sons of working-men. There is a probability, therefore, that the
sexes will be distributed unequally in different districts and also in
different classes of society.


1881.--_Number of Females to every 100 Males in_

  +----------+-----------+--------+----------+-------+
  |          |Kensington.|Hackney.|Islington.|LONDON.|
  |          |           |        |          |       |
  +----------+-----------+--------+----------+-------+
  |=All ages=| =149·8=   |=122·4= | =113·3=  |=112·3=|
  |Under 5}  |           |        |          |       |
  | years }  |   99·9    | 102·0  |   97·9   |  99·9 |
  |  5-10    |  105·1    | 103·3  |  100·4   | 101·1 |
  | 10-15    |  122·1    | 110·2  |  104·3   | 103·9 |
  | 15-20    |  172·9    | 145·0  |  123·4   | 114·7 |
  | 20-25    |  195·9    | 142·3  |  118·9   | 112·9 |
  | 25-30    |  187·2    | 128·1  |  115·3   | 110·7 |
  | 30-35    |  171·9    | 120·0  |  111·9   | 114·5 |
  |=35-45=   | =152·2=   |=118·9= | =111·7=  |=111·8=|
  | 45-55    |  153·6    | 125·1  |  120·4   | 117·0 |
  +----------+-----------+--------+----------+-------+

  +----------+--------+-----------+----------+--------------+
  |          |   St.  |Shoreditch.| Bethnal  |_Whitechapel._|
  |          |Pancras.|           | Green.   |              |
  +----------+--------+-----------+----------+--------------+
  |=All ages=|=109·9= | =105·2=   | =102·9=  |  _93·4_      |
  |Under 5}  |        |           |          |              |
  | years }  |  97·2  |  102·3    |   99·1   | _103·6_      |
  |  5-10    | 104·5  |  101·3    |   98·6   | _101·9_      |
  | 10-15    | 105·4  |  102·2    |  102·5   | _102·1_      |
  | 15-20    | 107·3  |   98·3[1] |   98·1[1]| _100·0_      |
  | 20-25    | 108·5  |  104·5    |  101·7   |  _83·0_      |
  | 25-30    | 109·4  |  100·8    |  105·0   |  _82·1_      |
  | 30-35    | 108·1  |  102·7    |  102·5   |  _82·4_      |
  |=35-45=   |=110·3= | =104·8=   | =101·6=  |  =89·4=      |
  | 45-55    | 118·3  |  111·6    |  110·8   |  _92·4_      |
  +----------+--------+-----------+----------+--------------+
[1] I have made no attempt to estimate the error introduced into the
Census by falsehood.

Taking the Census returns for 1881, and comparing England and Wales
with London, we find that, whereas in the former there were 105 females
to 100 males, in the latter there were 112 females to 100 males. Here
at once we have a marked local difference, and if we take special
districts of London and compare them with each other we shall find a
greater disparity.

According to Mr. Charles Booth’s classification in “Labour and
Life,”[2] Kensington has 30·4 per cent. of middle and upper class
people (classes _G._ and _H._), Hackney 24·2, Islington 20·9, London
17·8, Pancras 15·2. The percentage of these classes in Shoreditch,
Bethnal Green, and Whitechapel is too small to be taken into account,
but Shoreditch has 59·8 per cent. “in comfort,” while Bethnal Green
has 55·4. The order of these districts is, therefore, exactly the same
whether we arrange them according to preponderance of females over
males, or according to well-being. Whitechapel is set apart from the
rest, most probably by the peculiar effects of the Jewish immigration.
Putting aside for the moment the question whether the preponderance
is entirely due to the servant class, there can be little doubt that
it is connected with the servant-keeping classes. Between the ages
of thirty-five and forty-five the merely migrant portion of the
community seem to have disappeared, large numbers of shop-assistants,
domestic servants, etc., having married and settled down amongst their
own class. Between these ages but a small percentage of unmarried
people marry; they are, or should be, in the prime of life, and for
several reasons it is a period to notice, especially in estimating the
proportion of men or women who remain unmarried.

[2] For brevity I use the letters assigned by Mr. Booth to the various
classes, with the signification he has attached to them, viz.:

  _Poor._

  _A._ The lowest class of occasional labourers, loafers and
   semi-criminals.
  _B._ Casual earnings.
  _C._ Intermittent earnings.
  _D._ Small regular earnings.

  _In Comfort._

  _E._ Regular standard earnings.
  _F._ Higher-class labour.
  _G._ Lower middle class.
  _H._ Upper middle class, etc.


It is difficult to decide whether we should compare the number of
unmarried women with the number of married women only, or with the
number of married women and widows. If our object is to find the
percentage of women who marry, widows should be included with married
women; if we wish to estimate the number of women who may have to
support themselves, a large number of widows should be added to the
number of spinsters. Except for the age period from 35 to 45, widows
are not considered here at all.[3]

[3] No allowance has been made for false returns as to civil condition.
Men in the wealthier districts who return themselves as single,
although supporting women in another class, should be regarded as
married; but the women themselves for the present purpose are rightly
treated as married or widowed in accordance with their Census returns.


1881.--_Unmarried Women to 100 Married Women._

  +---------------+--------++-----------+--------+----------+
  |               |England ||Kensington.|Hackney.|Islington.|
  |               |& Wales.||           |        |          |
  +---------------+--------++-----------+--------+----------+
  |=All ages=     |=177·9= ||  =256·4=  |=205·7= | =183·0=  |
  |  15-20        | 3,844  ||   6,499   | 5,431  | 3,704    |
  |  20-25        | 201·2  ||   540·1   | 270·2  |  219·7   |
  |  25-35        |  42·8  ||   133·7   |  53·9  |   48·1   |
  | =35-45=       | =20·0= ||   =62·0=  | =28·3= |  =25·5=  |
  | Unmarried   } |        ||           |        |          |
  |  women to   } |        ||           |        |          |
  | 100 married } |  18·1  ||    52·0   |  24·9  |   22·4   |
  |  women and  } |        ||           |        |          |
  |   widows    } |        ||           |        |          |
  |    35-45    } |        ||           |        |          |
  +---------------+--------++-----------+--------+----------+

  +---------------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+------------+
  |               |LONDON.|   St.  |Shoreditch.|Bethnal|Whitechapel.|
  |               |       |Pancras.|           | Green.|            |
  +---------------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+------------+
  |=All ages=     |=182·4=| =168·3=|  =151·8=  |=157·5=|   =172·2=  |
  |  15-20        | 3,370 |  3,450 |   2,066   | 2,162 |    2,793   |
  |  20-25        | 214·9 |  194·8 |   102·2   | 108·5 |    153·5   |
  |  25-35        |  51·7 |   48·2 |    25·2   |  21·0 |     31·0   |
  | =35-45=       | =25·4=|  =24·4=|   =13·8=  |  =9·4=|    =14·3=  |
  | Unmarried   } |       |        |           |       |            |
  |  women to   } |       |        |           |       |            |
  | 100 married } |  22·2 |   21·3 |    12·0   |   8·6 |     12·2   |
  |  women and  } |       |        |           |       |            |
  |   widows    } |       |        |           |       |            |
  |    35-45    } |       |        |           |       |            |
  +---------------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+------------+

In this table, which deals with women only, Whitechapel would take
its right place between St. Pancras and Shoreditch, as in Mr. Booth’s
classification, indicating that the abnormal figures in the other
table are due to a preponderance of male immigrants over female
immigrants of a race which prevents inter-marriage with the English
population. England and Wales takes its place, so far as the ratio at
the age of 35 to 45 is concerned, after St. Pancras, from which the
inference may be drawn that London either possesses a larger percentage
of the servant-keeping classes, or that these classes employ more
servants than is the case in England and Wales. Both the tables show
that we are right in selecting the age-period 35-45, when men and women
have left off marrying, and have not begun dying, for special study in
connection with industry or marriage.

In all England and Wales, then, the proportion of women who may be
expected to remain unmarried is, roughly speaking, one in six; in
London it is one in five. The important question arises, Are these
chances equally distributed? On the face of it, it would seem not;
but people readily point out that the greater ratio of middle-aged
spinsters in Kensington, Hackney, and Islington, as compared with
Shoreditch or Bethnal Green, is easily explained by the number of
servants who naturally, if unmarried at this age, congregate in the
richer districts, but would, if distributed among the working-class
districts, make the ratios fairly equal. The explanation sounds so
plausible, that, were it not that experience has convinced me that in
the educated middle class there is a surplus of women over men above
the average, I should have accepted it without further inquiry. But by
a study of the Census for 1861 (in many respects an ideal one so far as
the tabulation of facts is concerned) and of the unpublished official
returns of 1881 for Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Hackney,
and Kensington, I find that, supposing all the middle-aged indoor
domestic servants to be single, they nevertheless are not more than
one-third of the single women in each district. Of the outdoor domestic
servants, such as charwomen, the percentage under 25 years of age is
so very small that it may fairly be assumed that the great majority
are married women or widows, and that the exceptions to this rule will
be balanced by the exceptions to the rule that the middle-aged indoor
domestic servants are single women. Shoreditch and Bethnal Green (with
almost exactly equal populations) give us together a ratio of 11·6
unmarried women between 35 and 45 to 100 married women at that age
as the normal for a working-class district without any upper middle
class. Kensington (including Paddington), with a population of 270,000,
contains 70 per cent. of working-class inhabitants; the surplus women,
whether servants or otherwise, are to be found in the houses of the
30 per cent. of middle and upper-class inhabitants. Roughly speaking,
then, to every 70 working-class married women in Kensington we may
assign 8 unmarried women, and to the remaining 30 married women between
35 and 45 years of age we must assign 54 unmarried women. To every
76 working-class married women in Hackney we may assign 9 unmarried
women at this age-period, leaving 18 unmarried women to the remaining
24 married women. One-third of these being domestic servants, if we
subtract them, we have left in Kensington in Classes G and H 36
unmarried women to 30 married women, and in Hackney 12 unmarried
women to 24 married women. It follows, therefore, that in Kensington,
excluding domestic servants, more than 50 per cent. of the women
between 35 and 45 in the servant-keeping classes are unmarried, while
in Hackney about 33 per cent. of the same class are unmarried.

The servant-keeping classes, as I have described the groups that Mr.
Booth has called Classes G and H, include everyone with an income of
£150 a year and upwards, and, were statistics available, it might
perhaps be shown that the unmarried women are, to a large extent, the
daughters of clerks and professional men. The tradesman class do not
find it nearly so difficult to provide for their sons and set them
up in business as is the case in the salaried class; and it is an
advantage from an industrial point of view for tradesmen to have wives
who can help them in various ways. Emigration is probably more frequent
in the salaried class; and where the sons are obliged to emigrate, it
frequently happens that the daughters have to work for their living. In
this class I believe the inequality of the sexes is greatest, and the
probability of marriage least. In this class, therefore, the importance
of an industrial training which shall enable women to earn a competency
through all the active years of their life, which shall enable them to
remain efficient workers and to provide for old age, is greater than in
any other.

As my object is not to point out how marriageable women may get
married, but to show that a considerable number of women must remain
unmarried, a table showing the inequality of numbers of the unmarried
of both sexes in different districts in London is given. The districts
are arranged in the order of poverty as calculated in 1889; the figures
are from the Census of 1881.


_Unmarried Women 35-45 to every 100 Unmarried Men 35-45._

  Holborn                           73
  St. George’s-in-East              50
  Bethnal Green                     83
  St. Saviour’s                     81
  St. Olave’s                       75
  Shoreditch                       100
  Whitechapel                       36
  Stepney                           50
  Greenwich                        137
  Poplar                            50
  Westminster                       86
  City                             116
  Islington                        165
  St. Pancras                      135
  Camberwell                       200
  Wandsworth                       191
  Marylebone                       212
  St Giles’                         86[4]
  Mile End Old Town                115
  Lambeth                          159
  Woolwich                          57[4]
  Fulham                           200
  Chelsea                          143
  Strand                            66[4]
  Kensington                       378
  Hackney                          230
  St. George’s, Hanover Square     175[4]
  Lewisham                         325
  Hampstead                        366

[4] The common lodging-houses in St. Giles’, the Woolwich Arsenal, the
Inns of Court and hotels in the Strand, and the Knightsbridge Barracks
in St. George’s, Hanover Square, may help to explain these exceptions
to the rule.

As only one-third of these unmarried women are domestic servants,
even if we suppose that all the unmarried men belong to Classes G and
H, there are obviously not enough men for all the women to be able
to marry. Such being the case, we can afford to dispense with mutual
recrimination. The women who find it less dishonouring to enter the
labour market than an overstocked marriage market are taking the more
womanly course in putting aside all thought of marriage. The men who
remain unmarried are perhaps in the position of Captain Macheath,
overwhelmed by an _embarras de richesses_, and should be forgiven if
they fear to make a choice of one which may seem to cast disparagement
on so many others of equal merit.

These statistics have been called startling and alarming. They may be
startling to men, but can hardly be so to women of the upper class,
and I fail to see why they should alarm anyone. If all these spinsters
had to be shut up in convents the outlook would be gloomy. But as
things are, if only we can secure good pay and decent conditions of
life, the lot of all women may be immensely improved by this compact
band of single women. It would be difficult to overrate the industrial
effect of a number of well-instructed, healthy-minded, vigorous
permanent spinsters. A man’s work is not interrupted but rather
intensified by marriage; but in the case of women, not only is the
wages question very much affected by the expectation of marriage, but
much organised effort on their part, whether for improvement of wages
or for provision against sickness and old age, must be wasted unless
there be a considerable number of single women to give continuity to
the management of their associations. Mr. Llewellyn Smith has pointed
out that, as mobility of labour increases, actual movement may, other
things remaining the same, diminish; and so also I should be inclined
to say that it is not marriage that is such a disturbing element in
the women’s wages question so much as the expectation of or desire
for marriage. In the middle classes, where it is impossible to earn
a sufficient income without a long training and years of practical
apprenticeship, nothing is so injurious to women’s industrial position
as this ungrounded expectation of marriage, which prevents them from
making themselves efficient when young, and makes them disappointed,
weary, and old when their mental and physical powers should be in their
prime.

With this profession of faith in the absolute necessity for the
existence of single women I pass on to a brief review of the position
of working women, considered in three groups, taking first of all those
who belong to the classes whom Mr. Booth describes as “poor.” Classes
A, B, C, and D, who are 30·7 per cent. of the population of London;
then the well-to-do artisans in Classes E and F, who are 51·5 per
cent., and lastly the so-called middle and upper classes, who are 17·8
per cent., of London, and should therefore be designated the upper
classes.

From the first of these groups are drawn the lower grades of
factory girls in East London, who form the majority of match-girls,
rope-makers, jam and sweetstuff-makers, and a considerable proportion
of the box, brush, and cigar-makers, as well as of the less skilled
tailoresses. The children when they leave school do not all go to work
at once, but relieve their mothers or elder sisters of the charge of
the ubiquitous baby, enabling the former nurse to go to the factory.
They stagger about with their charges, or plant them securely on the
coldest stone step they can find, and discuss with each other or with
nursing mothers in their narrow street the births, deaths, marriages,
misfortunes, and peculiarities of their neighbours. Their families live
in one or, at most, two rooms, and their knowledge of life is such
as to render Bowdlerised versions of our authors quite unnecessary.
Sometimes the children take “a little place” as servant-girl, going
home at night, but eventually, and generally before they are fifteen,
they find their way to the factory. By the time they are one-and-twenty
at least a quarter of them have babies of their own to look after;
during the next five years the rest, with but few exceptions, get
married or enter into some less binding union. To show that I do not
exaggerate the proportion of girl marriages in this class, I give a
table of the number of girls married under 21 years of age in every
100 marriages that took place in the seven years from 1878 to 1884.
The percentage has been calculated for each year, and the mean of the
percentage is given.


_Girls Married under 21 years of age in every 100 Marriages 1878-1884._

  Holborn                           19·4
  St. George’s-in-East              22·9
  Bethnal Green                     34·7
  St. Saviour’s                     22·9
  St. Olave’s                       19·5
  Shoreditch                        20·9
  Whitechapel                       25·2
  Stepney                           21·8
  Greenwich                         19·6
  Poplar                            18·9
  Westminster                       15·1
  City                              17·5
  Islington                         14·6
  St. Pancras                       14·7
  Camberwell                        17·2
  Wandsworth                        17·5
  Marylebone                        13·9
  St. Giles’                        16·6
  Mile End Old Town                 26·5
  Lambeth                           17·3
  Woolwich                          17·1
  Fulham                            19·3
  Chelsea                           14·5
  Strand                            14·0
  Kensington                        12·9
  Hackney                           13·9
  St. George’s, Hanover Square      10·6
  Lewisham                          12·1
  Hampstead                          9·4

As girl marriages are more common among the poorer half of East London,
and as, unfortunately, in a large number of cases, the legal ceremony
only takes place, if it takes place at all, in time to legitimise the
offspring of the union, it is obvious that girl marriage is extremely
common in the class of which I am speaking. When the husband earns
regular wages, even though they may be small, the wife does not as a
rule go to the factory, nor even take work out to do at home, for the
first few years of her married life. But many factory girls return
to work the day after they are married, and those who leave it for
several years often return as soon as one of the children is old enough
to leave school. Married labour is, of course, irregular labour, and
many employers discourage it as much as possible. But it is most to be
deprecated on account of the effect on the children. It is unfortunate
that the Census returns, as at present tabulated, give us no means of
estimating the extent of the evil. We do not need to know whether men
engaged in different occupations are married or single; but there is
no fact of more importance with regard to female labour, and the value
of such a return would more than balance the expense. The factories
where the work cannot be given out (as is the case in match, jam, and
cigar factories) contain the largest percentage of married women; and
if called upon to choose the less of two evils, married labour in the
factory and home work, I should unhesitatingly decide in favour of home
work, which, if well organised, need not even be an evil.

The great need of this class is training for domestic life--by which
I do not mean domestic service. Herein lies the only effective cure
for the industrial and social miseries of the poor. The children are
overworked, or else allowed to spend their time in a most dangerous
idleness. That men should ask for an Eight Hours Bill when little
girls of thirteen or fourteen may be found in our factories working
ten hours seems unwise, if not selfish. Ten hours in a factory is
not so wearing to a child as eight hours in school would be, but it
is far too long. It makes education impossible, and leaves no room
for surprise that married women in the poorest classes sink into a
condition hardly above animalism. The two things which struck me most
in East London were the amount of wasted intelligence and talent among
the girls and the wretchedness of the married women. A secondary
education in cooking, cleaning, baby management, laws of health, and
English literature, should follow that of the Board School, and the
minimum age at which full time may be worked should be gradually
raised. By 1905 no one under sixteen should be working for an employer
more than five hours a day, and all half-timers should be attending
morning or afternoon school. The dock labourers’ wives, having learnt
to be useful at home, would appreciate how much is lost by going out
to work. Their withdrawal from the labour market and the increased
efficiency of their children, brought about by better home management
and education, would both tend to raise wages, provided that a trade
union existed to secure that the workers should keep the result of
their increased efficiency. Bad cooking, dirty habits, overcrowding,
and empty-headedness are the sources of the drunkenness, inefficiency,
immorality, and brutality which obstruct progress among so many of
the poor, and philanthropic efforts can be better employed in this
direction than in any other.

During the last four years the trade union movement, for which Mrs.
Paterson worked so unwearyingly and with such dishearteningly small
success, has made considerable progress in East London amongst this
group. The principal results to be expected from trade unionism
amongst these workers are not sufficiently obvious for large numbers
to be attracted by them. But even a small union can be most useful in
guarding against reductions and in bringing public opinion to bear upon
employers who allow their foremen to exercise tyranny and make unfair
exactions from their workpeople. The usefulness of a trade union must
be estimated in many cases by what it prevents from happening rather
than by any positive advantage that it can be proved to have secured.

From the second group of working women are drawn our better-paid
factory girls, our tailoresses, domestic servants, and a large number
of our dressmakers and milliners, shop-assistants, barmaids, clerks,
and elementary teachers. A considerable number of dressmakers,
shop-assistants, and clerks are, however, drawn from the lower middle
class, and a few from the professional class. Although this second
group is the largest group in London, and probably in England, it is
the one about which we have least general information. They have hardly
been made the subject of industrial inquiry, do not regard themselves
as persons to be pitied, and work in comparatively small detachments.
They are nevertheless of more industrial importance than the working
women of the first group. Their work is skilled and requires an
apprenticeship. They are in the majority of cases brought into direct
contact with the consumer, and education, good manners, personal
appearance and tact all raise their market value. In this second group
would be included the majority of the Lancashire and Yorkshire weavers
by anyone competent to deal with England as a whole; and what applies
to the group in London would not apply to this section of it, who
occupy a unique position. The extent to which women compete with men is
very much exaggerated. Of the three million and a half women and girls
who were returned as occupied in industry in 1881 in England and Wales,
over one-third were domestic indoor servants, 358,000 were dressmakers,
milliners, or stay-makers; midwifery and subordinate medical service,
charing, washing and bathing service, hospitals and institutions,
shirt-making and sewing employed another 400,000. The textile trades
employed altogether only 590,624 women and girls, and of these over
300,000 were in the cotton trade. Their aggregation in large factories
and in special localities has attracted to them an undue amount of
attention, and the history of industry in Lancashire is often given
as the history of industry in England, whereas no other county is less
typical.

In London in 1881 the number of women and girls occupied in industry
was 593,226. Of these, more than 40 per cent. were indoor domestic
servants, more than 12 per cent. were engaged in charing, washing and
bathing service and hospital and institution service, 16 per cent. in
dressmaking, millinery, stay-making, shirt-making and needlework; and
of the remaining miscellaneous trades a large proportion are purely
women’s trades; even in those where men are employed women and girls
are rarely to be found doing the same work as men. Of domestic servants
and charwomen there is no need to speak here. Of the laundresses a
considerable proportion belong to the first group already discussed,
but the ironers generally belong to the second group. An inquiry into
their position with regard to wages, hours and sanitary conditions of
work is about to be made, and the proposal to bring them under the
Factory Acts cannot be considered until the results have been given
us. Of the wages and hours of work of dressmakers and shop-assistants
surprisingly little information is at present available. But one fact
is too common to be denied: these girls accept wages which would not
be enough to support them if they had not friends to help them; and
they endure hard work, long hours, and close rooms because they believe
that they are only filling up a brief interval before marriage. The
better off their parents may be, the less heed do they give to securing
anything but pocket-money wages. These girls are constantly coming in
contact with the rich, and have ever before their eyes the luxury and
comfort of those who have money without working for it. They are taught
to think much about dress and personal appearance, and are exposed
to temptations never offered to the less attractive factory girls.
They have naturally a higher standard of living, their parents cannot
be relied upon to help them after the first few years, and, failing
marriage, the future looks intensely dreary to them. There would be
little harm in the high standard of comfort of single men in the
middle and upper classes which makes them regard marriage as involving
self-denial, if working women all along the line were also earning
enough to make them regard it in the same light. In a class more than
any other liable to receive proposals of a dishonouring union, which
may free them from badly paid drudgery, the greatest effort should be
made to secure good wages. Combination is nowhere so much needed, and
perhaps is nowhere so unpopular. And yet the difficulties of foreign
competition which make attempts to raise wages among factory girls so
unsafe, and which make it most undesirable for outsiders, ignorant of
trade circumstances, to spread the “doctrine of divine discontent,”
are entirely absent here; skilled hands are not so plentiful that they
could easily be replaced, and the girls, if assisted by their friends,
could well afford to bide their time quietly at home until they had
secured good terms.

There is no hard-and-fast line separating any group of workers from
another. If social distinctions divide population into horizontal
sections, industry cuts through these sections vertically. Class _G._,
or the lower middle class, enter the upper branches of the industries
to which I have referred. The girls here do not enter the factories or
become domestic servants to any extent worth considering. They form
the majority of the shop-assistants in the West End and the richer
suburbs, and more than any other class supply the elementary schools
with teachers. It is as teachers, and also as Civil Service clerks,
that they join the upper middle class, including under that term the
professional, manufacturing, and trading classes. In treating of this
third group of working women I shall confine myself entirely to the
position of women in class _H._, partly because my experience as a
high-school teacher has brought me into special relations with girls
and women of that class who have to earn their living, and partly
because their unconscious even more than conscious influence on the
habits and ideals of the girls in the lower middle class is very great.

In every class but class _H._ the girls can, if they choose, enter
industries conducted by employers with a view to profit. In the
section of the factory class where the girls are obliged to be
self-supporting there is a point below which wages cannot fall for any
considerable period; there is a point above which it would not pay the
employers to employ them. The standard of living is, unfortunately, a
very low one, and the wages are low; but single women in this class can
support themselves so long as they are in work. In the second group
there is again a maximum height to which wages might be pushed by
combination; so long as it is profitable to employ them they will be
employed, however high the wages demanded may be. But the minimum wage
is not equivalent to the cost of living, but is rather determined by
the cost of living minus the cost of house-room and part of the cost
of food. In class _H._ women are not employed to produce commodities
which have a definite market value, and have therefore no means of
measuring their utility by market price. They nearly all perform
services for persons who pay them out of fixed income, and make no
pecuniary profit by employing them. And there is no rate at which we
can say that the supply of these services will cease; for the desire
to be usefully employed is so strong in educated women, and their
opportunities of being profitably employed (in the economic sense of
the word “profitable”) are so few, that they will give their services
for a year to people as well off as themselves in return for a sum of
money barely sufficient to take them abroad for a month or to keep
them supplied with gloves, lace, hats, and other necessary trifles.
Chaos reigns supreme. And while in this class it seems to be considered
ignoble to stipulate for good pay, strangely enough it is not
considered disgraceful to withhold it. Teachers are constantly exhorted
to teach for love of their work, but no appeal is made to parents to
pay remunerative fees because they love their children to be taught.

The children of the upper and middle classes have their education
partly given them by the parents of the assistant mistresses and
governesses whom they employ. As a proof of this, I give a few
particulars about the salaries and cost of living of the only section
of educated working women in which some kind of order reigns--assistant
mistresses in public and proprietary schools giving a secondary
education. In these schools, of which a considerable number are under
the management of the Girls’ Public Day Schools Company and the Church
Schools Company, while others are endowed schools or local proprietary
schools, some University certificate of intellectual attainment is
almost invariably demanded, and a University degree is more frequently
required than in private schools or from private governesses. These
assistant mistresses have nearly all clearly recognised, even when mere
school-girls, that they must eventually earn their own living if they
do not wish to spend their youth in maintaining a shabby appearance of
gentility. They regard marriage as a possible, but not very probable,
termination of their working career; but for all practical purposes
relegate the thought to the unfrequented corners of their minds,
along with apprehensions of sickness or old age and expectations of
a legacy. They are women whose standard is high enough for them to
be able to spend £200 a year usefully without any sinful waste. In
the majority of cases they are devoted to their profession, for the
first few years at least; and they only weary of it when they feel
that they are beginning to lose some of their youthful vitality, and
have no means of refreshing mind and body by social intercourse and
invigorating travel, while at the same time the fear of sickness and
poverty is beginning to press on them. There are not 1,500 of them in
all England, and their position is better than that of any considerable
section of the 120,000 women teachers entered in the Census of 1881.
The particulars that I give are from the report of a committee formed
in 1889 to collect statistics as to the salaries paid to assistant
mistresses in high schools. The critics of the report believe that the
poorest paid teachers did not give in returns, and that the report gave
too favourable an impression of the state of affairs. The number who
gave information was 278. The return for the hours of work did not
include the time spent in preparation of lessons and study, both of
course absolutely necessary for a good teacher.

 Summing up the results, we may say that, of the teachers who joined
 their present school more than two years ago, one-fourth are at
 present receiving an average salary of £82 for an average week’s work
 (the average including very large variations) of thirty-two hours;
 half (25 per cent. of whom possess University degrees) are receiving
 an average salary of £118 for a week’s work of about thirty-five
 hours; and one-fourth (50 per cent. of whom are University graduates)
 are receiving an average salary of £160 in exchange for a week’s work
 of thirty-six to thirty-seven hours. These results do not appear
 unsatisfactory, but it must be remembered that under the phrase _more
 than two years_ is covered a length of service extending in one case
 to as many as seventeen years, and of which the average must be taken
 as very nearly six. Many also of these teachers have had considerable
 experience in other schools before entering the ones in which they
 are at present engaged. The condition of the teaching profession
 as a career for educated women may be summed up according to these
 averages, by saying that a teacher of average qualifications, who
 a few years ago obtained a footing in a high-class school, and has
 continued working _in the same school_ for six years, at the end
 of this time is hypothetically earning a salary of £118 a year by
 thirty-five hours’ work a week for thirty-nine weeks in the year, or
 slightly over 1_s._ 8_d._ an hour. A result obtained from so many
 averages is, of course, entirely valueless as a guidance to any
 individual teacher, but affords a certain index to the pecuniary
 position of the profession as a whole.

The prospects of the assistant mistress as she approaches middle age
may be judged from the particulars of twenty-four instances in which a
change of work had been attended by a fall of income.

 Three of these changes may be at once struck out as changes from the
 post of private governess, and three others do not lend themselves to
 easy comparison, because of great differences in the hours of work.
 Of the remaining eighteen teachers, five have now attained a higher
 salary than that formerly paid them, four have exactly regained
 their old income, while nine are still in receipt of a lower salary
 than that paid them at their last school. These figures point to a
 precariousness in the position of teachers which has to be seriously
 taken into account in estimating the prospects of the profession.

But there are many people who, like a certain clergyman’s wife, think
that girls are getting “uppish nowadays” when they hear that after
three years at Girton and two years’ experience in teaching, an
assistant mistress refuses less than £120 a year. There are thousands
of mothers like one who wanted a lady graduate as daily governess for
her boys “quite regardless of expense,” and who was even willing to
pay £30 a year! Wealthy residents of Notting Hill and Kensington send
their children to high schools whose managers dare not ask more than a
maximum fee of £15 a year. For their enlightenment I give the tables of
cost of living compiled by Mr. Alfred Pollard with the aid of experts.
Arithmeticians may amuse themselves with calculating in how many
years a teacher, twenty-six years of age, with a salary of £120, may,
by saving £16 a year, secure an annuity of £70 a year; and may then
attack the more interesting problem of the probabilities of any school
retaining her in its employment for that length of time.


_Cost of Living._

  +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+
  |                            |   Salary    |   Salary    |
  |                            |    £80.     |    £100.    |
  +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+
  |Board and lodging during    |  £ _s._ _d._|  £ _s._ _d._|
  |  term, say 40 weeks        | 42   0    0 | 50   0   0  |
  |Half-rent during holiday    |  3   0    0 |  4   0   0  |
  |Railway and other expenses  |             |             |
  |  for six weeks of holiday  |             |             |
  |  with friends              |  3   0    0 |  4   0   0  |
  |Six weeks of holidays at own|             |             |
  |  expense                   |  7  10    0 |  9   0   0  |
  |Educational books           |  0  10    0 |  1   0   0  |
  |Dress                       | 14   0    0 | 15   0   0  |
  |Petty cash for omnibuses,   |             |             |
  |  amusements, presents,     |             |             |
  |  charities, etc. etc.      |  3   0    0 |  4  10   0  |
  |Laundry                     |  3  10    0 |  3  10   0  |
  |Medical attendance and      |             |             |
  |  provision against sickness|  3  10    0 |  5   0   0  |
  |Sum available towards       |             |             |
  |  provision or old age      |  0   0    0 |  4   0   0  |
  +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+
  |                            |£80   0    0 |100   0   0  |
  +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+

  +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+
  |                            |   Salary    |   Salary    |
  |                            |    £120.    |    £150.    |
  +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+
  |Board and lodging during    |  £ _s._ _d._|  £ _s._ _d._|
  |  term, say 40 weeks        | 50   0   0  | 60   0   0  |
  |Half-rent during holiday    |  4   0   0  |  5   0   0  |
  |Railway and other expenses  |             |             |
  |  for six weeks of holiday  |             |             |
  |  with friends              |  4   0   0  |  4   0   0  |
  |Six weeks of holidays at own|             |             |
  |  expense                   | 12   0   0  | 15   0   0  |
  |Educational books           |  2   0   0  |  3   0   0  |
  |Dress                       | 15   0   0  | 20   0   0  |
  |Petty cash for omnibuses,   |             |             |
  |  amusements, presents,     |             |             |
  |  charities, etc. etc.      |  6   0   0  |  9   0   0  |
  |Laundry                     |  3  10   0  |  3  10   0  |
  |Medical attendance and      |             |             |
  |  provision against sickness|  7  10   0  |  7  10   0  |
  |Sum available towards       |             |             |
  |  provision or old age      | 16   0   0  | 23   0   0  |
  +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+
  |                            |120   0   0  |150   0   0  |
  +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+


It will be observed that these teachers are even here supposed to have
friends who will put up with them for six weeks. And attention may be
especially called to the magnificent sum that can be set apart for
educational books and lectures. Frivolous books, such as the works of
Walter Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot, George Meredith, Browning, R. L.
Stevenson, must be presented by friends or borrowed in all their grime
and dirt from a free library.

If this is the position of a favoured thousand, the position of the
rest may be inferred. Of the whole number, however, a considerable
proportion are teachers in elementary schools, and do not come from
Class _H._ I have no means of separating the two. Imagination may be
stimulated by perusing the employment columns of such a paper as _The
Lady_, where advertisements appear for governesses at unconscionably
low salaries, reaching occasionally to almost a minus quantity when
some more than ordinarily audacious matron offers a comfortable home
to a governess in return for the education of her children and twelve
shillings a week.

Are girls worth educating? Apparently not, as their parents do not
think them worth paying for. The expectation that marriage will in a
few years after a girl leaves school solve all difficulties and provide
for her is at the root of all the confusion. Fathers who know they can
make no provision for their daughters make no attempt to train them
for really lucrative employment, because they think the money will be
thrown away if their daughters marry; they let them work full time for
half or less than half the cost of living, out of a mistaken kindness,
of which employers get all the benefit. The girls in many cases accept
low salaries under the same impression, in others because they are
not strong enough to hold out where so many are willing to undersell
them. Those who only take up employment as a stopgap until marriage
never become really efficient, and when later on they find that there
is no prospect of release, they become positively inefficient. Those
who have faced facts from the first can throw their whole heart into
their work, but they are heavily handicapped in their efforts towards
progress by the bad pay which is the result of the thoughtlessness
and folly of those around them. If only the relatives of these girls
could realise that at least one-half of them will never be married, and
that of the others many will not marry for several years after leaving
school, that there is no means of predicting which of them will be
married, and that any of them may have to support, not only themselves
all their lives, but a nurse as well in old age, the tangle would
soon be unravelled. Two things only I would venture to suggest: one,
that instead of supplementing salaries and so lowering them, parents
should help their daughters to hold out for salaries sufficient to
support them, should assist them in making themselves more efficient,
and should help them to make provision for themselves in later
life, instead of making self-support impossible; the other, that
manufacturers and business men should train their daughters as they
train their sons. The better organisation of labour should open a wide
field for women, if they will only consent to go through the routine
drudgery and hardship that men have to undergo. An educated girl who
goes from the high school to the technological college will find full
scope for any talents she may possess. As designer, chemist, or foreign
correspondent in her father’s factory she could be more helpful and
trustworthy than anyone not so closely interested in his success. As
forewoman in any factory, if she understood her work, she would be far
superior to the uneducated man or woman, and some of the worst abuses
in our factory system would be swept away.

If anyone objects that women who are intensely interested in work which
also enables them to be self-supporting are less attractive than they
would otherwise be, I can make no reply except that to expect a hundred
women to devote their energies to attracting fifty men seems slightly
ridiculous. If the counter-argument be put forward that women, able to
support themselves in comfort, and happy in their work, will disdain
marriage, then those who take this view are maintaining, not only that
it is not true that

  Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;
  ’Tis woman’s whole existence.

but also that marriage has naturally very much less attraction for
women than for men.




THE EXPENDITURE OF MIDDLE CLASS WORKING WOMEN.

_December, 1898._


In making an appeal to middle class working women to keep and utilise
their accounts of expenditure, some little explanation is necessary of
the ends to be furthered by such tedious labour. For the keeping of
such accounts is to most people a weariness and a vexation. One friend
of mine declines to make the attempt because it makes her miserable
to have the smallness of her income and the gloominess of the future
brought before her mind with such regularity. Another after six months’
trial has suffered a relapse because keeping the account spoilt all
the pleasure of spending. Many are afraid that moralists will denounce
their expenditure as misdirected and extravagant, and, although living
within their income, prefer to remain uncertain as to the amount they
spend on what others may regard as mere vanities.

There are two questions which every woman who may have to be
self-supporting should ask herself:--

(1) Is the salary which I am efficient enough to earn sufficient to
maintain that efficiency for a considerable number of years?

(2) In middle age, when I may be entirely dependent on my own
exertions, shall I be more, or shall I be less, competent to earn a
salary sufficient to maintain the standard of living to which I have
been accustomed?

The cost of efficiency is higher than the cost of living, a fact which
is not sufficiently recognised by the middle class working woman or by
her employers. The habits of domestic life which make it incumbent on
women to make the best of a fixed income cling to them as wage-earners.
They do not sufficiently realise that the drain on their vitality,
effected by their daily routine of continuous and often monotonous
exertion, must be met by fresh streams of energy which can only be
produced under present conditions by deliberate search for recreation
and by a greater expenditure of money than a purely domestic life
demands.

Some curious results of the movement in favour of securing economic
independence for women may be observed at the present time. The theory
has of course in many cases been reduced in its application to an
absurdity. Parents who thirty years ago would have expected all their
daughters to stay at home until they were married, now with equal
unwisdom wish them to pass from the school to the office, regardless
of their natural bent, and as careless of their future prospects as
before. Girls fitted by Nature for a home life, and for nothing else,
lose their brightness and vitality in sedentary drudgery, losing at the
same time all prospect of an escape from it.

So also from a system under which the womenkind were expected to
devote their evenings entirely to smoothing away the wrinkles and
dispelling the bad tempers of their fathers and brothers after their
harassing day’s work, we have suddenly passed to one under which all
the daughters may come home equally cross and equally tired, with no
hope that others will do their repairs for them, whether of temper or
of clothes.

But there are well-to-do families where the competent mother has no
desire to hand over her duties to her daughters, and where their
happiness is still the chief consideration. Here girls are allowed to
earn--not their living--but an income by which they may relieve their
parents of some of their cost of living and at the same time live at a
greater cost. From both a social and an economic point of view there
is much to be said for this plan, provided both parents and daughters
realise that the latter have not, under this system, achieved economic
independence, or the power to be economically independent. The girl
who earns £100 a year by her work and receives another £100 a year in
one form or another from her father is in all probability underselling
no one; and indeed, in the consciousness that she is only being paid
half her cost of living, may even, by her liberal views of what is a
good salary, be inciting her less luxurious colleagues to raise their
standard of living and remuneration. But if her work is not of a kind
that gives training and power to pass on to higher paid posts, the
woman worker in middle life will be in almost as unhappy a position if
obliged to be self-supporting as the helpless women who thirty years
ago used to advertise for posts as companions or governesses, stating
as their only recommendation that they had never expected to have to
perform the duties of either situation.

Women never will and never can become highly efficient and continue so
for any long period on the salaries which they at present receive, or
even on the salaries with which, as a rule, they would be contented
if they could get them. Vitality and freshness of mind, when youth is
gone, cannot be maintained within the four walls of the class room or
office, on incomes too small to admit of varied social intercourse,
or of practical beneficence. Without the latter power the middle-aged
unmarried woman can feel that she has small claim to live, and, in such
a case, if her daily work does not in itself call for its exercise, she
has little desire to.

What is our standard of living, then? and how much more will it cost
us to maintain that standard when the whole effort to maintain it
falls upon ourselves? To answer these questions we must have definite
accounts of expenditure.

The samples that I have to give are all more or less imperfect as
regards their form of presentation. The teaching profession is the one
from which naturally it will be easiest to obtain returns. Recruited as
it is from every rank of life except the aristocracy, and charged with
the training for every rank of life--except, again, the aristocracy,
who owe little of their education to their governesses--it should
present to us through its accounts a corresponding variety of standard
of living. It should do so; but I venture to predict that it will not.

My first three budgets were given to me several years ago. They give
the expenditure of three assistant mistresses teaching in high schools
and boarding during term time in private houses. No. 1 gives the
expenditure for one year; No. 2 the expenditure for two successive
years; No. 3 the average expenditure for six years. Side by side with
them I place the budget for one year of another high school mistress
(No. 4) living in lodgings--which I give afterwards in greater detail.


TABLE I.

 _Accounts of Expenditure of three High School Mistresses boarding in
 Private Houses, and of one High School Mistress in Furnished Lodgings._

AMOUNT SPENT ON

  +------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
  |                  |       1.    |     2 A.    |     2 B.    |
  |                  +-------------+-------------+-------------+
  |                  |  £ _s._ _d._|  £ _s._ _d._|  £ _s._ _d._|
  |Lodging and board | 41   0    0 | 41   6    0 | 40   4    0 |
  |Washing           |    [5]      |  2   7    6 |  2   4    0 |
  |Dress             | 10  10    0 | 16   0    0 | 16   0    0 |
 |Books,newspapers,}|  0   7    9 |  4   1    8 |  3   8    0 |
  |  &c.            }|             |             |             |
  |Travelling        |  3  18    0 |  4  15    6 |  4  16    0 |
  |Holidays          |  9  10   10 |  4   5    0 |  5   4    3 |
  |Amusements        |    [5]      |  1   6    8 |  0  17    6 |
  |Subscriptions,  } |    [5]      |    [5]      |    [5]      |
  |  donations, &c.} |             |             |             |
  |Presents          |    [5]      |    [5]      |    [5]      |
  |Postage and  }    |    [5]      |    [5]      |    [5]      |
  |  stationery }    |             |             |             |
  |Miscellaneous     |  7   0    0 |  7   3    0 |  9   0    0 |
  |Doctor and }      |  2   0    0 |  0   6    0 |  1   1    0 |
  |  medicine }      |             |             |             |
  |Insurance         |     --      |     --      |     --      |
  |Savings           |     --      |     --      |     --      |
  |Not spent         | 25  13    5 | 18   8    8 | 23  18    7 |
  |                  +-------------+-------------+-------------+
  |  Total           |100   0   0  |100   0    0 |106  13    4 |
  +------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+

  +------------------+-------------+-------------+
  |                  |      3.     |      4.     |
  |                  +-------------+-------------+
  |                  |  £ _s._ _d._|  £ _s._ _d._|
  |Lodging and board | 50  17   11 | 54   9   3  |
  |Washing           |  3   0    7 |  3  7  11³⁄₄|
  |Dress             | 12  14 1¹⁄₂ | 16  0   5¹⁄₂|
  |Books,newspapers,}|  3  16    8 |  2 15   4¹⁄₂|
  |  &c.            }|             |             |
  |Travelling        |}17   4 2¹⁄₂ | 12  0   5¹⁄₂|
  |Holidays          |}            |     --      |
  |Amusements        |     [5]     |  3  11  5   |
  |Subscriptions,  } |  4   4 5¹⁄₄ |  1  17 11   |
  |  donations, &c.} |             |             |
  |Presents          |  9  15  7   |  5  18  3³⁄₄|
  |Postage and  }    |  1  15  2   |  4  15  1¹⁄₂|
  |  stationery }    |             |             |
  |Miscellaneous     |  3  16  3   |  3  11  11  |
  |Doctor and }      |  3   2  1   |  0  19   5  |
  |  medicine }      |             |             |
  |Insurance         | 23  10 10   |      --     |
  |Savings           |  1  13  4   |      --     |
  |Not spent         |     --      | 20  12  4¹⁄₂|
  |                  +-------------+-------------+
  |  Total           |135  11  2¹⁄₄|130   0  0   |
  +------------------+-------------+-------------+

[5] Included in “Miscellaneous.”


These tables are not so readily comparable as they should be for
scientific exactness. The items included under “Travelling” and
“Holidays” need to be enumerated. Under the latter head, for instance,
are board and lodging included and are railway fares subtracted and
placed under “Travelling”? As a fact No. 1 and No. 2 include under
“Board and Lodging” only the cost incurred during the school terms;
under the head of “Travelling” is only counted the cost of going to
school from home and their daily travelling expenses during the school
term. The money put down under “Holidays” includes their expenses for
the part of their holidays during which they were not at home. The
same is, I believe, true in the case of No. 3, but I do not know for
what length of time any of them were subsidised by this free board and
lodging at home.

On the other hand, No. 4’s accounts are so summarised that the cost of
“Holidays” disappears altogether, being broken up into its constituents
of board, lodging, travelling fares and amusements. The confusion in
this case is remedied in the following detailed table supplied by No. 4.


TABLE II.

_Accounts of Expenditure of a High School Mistress (No. 4) in Furnished
Lodgings._

AMOUNT SPENT ON

  +----------------+----------------+---------------+--------------+
  |                | During School  |During Holidays|    Total     |
  |                |Year (39 weeks).|  (13 weeks).  | during year. |
  |                +----------------+---------------+--------------+
  |                |    £  _s._ _d._|    £ _s._ _d._|  £  _s._ _d._|
  |                | { 13   7    6  |               |              |
  |                | {  3   7    0  |               |              |
  |Lodgings        | { to be        |    0   8   6  | 17  13    0  |
  |                | { reserved in  |               |              |
  |                | { holidays.    |               |              |
  |Board           |   34  11    3  |    2   5   0  | 36  16    3  |
  |Lunches, teas,  |                |               |              |
  |  &c.           |                |    0  16   8  |  0  16    8  |
  |Furniture       |    1   5    6  |               |  1   5    6  |
  |Washing         |             3  7  11³⁄₄        |  3   7  11³⁄₄|
  |Dress           |            16  0   5¹⁄₂        | 16   0   5¹⁄₂|
  |Books           |             2 15   4¹⁄₂        |  2  15   4¹⁄₂|
  |Fares           |    3  16   6¹⁄₂|    8   3  11  | 12   0   5¹⁄₂|
  |Amusements      |    2 18  6     |    0  12  11  |  3  11   5   |
  |Subscriptions,  |                                |              |
  |  donations, &c.|             1 17 11            |  1  17  11   |
  |Presents        |             5 18  3³⁄₄         |  5  18   3³⁄₄|
  |Postage and     |                                |              |
  |  stationery    |             4 15  1¹⁄₂         |  4  15   1¹⁄₂|
  |Miscellaneous   |             1  9  9            |  1   9   9   |
  |Doctor and      |                                |              |
  |  medicine      |             0 19  5            |  0  19   5   |
  |Not spent       |            20 12  4¹⁄₂         | 20  12   4¹⁄₂|
  |                |                                +--------------+
  |                |                    Total       |130   0  0    |
  +----------------+--------------------------------+--------------+


The social outlook of a working woman is very largely determined by
the amount she can afford to spend on dress, and her view of life
is perhaps most clearly indicated in the consideration of this item
of expenditure. And no accounts of expenditure are of much value
without some accompanying expression of the spender’s contentment or
dissatisfaction with the results of her expenditure. In reply to my
question on the subject of dress, No. 2 informs me that £16 a year was
quite enough for her dress:--

 “My dresses were always made by a dressmaker, not at home; as we lived
 in a country town, her charges for making were inexpensive as such
 things go; I don’t think that with linings and small etceteras (not
 of course trimmings) they ever exceeded 15_s_. I cannot say that I
 was well dressed, but I don’t think that I was exactly badly dressed.
 I am sure that any one with more _judicious_ taste than I had could
 have done better on the same money; I myself could do better now,
 for I certainly several times made mistakes of the kind that writers
 on dress warn us against, that of buying things, say at sales, which
 were not really suitable for any likely purpose. I always made a plan
 of buying my winter dress at the summer sales, which in our country
 town came in early August, and my summer dress at their winter sale
 (things really were reduced). Though I did no dressmaking I made my
 own underclothing.

 “I am afraid I don’t quite see the application of the words
 ‘prettily,’ and ‘admiration’ to the school dress of a high school
 teacher. I should rather consider neatness as one’s aim in school
 dressing, but then some people have a talent for dressing for which
 they very properly receive their reward: I am afraid I don’t possess
 it.”

No. 3 writes:

 “I still keep to about £12 a year for my dress, and I think there are
 many teachers, if not most, who spend about that amount. Miss B----,
 who was for some years head mistress at C----, tells me that she
 never spent more than £12 a year while there, and she visited a good
 deal and certainly always looked very nice. Miss D----, head mistress
 at E----, tells me that before she came here she spent £10 a year for
 about ten years while teaching in London. As to being well dressed,
 that is always comparative. I have my clothes made at very good shops,
 _not_ the most fashionable, and always of the best materials, as I
 think it is most economical in the end; but I spend very little on
 trimmings, and nothing on fripperies, such as beads and feathers. I
 generally have two new dresses a year. I make my own blouses because
 the ready-made ones are too cheap and poor. If I had time, I think
 I should enjoy making other things, but I have too much to do. I
 generally do my own mending, but sometimes lately I have had a woman
 in to do it. Children certainly prefer a well-dressed teacher; I do
 not think my dress is either so dowdy or so shabby as to displease
 their taste; to look fresh and clean is my aim for school clothes,
 and plainly made things seem to me most suitable for our work. As to
 evening dress, I generally have one dress that will do for a concert,
 and I very seldom go to any other evening entertainment. I think it
 distinctly an advantage to a teacher to have as many quiet evenings at
 home as possible, and I find so many occasions present themselves of
 attending meetings and lectures that if I were to go into society as
 well, I should have very little time to give to study and the quiet
 rest which is so refreshing after the day’s work.”

The details of No. 4’s expenditure are given later on.

No. 3 and No. 4 were both considerably older than No. 1 and No. 2, and
had both learnt that the one absolutely necessary indulgence for a high
school mistress is a good holiday in new scenes. No. 4 says in a note
that the cost of her holidays during this year were lower than usual,
as she did not go abroad. No. 2 strikes the usual note of warning on
this point:--

 “I spent very little in my holidays; for my father was much averse
 to his only daughter spending any of her free time away from home;
 but you will also notice that there is a distinctly large proportion
 of my salary unappropriated or reserved, and a certain proportion of
 this ought to have been spent in holidays. I enjoy excellent health
 usually, and my nerves seem the only vulnerable point, but after
 teaching more than three years at W----, a term in X---- brought me to
 the brink of a regular nervous breakdown: this I imagine might have
 been avoided if I had really had a good holiday every year.”

The moral of this to young teachers would seem to be: Do not try
to save out of £100 a year at the expense of your health. Better
keep fresh and strong without saving and rise to £120 as quickly as
possible, than break down and exhaust your savings in a long illness
which may reduce your salary to £90.

The conditions and cost of living of women clerks vary in many and
important respects from those of women teachers. Their work is less
exhausting on the whole and less trying to the nerves. But, on the
other hand, their holidays are generally very short; except for a few
brief months in the year, they must work while it is day, and seek for
their amusements when the night comes; they are doing sedentary work
in office hours, and yet only by a strong determination can they find
any recreation except in the further sedentary occupations of reading
and sewing, or in poisonous lecture halls, concert rooms, or theatres.
They cannot easily do their shopping, and have no opportunity of
wearing out their shabby dresses in private; they must feed themselves
unwholesomely at tea-rooms, or extravagantly and monotonously at
restaurants. Above all, whereas teaching may be regarded as a life work
well worth the doing for its own sake, clerical work can hardly be
soul-satisfying to any intelligent human being. It is not living, but
merely a means of living.

Dress is necessarily much more expensive in the case of the clerk than
in the case of the high school mistress. Circumstances and temperament
work together in producing this result. Were it possible--as I hope it
may be--to secure accounts of clerks and typists living at home and
working for about £40 to £60 a year, it would, I believe, frequently
be found that their expenditure on this item was double that of the
high school mistress earning £130 a year. On the other hand, the high
school teacher knows that she must preserve physical health, and that
she cannot afford to economise in food. The clerk too often lives on
tea and roll until the evening, and for want of physical exercise, has
little appetite even then.

The clerk’s budget (No. 5) that I present here gives a year’s
expenditure of an income of £227. It has to be noted that, apart
from the food and rent, most of the items were largely supplemented
_in kind_. The expenditure does not at all represent the standard
of living in things not strictly necessaries. The sum put down for
holiday expenditure includes the expense of five days’ holiday only,
the remainder being for railway fares, no other expense whatever being
incurred during the remainder of the holidays.


TABLE III.

_Accounts of Expenditure of a Clerk (No. 5) renting Unfurnished
Lodgings._

AMOUNT SPENT ON

                                            £ _s._ _d._
  Rent of two unfurnished rooms,
    kitchen fire, and attendance           40   0   0
  Coals, wood, and lights                   5   0   0
  Miscellaneous housekeeping expenses
    (including additions to
    furniture)                              4   0   0
  Food                                     43   0   0
  Washing (household and personal)          4  10   0
  Dress                                    41   0   0
  Library subscription, books, newspapers,
    etc.                                    3   0   0
  Travelling and holiday                    8   0   0
  Amusements                                2   0   0
  Clubs and societies                       2  10   0
  Presents and charities                   12  10   0
  Doctor                                    2  10   0
  Small expenses                           19   0   0
  Not spent                                40   0   0
                                         ------------
                             Total       £227   0   0
                                         ============

_Notes._--About £14 included under “Food” was spent on lunch and tea,
which had to be taken out every day. The amount under “Washing” does
not represent the true expense; many things were sent regularly to a
country laundry, and were not paid for by their owner. The expenditure
on “Dress” is £10 in excess of what produced a better effect when
living at home as a “lady of leisure.” Practically, all mending
(except stockings) and renovating were paid for. The amount spent in
books by no means represents the value received. The heading “Small
Expenses” includes cabs, omnibuses, and incidental travelling expenses,
stationery, postage, extra newspapers, and oddments not amounting to
more than a few pence each.

The last complete budget placed at my disposal is that of a journalist
(No. 6), a joint occupier of a house, spending £338 in the year, for
which the accounts are given. The income tax and total income are not
stated. No. 6 writes:--

 “My work is mainly office work, and I have nothing to do with society
 journalism, so that I do not have to be well dressed. In giving my
 travelling expenses I have of course omitted all travelling expenses
 refunded to me by my employers, but I have included fares spent in
 taking my bicycle out of London, although they should perhaps come
 under the head of holiday expenses. Then, of course, as, except the
 theatre, my amusements are nearly all outdoor, the expenses are really
 divided between food and dress and lodging, and it looks as though I
 spent very little on recreation.”

TABLE IV.

_Accounts of a Journalist (No. 6), Joint Occupier of a House._

AMOUNT SPENT ON

                                    £   _s._  _d._
  Rent (share of)                   22   10     0
  Rates    ”                         7    4     3
  Water    ”                         1    6     0
  Gas      ”                         3   13     0¹⁄₂
  Coal     ”                         4    1     0
  Service  ”                         6   17     6
  “Housekeeping”[6]                 44    3     4¹⁄₄
  Luncheons, teas, and dinners away
    from home[7]                    31    1    10¹⁄₂
  Furniture                          2   13     3
  Flowers                            1    2     3
  Dress                             42    1     4³⁄₄
  Books                             14    1     2
  Newspapers                         2    3     9¹⁄₂
  Fares                             13    8     5
  Holiday[8]                         7   18     8
  Amusements                         4   19     6
  Clubs                              3    1     0
  Subscriptions, donations          27   15     4
  Presents[9]                       18   17     0
  Postage and stationery             3    2    10¹⁄₂
  Miscellaneous                      5    0    10
  Doctor and medicine                0    0     0
  Insurance                         31    2    10
  Savings                           40    0     0
                                  ---------------
        Total expenditure         £338    5     4
                                  ===============
  Income tax                         Not stated
  Balance                            Not stated

[6] The housekeeping done by the other occupier, and separate account
of each item not kept. Under this head are included half the cost of
food for household of three people and servant, and of laundry, garden,
kitchen requisites, house repairs, &c.

[7] This includes daily lunches and teas, and lunches and dinners to
guests at clubs, restaurants, &c.

[8] Spent unusually little on holidays this year.

[9] Includes five months’ contribution towards payment of one relative
to live with and take care of another.

Details of dress expenditure for one year have been given me by Nos.
5 and 6, as well as by No. 4. In addition, I have received the dress
accounts for one year of a clerk living at home and receiving board and
lodging free, and those for nine years of a lady receiving an allowance
for her personal expenditure. I give the accounts of the wage-earning
women first.


TABLE V.

_Accounts of Expenditure on Dress of No. 4 (a High School Mistress),
Nos. 5 and 7 (Clerks), and No. 6 (a Journalist)._

AMOUNT SPENT ON

 +-------------------+------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
 |                   |     4.     |    5.     |    7.     |     6.     |
 |                   +------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
 |                   | £ _s._ _d._|£ _s._ _d._|£ _s._ _d._| £ _s._ _d._|
 |Dresses            | 3 16   1   |16  10  0  |23  2  11  |19   1   9  |
 |Coats, cloaks,     |            |           |           |            |
 |  umbrellas, &c.   | 2  7  11   | 8  10  0  | 2 16   0  | 2   4   0  |
 |Millinery          | 1 11   1   | 4  10  0  | 5  5   9  | 3  11   7  |
 |Underclothing      |            |           |           |            |
 |  and handkerchiefs| 3  9  11   | 6   0  0  | 5  2   1  | 6  17   8  |
 |Boots and shoes    | 2 15  11¹⁄₄| 3   0  0  | 3  4   2  | 6   5   8  |
 |Gloves             | 0 15   8   | 1  15  0  | 1 13   6  | 2   0   0  |
 |Ties, collars, &c. | 0 15  11³⁄₄| 0  15  0  | 1  6   5  | 0  19   9  |
 |Miscellaneous      | 0  8  11   | ----[10]  |  ----[11] | 1  0  11³⁄₄|
 |                   +------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
 |      Total        |16  1   6   |41   0  0  |42 10  10  |42  1   4³⁄₄|
 +-------------------+------------+-----------+-----------+------------+

[10] Included in “petty cash” and not separable from other items.

[11] Sponges, toilet soaps, brushes, &c., should have been included
under this head.


No. 5 (a clerk) adds the following note to her dress account:--

 “To give a true impression I think detailed dress accounts should
 cover three years’ expenditure; things like, _e.g._, winter coats and
 best evening dresses cannot come out of the same year’s income on a
 £40 dress allowance. In considering the effect produced for the money,
 people should certainly state whether they are a ‘stock’ size. I can
 wear nothing ready made. People who can may reduce the cost of all
 their outer garments by about half.”

No. 7 (a clerk), who is perhaps more representative of the middle class
working women of the future than the others whose accounts are given
here, inasmuch as she appears to regard bicycling, tennis, hockey,
society, and pretty dresses as being as much the right of the girl
wage-earner as of her stay-at-home cousins, has given me the list of
additions to her wardrobe made by her family during the year, the
items being: one pair of good evening slippers, one blouse, one dozen
handkerchiefs, one lace collar, a total value of £2 4_s._; and sundry
veils, ribbons, and belts, value not known.

She writes:--

 “What comes so expensive when one has to go to work straight on, say
 for the first six months of the year, is the having to keep up the
 same standard of respectability in the ‘between season’ time as at
 other times. The holidays always come between the seasons at school
 or college, and it does not matter much what one wears. But at the
 office by April I felt that I had simply ‘nothing to wear,’ and yet I
 hardly knew what to buy, as it was too early to get summer things. If
 one once got into the way of getting inter-season clothes as well, the
 expenditure would be enormous.”

No. 6 writes:--

 “I walk a great deal in all weathers, and boots and walking dresses
 are subjected to hard wear. I generally have about three new walking
 dresses a year, at about 4¹⁄₂ guineas each on the average. My
 boot-bill is extra heavy, because my boots have to be made to order.”

And in answer to further questions on this latter point:--

 “I find that my average expenditure on boots and shoes for the year
 I gave you and for the year just ended (September 30) is £4 14_s._
 9_d._; I never kept my accounts before, so that I cannot be sure
 about my permanent average, but I should say it was generally about 5
 guineas. This year was a very dry year, and not so ruinous as usual,
 and I cycled more and walked less.”

It should be noted that the three office workers who spend over £40
on dress are all dissatisfied with the result, and consider that they
have to exercise rigid economy to keep their expenditure down to that
limit. At the same time, all three are a little ashamed to find that
they spend so much. This arises from the fact that the expenditure is
always compared with that of the girl living at home on an allowance.
The comparison is not justifiable. The office worker wears out more
clothes and has no time for making or mending.

I lay stress on this because one difficulty in the way of obtaining
accounts is a fear of incurring the disapprobation of the censors who
think that to devote half one’s time to managing to dress well on £30
a year earned by some one else is less extravagant than to earn £300
a year and spend £50 of it on dress. I asked a journalist, one of the
very few working women of my acquaintance always suitably and prettily
dressed, if she would let me have her accounts. She owned she had not
the courage to confess what a large proportion of her income had to go
for clothes. Later on, after reading the journalistic comments on the
expenditure tables submitted to the British Association, she told me
how thankful she was she had withheld hers--“They call £40 a lavish
expenditure!” And yet I have little doubt that few people could under
the same circumstances produce so good a result at the same expense;
while at the same time from a business point of view such an outlay in
my friend’s branch of journalism repays itself with high interest.

My last set of tables, as I have already said, are not those of a
wage-earner. The average expenditure is here given for three sets of
three years, the personal allowance being £30, £40 and £50 for the
successive periods (rising to £60 during the last year of the third
period). Books and subscriptions and presents are the other items of
expenditure not given here.


TABLE VI.

_Accounts of Expenditure on Dress of No. 8, living at Home, and
receiving an Allowance._

AVERAGE AMOUNT SPENT DURING THE THREE YEARS.

 +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
 |                            |   1883-85.  |   1889-91.  |   1894-96. |
 |                            +-------------+-------------+------------+
 |                            |  £  _s.  d._|  £  _s.  d._|  £ _s.  d._|
 |Dresses                     | 13   9   8  | 17  15   6  | 22   1   0 |
 |Coats, cloaks, umbrellas    |  3  16  11  |  6   5   0  |  5  12   9 |
 |Millinery                   |  2  14   4  |  3   3   6  |  4  10   3 |
 |Underclothing, handkerchiefs|  3   0   8  |  3   7   6  |  5  13  10 |
 |Boots and Shoes             |  3  13   5  |  2  19   2  |  3   9   2 |
 |Gloves                      |  2   2   8  |  1  18   1  |  1  16  11 |
 |Ties, collars, &c.          |  0  13   1  |  0  17   8  |  0  18   4 |
 |Miscellaneous               |  0   8   6  |  0   9   0  |  0  19   9 |
 |                            +-------------+-------------+------------+
 |           Total            | 29  19   3  | 36  15   5  | 45   2   0 |
 |                            +-------------+-------------+------------+
 |     Personal allowance     |    £30      |     £40     |   £50-£60  |
 +----------------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+


No. 8 writes:--

 “In addition to the allowance I had various presents of money. While
 receiving £30 I had evening dresses given me. My mending and altering
 are done by a maid at home. Up to 1888 I occasionally had dressmaking
 done at home, but now put it all out. Being so busy a person and not
 caring for dressmaking or millinery, I have done none myself for the
 last seven years or more. The average yearly glove expenditure of the
 three periods is less now than in 1885. This is probably accounted for
 by the fact that I don’t require so many white evening gloves as when
 I had many dances.”

The accounts I have presented here have no claim to be regarded as
typical. They are merely samples of the kind of material needed to
enable us to discover the type.




THE AGE LIMIT FOR WOMEN.

_December, 1899._

 “Rather than remain braced and keen to watch the world accurately and
 take every appearance on its own merits, the lazy intellect declines
 upon generalizations, formalized rules and Laws of Nature.”

  --“Idlehurst, a Journal kept in the Country.”


Every reader of the educational journals must be familiar with the
typical advertisement that “The Council of the ---- High School
for Girls will shortly appoint a Headmistress. No one over 35 need
apply.” The restriction produces an effect on assistant mistresses
very prejudicial to the interests of education. Girls after a three or
four years’ University course, followed in some cases by a year in a
Training College, have hardly settled down to the practical business
of their lives in the high schools before they are seized with a
nervous fear that if they do not shortly bestir themselves in the
competition for headmistress-ships they will before long be stranded
on this old-time superstition. Their youth and inexperience are facts
constantly brought before them up to the age of thirty or thereabouts,
and then with hardly an interval they find themselves confronted by
this theory of sudden decay of faculties in women. During the second
five years of teaching there is a constant agitation among young
mistresses in the endeavour to secure a headship, and then amongst
those who fail in the lottery--for it is a lottery--comes the deadening
prospect of, perhaps, a quarter of a century’s work to be carried on
without hope of promotion.

It may be useful to consider the origin of this “formalised rule” that
women are unfit to undertake serious responsibility after the age of
thirty-five.

The rule--an advance, no doubt, on the eighteenth-century habit
of referring to men and women of forty or fifty as “aged”--became
stereotyped at least as early as the middle of this century. Unmarried
ladies regarded as on the shelf at twenty-five were forced to let their
faculties die for want of exercise. The freshness was drained out of
them by the pressure of trivialities unresisted by hope. Those who
entered the labour market did so as victims of cruel misfortune, full
of pity for themselves and quickly worn out by their struggles to gain
a livelihood with few qualifications for the task.

During the last twenty years a very striking change has made itself
apparent. In some branches the extension of the working period of a
woman’s life has been so great that it has even brought back to useful,
hopeful enterprise women who had settled down to the colourless,
dreary, monotonous round prescribed for the unattached elderly. The
number of educated women who either earn a livelihood or engage in
philanthropic work has not increased so much as is usually supposed,
but the spirit in which the work is undertaken is wholly different. Not
that it is in all respects a praiseworthy one. The disinterestedness
of the saint is perhaps lacking. Indeed, what I wish to lay stress
on as a fact for which to be thankful is that the period of youthful
_interestedness_ has been very greatly extended.

In fiction our women writers have long since abandoned sweet seventeen
as a heroine, and even men writers, slowest of all to observe such
changes, have, during the last five years or so, recognised that at
that favoured age girls are nowadays too much absorbed in preparing
for senior locals and college entrance examinations to offer useful
material for romantic literature.

Not a few of our veterans shake their heads over what I have called
the extension of youthfulness, but what they call the prolongation of
childish irresponsibility. The crudeness of the girl-graduate of two or
three and twenty is contrasted unfavourably with the finished manners
and graceful maturity of the girl of eighteen some forty years ago. And
there would be much to be urged in support of their disapproval if,
with the raising of the age-limit of a girl’s systematised education,
there were no corresponding rise in the age-limit of her usefulness
and energy. If the prime of life were necessarily passed at an age
fixed for all time, so that the time spent in preparation for work was
deducted from the time available for work itself, it might fairly
be doubted whether our modern system of education was not positively
harmful.

But there is no such fixity in the age at which maturity is attained,
and there is reason to believe that as each generation takes longer to
arrive at maturity, owing to much more careful attention to mental and
physical development, so also each generation retains the possession of
its mature powers for a longer period than the preceding one.

Reflecting on this possibility and comparing modern systems of
education with those prevailing a century ago, it will be noticed that
in those days girls became wives and mothers before they had time to
realise the joy of youth; that children were introduced to society
too soon to have indulged in the delightful exercise of imagination,
untouched by responsibility; and that toddling babies must have been
taught to theorise on moral problems, judging by the period at which
some of them attained to a reasoned self-control.

Looking back, too, with curiosity, to the methods by which this
precocious maturity of judgment was produced, it is interesting to note
the changes in the school curriculum apparent at different periods,
and the absence of those subjects which, in our day, we regard as
preliminary to education, and which yet require more years for their
mastery than were necessary a hundred years ago for the mastery of
feminine accomplishments and the acquisition of fixed moral principles.

It is those fixed moral principles that form the most marked
characteristic of the eighteenth-century child. Of religious teaching
there was strikingly little; religious fervour is almost entirely
absent from the literature of the period. But moral teaching was, so
far as girls were concerned, the only branch of study in which they
were called to exercise their reason.

We are all of us apt to imagine that the writers of children’s books
in the last century had so little artistic faculty as to be constantly
writing a language which no human being could ever have indulged in, in
real life. But, in fact, these prematurely grown-up girls were never
called on to exercise their intelligence on any subject except morals.
They were twice as old as our children of the same age, but their
brains were less accustomed to exercise than those of our infants in
the kindergarten nowadays. The style in vogue was a natural result.

Daniel Defoe, in his “Tour through Great Britain,” describes the
domestic system in the woollen industry in the West Riding at the
beginning of the eighteenth century with glowing enthusiasm. I quote,
from the edition of 1759, the account of the trade in Halifax and the
surrounding district. After describing the scenery, he goes on:

“Nor is the industry of the people wanting to second these advantages.
Though we met few people without doors, yet within we saw the houses
full of lusty fellows, some at the dye vat, some at the loom, others
dressing the cloth; the women and children carding or spinning; all
employed from the youngest to the oldest; scarce anything above four
years old but its hands were sufficient for its own support.”

There are other instances of a similar kind in other parts of the
book. It is to him a delightful thing that there should be work enough
for these little four-year-old mites to be able to relieve their
parents from the burden of their support.

Clearly, then, children were not allowed to be children for long in
those days. And some of the stories to which I shall refer are not
quite so ridiculous as we may have imagined. We have accused the
writers of talking in an absurdly grown-up manner to little children.
It was really the little children who were absurdly grown up in real
life, not merely in fiction.

Take as an instance the story of “Jemima Placid,” written some time
between 1770 and 1790. I quote the prologue:

 “As I had nothing particular to do, I took a walk one morning as far
 as St. James’s Park, where meeting with a lady of my acquaintance,
 she invited me to go home with her to breakfast; which invitation
 I accordingly complied with. Her two daughters had waited for her
 a considerable time, and expressed themselves to have been much
 disturbed at her stay. They afterwards fretted at the heat of the
 weather; and the youngest, happening accidentally to tear her
 apron, she bewailed it the succeeding part of the day with so much
 appearance of vexation, that I could not help showing some degree of
 astonishment at her conduct; and having occasion afterwards to mention
 Miss Placid, I added that she was the most agreeable girl I had ever
 known.

 “Miss Eliza, to whom I was speaking, said that she had long wished
 to hear something further concerning that young lady, as her mamma
 very frequently proposed her as an example without mentioning the
 particulars of her conduct; but as I was so happy as to be favoured
 with her intimacy, she should be glad to hear a recital of those
 excellences which acquired such universal approbation.

 “In compliance with this request I wrote the following sheets and
 dispatched them to Miss Eliza, and by her desire it is that they are
 now submitted to the world; as she obligingly assured me that her
 endeavours to imitate the calm disposition of the heroine of this
 history had contributed so much to her own happiness, and increased
 the good opinion of her friends, that she wished to have so amiable an
 example made public for the advantage of others.”

And then we are given the life of Miss Jemima Placid at the age of six,
and in particular of her first visit from home to her cousins, Miss
Nelly and Miss Sally Piner, aged nine and eight years respectively.

The incidents of the story are of the kind that would happen to
children of six or seven nowadays. But the moral teaching is
representative of the ethical teaching of the time. The importance of
ease of manner and good deportment in society is constantly being
urged:

 “Jemima, who had not seen her cousins since she was two years old,
 had entirely forgotten them; and, as they expected to find her as
 much a baby as at their last interview, they appeared like entire
 strangers to each other. They welcomed their papa and mamma, and
 looked at Miss Placid with silent amazement: both parties, indeed,
 said the civil things they were desired, such as, ‘How do you do,
 cousin?’ rather in a low and drawling tone of voice; and Miss Sally,
 who was eight years old, turned her head on one side and hung on
 her papa’s arm, though he tried to shake her off and desired her to
 welcome Miss Placid to London, and to say she was glad to see her, to
 inquire after her papa, mamma, and brothers, and, in short, to behave
 politely and receive her in a becoming manner. To do this, however,
 Mr. Piner found was impossible, as his daughters were not at any time
 distinguished by the graces, and were always particularly awkward,
 from their shyness, at a first introduction. In this place, my dear
 Eliza, you must excuse me if I stop to hint at a like error in your
 own conduct, and which, indeed, young ladies in general are too apt
 to be inattentive to; that, as first impressions are usually the
 strongest, it is of great consequence to impress your company with a
 favourable opinion of your appearance. As you are acquainted with the
 common forms of good breeding, you should consider that it is quite
 immaterial whether you address a lady you have before seen or one
 with whom you are unacquainted, since the compliments of civility are
 varied only by the circumstances of your knowledge, or the different
 connections of the person to whom you are speaking. When, therefore,
 you are in company with strangers, you should accustom yourself to
 say what is proper (which will be to answer any question they may ask
 you) without at all considering how long you have known them; and be
 assured that as an easy behaviour is at all times most agreeable, you
 will certainly please when you speak with a modest degree of freedom.
 Do not therefore make yourself uneasy with the idea of appearing
 awkward, for by that means you will defeat your wishes; but endeavour
 to retain your natural voice, and express yourself with the same
 unconcern as you do in common conversation, since every species of
 affectation is disagreeable, and nothing will so strongly recommend
 you as simplicity.”

Mrs. Placid’s exhortation on mutual forbearance to the Miss Piners,
who had just emerged from a fight for a place in the window-seat, is
another example of excellent forensic powers brought to bear on the
education of little girls:

 “‘There is great wickedness,’ replied her aunt, ‘in being so tenacious
 of every trifle as to disagree about it with those with whom we live,
 especially between brothers and sisters, who ought always to be
 united in affection and love; and if you now indulge your passions
 so that you will submit to no opposition, it will make you hated and
 despised by everybody and constantly unhappy in your own mind. It is
 impossible, my dear, to have every circumstance happen as we wish it
 to do; but if a disappointment could at any time justify ill-nature
 and petulance it would certainly be adding greatly to the unhappiness
 of life. And do you think, my dear, that to fight on every occasion
 with those who oppose you is at all consistent with the delicacy of a
 young lady? I dare say, when you give yourself time to reflect on the
 subject, you will perceive that you have been much to blame, and that
 whenever you have suffered yourself to be ill-natured and quarrelsome
 you have always been proportionably uneasy and wretched. Nothing can
 so much contribute to your present felicity or future peace as a
 good understanding and cordial affection for your sister. You will
 most probably be more in her company than in any other person’s, and
 how comfortable would it be, by every little office of kindness, to
 assist each other! I am sure, if you would try the experiment, you
 would find it much better than such churlish resistance and provoking
 contentions. It is by good humour and an attention to please in
 trifles that love is cherished and improved. If your sister wants
 anything, be assiduous to fetch it. If she cannot untie a knot, do it
 for her. If she wishes a place in the window, make room immediately.
 Share with her all that is given to you: conceal her faults, as you
 dislike your own to be observed; commend her good qualities, and never
 envy, but endeavour to emulate, her perfections. By this method you
 will ensure her regard and make yourself happy at the same time; that
 will give the highest pleasure to your parents, and obtain the esteem
 of all your acquaintance. Think of these motives, my dear girl, and
 resolve to exert yourself; and when you feel inclined to be angry
 and cross, recollect whether it will be worth while, because you
 have first got possession, to engage in a contest which will forfeit
 all these advantages. Think with yourself, Shall I lose my sister’s
 love or abate her regard for an orange, a plaything, or a seat? Do
 I not prefer making her contented, and keeping my own mind serene
 and placid, before the pleasure of enjoying a toy or any other thing
 equally trifling? Will it tire me to fetch down her cloak, or her
 doll, if she is in want of them? And shall I not do it in less time
 than it will take to dispute whose business it is to go? In short, my
 dear niece, you will find so much ease and pleasure result from the
 resolution to oblige that I dare say, if you once attempt it, you will
 be inclined to persevere.’

 “‘But indeed, madam,’ returned Miss Nelly, ‘my sister is as cross to
 me as I am to her, and therefore it is out of my power to do what you
 advise; for I cannot bear to do everything for her when she will do
 nothing for me.’

 “‘You are both much to blame,’ said Mrs. Placid, ‘but as you are the
 eldest it is your place to set a good example, and you do not know,
 Nelly, how far that incitement will prevail. When you have refused her
 one request, she is naturally, by way of retaliation, induced to deny
 you another: this increases your mutual dissatisfaction and commences
 new quarrels, by which means your anger is continued, so that neither
 is inclined to oblige or condescend. But if she finds you continue
 to be good-natured, she will catch the kind impression, as she used
 to imbibe the ill habits of malevolence and rage. In every case you
 should consider that the errors of another person are no excuse for
 the indulgence of evil in yourself.’”

In the story of “Mrs. Teachum and the Little Female Academy,” the
school curriculum is very clearly stated. A delightful account of the
training received by Mrs. Teachum for the post of schoolmistress shows
the prevalence of a humble deference to men’s superior judgment, which
may help to explain the absence of enthusiasm on their part for the
higher education of women.

 “This gentlewoman was the widow of a clergyman, with whom she had
 lived nine years in all the harmony and concord which form the only
 satisfactory happiness in the married state.

 “Mr. Teachum was a very sensible man, and took great delight in
 improving his wife, as she also placed her chief pleasure in receiving
 his instructions. One of his constant subjects of discourse to her
 was concerning the education of children; so that, when in his last
 illness his physicians pronounced him beyond the power of their art to
 relieve him, he expressed great satisfaction in the thought of leaving
 his children to the care of so prudent a mother.

 “Mrs. Teachum, though exceedingly afflicted by such a loss, yet
 thought it her duty to call forth all her resolution to conquer
 her grief, in order to apply herself to the care of these her dear
 husband’s children. But her misfortunes were not here to end: for
 within a twelve-month after the death of her husband she was deprived
 of both her children by a violent fever that then raged in the
 country; and about the same time, by the unforeseen breaking of a
 banker in whose hands almost all her fortune was just then placed, she
 was bereft of the means of her future support.

 “The Christian fortitude with which (through her husband’s
 instructions) she had armed her mind, had not left it in the power of
 any outward accident to bereave her of her understanding, or to make
 her incapable of doing what was proper on all occasions. Therefore,
 by the advice of all her friends, she undertook what she was so well
 qualified for--namely, the education of children.

 “And this trust she endeavoured faithfully to discharge, by
 instructing those committed to her care in reading, writing, working,
 and in all proper forms of behaviour. And though her principal aim
 was to improve their minds in all useful knowledge, to render them
 obedient to their superiors, and gentle, kind, and affectionate to
 each other, yet she did not omit teaching them an exact neatness
 in their persons and dress, and a perfect gentility in their whole
 carriage.”

“Reading, writing, working, and all proper forms of behaviour.” And it
is on the “proper forms of behaviour” that the story lays stress. And
it must frankly be admitted that the teaching was necessary. The number
of Mrs. Teachum’s young ladies was limited to nine. The eldest, Miss
Jenny Peace, was just turned fourteen, and the others were all under
twelve. Miss Jenny Peace being of such an advanced age, necessarily has
cast upon her a responsibility for improving the tone of the school,
and rises to the occasion with a sweet self-confidence, combined with
modesty, which the nineteen-year-old captain of a high school nowadays
might admire, but would hardly dare to imitate. The quarrels of the
two Miss Piners seem tame, although solely on account of the inferior
numbers, by comparison with the free fight in which Mrs. Teachum’s
young ladies indulge at the beginning of the story.

It opens with a dispute as to which of them was entitled to the largest
apple in a basket of the fruit given to Miss Jenny Peace to distribute.
To end the strife, Miss Jenny threw the apple over a hedge into another
garden.

 “At first they were all silent, as if they were struck dumb with
 astonishment with the loss of this one poor apple, though at the same
 time they had plenty before them.

 “But this did not bring to pass Miss Jenny’s design: for now they all
 began again to quarrel which had the most right to it, and which ought
 to have had it, with as much vehemence as they had before contended
 for the possession of it; and their anger by degrees became so high
 that words could not vent half their rage; and they fell to pulling
 of caps, tearing of hair, and dragging the clothes off one another’s
 backs; though they did not so much strike as endeavour to scratch and
 pinch their enemies.

 “Miss Dolly Friendly as yet was not engaged in the battle; but on
 hearing her friend Miss Nannie Spruce scream out that she was hurt
 by a sly pinch from one of the girls, she flew on this sly pincher,
 as she called her, like an enraged lion on its prey: and not content
 only to return the harm her friend had received, she struck with
 such force as felled her enemy to the ground. And now they could not
 distinguish between friend and enemy; but fought, scratched, and tore
 like so many cats, when they extend their claws to fix them in their
 rival’s heart.

 “Miss Jenny was employed in endeavouring to part them.

 “In the midst of this confusion appeared Mrs. Teachum, who was
 returning in hopes to see them happy with the fruit she had given
 them; but she was some time there before either her voice or presence
 could awaken them from their attention to the fight; when on a sudden
 they all faced her, and fear of punishment began now a little to
 abate their rage. Each of the misses held in her right hand, fast
 clenched, some marks of victory; for they beat and were beaten by
 turns. One of them held a little lock of hair torn from the head of
 her enemy, another grasped a piece of a cap, which, in aiming at her
 rival’s hair, had deceived her hand, and was all the spoils she could
 gain; a third clenched a piece of an apron; a fourth, of a frock. In
 short, every one, unfortunately, held in her hand a proof of having
 been engaged in the battle. And the ground was spread with rags and
 tatters, torn from the backs of the little inveterate combatants.”

Space does not permit me to describe the efforts by which Miss Jenny
brought about the moral reform of the combatants. She recounts to
them her mamma’s system of bringing her up, with especial reference
to her studies up to the age of six; and the other girls, brought to
see the error of their ways by a recognition of the unhappiness which
their faults have always brought upon themselves, recount the stories
of their lives also. Fairy tales and society plays are brought into
the service of morality, and the teaching to be deduced from them
is expounded. And although at the end of a fortnight Miss Jenny’s
ministrations are ended by her leaving school,

 “all quarrels and contentions were banished from Mrs. Teachum’s house;
 and if ever any such thing was likely to arise, the story of Miss
 Jenny Peace’s reconciling all her little companions was told to them:
 so that Miss Jenny, though absent, still seemed (by the bright example
 which she left behind her) to be the cement of union and harmony in
 this well-regulated society. And if any girl was found to harbour in
 her breast a rising passion, which it was difficult to conquer, the
 name and story of Miss Jenny Peace soon gained her attention, and left
 her without any other desire than to emulate Miss Jenny’s virtues.”

But perhaps it may be imagined that this story does not really
represent the system of education which we know from biographies and
letters did after all either produce, or allow to emerge, women of
strong character and considerable intellectual attainments.

For further light, turn to Miss Edgeworth’s two stories of Mlle.
Panache, the bad French governess, and Mlle. de Rosier, the good
French governess.

 “Mrs. Temple had two daughters, Emma and Helen; she had taken great
 care of their education, and they were very fond of their mother, and
 particularly happy whenever she had leisure to converse with them;
 they used to tell her everything that they thought and felt; so that
 she had it in her power early to correct, or rather to teach them to
 correct, any little faults in their disposition and to rectify those
 errors of judgment to which young people, from want of experience, are
 so liable.

 “Mrs. Temple lived in the country, and her society was composed of a
 few intimate friends; she wished, especially during the education of
 her children, to avoid the numerous inconveniences of what is called
 an extensive acquaintance. However, as her children grew older, it
 was necessary that they should be accustomed to see a variety of
 characters, and still more necessary that they should learn to judge
 of them. There was little danger of Emma’s being hurt by the first
 impressions of new facts and new ideas; but Helen, of a more vivacious
 temper, had not yet acquired her sister’s good sense. We must observe
 that Helen was a little disposed to be fond of novelty, and sometimes
 formed a prodigiously high opinion of persons whom she had seen but
 for a few hours. Not to admire was an art which she had yet to learn.”

Helen enters upon this part of her education when she is between eleven
and twelve years old.

After this it creates a sensation of relief to hear Miss Edgeworth, in
describing the pupils of Madame de Rosier, declare of Favoretta, the
youngest, aged about six years old, that “At this age the habits that
constitute character are not formed, and it is, therefore, absurd to
speak of the character of a child six years old.” It would almost seem
that in making this assertion Miss Edgeworth was delivering heretical
views, and we have seen that the author of “Jemima Placid,” at any
rate, disagreed with her.

Turning from fiction to real life to confirm it, we find the following
advice given by the Countess of Carlisle, in 1789, to young ladies
on their first establishment in the world. In her preface she says
that the book is intended for those who have been educated. That this
implies moral education more than anything else is made evident. The
young married woman is, however, recommended to cultivate her mind, and
the advice takes practical form.

 “If abundance of leisure shall allow you to extend your studies,” says
 Lady Carlisle, “let arithmetic, geography, chronology, and natural
 history compose the principal part.”

The brain which has not been trained in mental gymnastics in early
youth, unless unusually active, loses its powers. Narrow-mindedness
is a correct name for a psychological fact. That there were broad and
vigorous-minded women at this period who probably owed much to their
teachers there is no doubt. But, for the most part, these were women
who by their social position came in contact with able men, and saw
life from many points of view. The easy access to personal acquaintance
with leaders of thought, statesmen, practical workers, and cultured and
refined women, gives to the aristocracy and the upper middle classes an
education and training which never cease, and which make a University
training an amusing episode rather than a necessity.

In the middle classes the circumstances and duties of a woman’s life
are entirely different. After marriage, a limited income and maternal
and domestic duties limit a woman’s social education, and if her mental
powers have not been fully developed by education it is difficult for
her to resist the tendency to become absorbed in her purely personal
worries and cares; brain atrophy sets in, and with it old age, the
closing up of the mental avenues to new impressions and feelings.

Thus any child at a Board school can be taught arithmetic, and most
children at a high school can make progress in geometry and algebra,
but even capable middle class women, who begin these subjects for the
first time in early middle life, are frequently found to be mentally
incapable of the reasoning processes involved.

In one hundred years the age of childish irresponsibility has been
raised from six to about twelve, and in the extra six years thus
granted imagination and individuality have been left free to develop
themselves.

During the last twenty years another change has taken place. The duties
of the young person have altered. Formerly at the age of eighteen, in
the young person’s fiction, she was expected to relieve her invalid
mother of household cares and brighten her aged father’s declining
years. But mothers in 1899 refuse to become decrepit and take to the
sofa merely because their daughters are grown up, and fathers only
require to be amused occasionally in the evening. The new mother may
be considerably over thirty-five, bordering on fifty perhaps, but she
neither feels aged nor looks it, and is rather inclined to look beyond
her home for full scope for her powers when thus set free from maternal
cares. And, given intelligence, length of years guarantees experience.

One of the tortures of the Inquisition was to place the victim in a
room, the walls of which grew nearer to each other every day until,
at last, they closed in on him and crushed him to death. In the same
way intelligent life gradually grows fainter and fainter as the brain
decays for want of exercise. A daily mental constitutional is necessary
to prevent the accumulation of what W. K. Clifford called mental fat;
mental gymnastics are needed to prevent stiffening of the brain. When
not only our habits but our ideas have become fixed, then we have grown
old. An octogenarian may be young, if he has preserved the faculty of
modifying his conceptions in correspondence with new evidence.

Mental activity, provided there is no overstrain of the nerves, gives
freshness and interest to life, and to be fresh and interested is to
be young. It is because girls have been taught to use their brains,
and women have been encouraged to keep them in repair, that this
old stereotyped conception of the necessary failure of power after
thirty-five years of age has become absurd. At what age the value of a
woman’s increased experience is counterbalanced by diminished physical
power I do not pretend to judge. Women differ, and their social
opportunities differ. I merely transpose my text and say, “Do not let
your intellect lazily decline upon generalisations, formalised rules,
and laws of nature; but rather let it remain braced and keen to watch
the world accurately and take every appearance on its own merits.”




MRS. STETSON’S ECONOMIC IDEAL.

_March, 1900._


The argument of Mrs. Stetson’s book, “Women and Economics,” may be
briefly summed up as follows:--

 (1) Man is the only animal species in which the female depends on the
 male for food.

 (2) The married woman’s living (_i.e._, food, clothing, ornaments,
 amusements, luxuries) bears no relation to her power to produce
 wealth, or to her services in the house, or to her motherhood.

 (3) The woman gets her living by getting a husband. The man gets his
 wife by getting a living.

 (4) Although marriage is a means of livelihood, it is not honest
 employment, where one can offer one’s labour without shame. To earn
 her living a woman must therefore make herself sexually attractive.

 (5) The result of this is that, while men have been developing
 humanity, women have been developing femininity, to the great moral
 detriment of both men and women.

 (6) The disastrous effects of this undue cultivation of sex
 differences can only be prevented by the wife being economically
 independent of her husband.

 (7) This economic independence should be secured by the wife earning
 her living by performing paid work for some person or body other than
 her husband.

 (8) The performance of maternal functions is not incompatible with the
 performance of such remunerative services outside the family.

 (9) The servant functions of preparing food and removing dirt are
 not necessarily domestic functions, and could be better performed
 by professional cooks outside the home, and professional cleaners
 visiting the home or taking the work from the home.

 (10) The nursemaid functions of minding small children can be better
 performed, with greater advantage to the children, in the crêche and
 kindergarten than in the domestic nursery.

 (11) The wife can therefore advantageously be relieved from the
 continuous supervision of the kitchen, the living rooms, and the
 nursery, as she has already been relieved of the burden of the family
 washing, dressmaking, tailoring, and manufacture of underclothing.

 (12) She will then be free to earn her own living outside the home.

 (13) By so doing she not only will prevent the evils which have arisen
 from the wife’s economic dependence on her husband, but she will
 develop her human faculties. For what we do modifies us more than what
 is done for us.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh propositions are those on which the whole
argument hinges. Mrs. Stetson’s energy of expression and her contempt
for convention have deservedly secured for her a re-consideration of
old problems thus presented in a new form. The ability with which she
supports her conclusions is obvious. Her logic needs more careful
examination.

Her first argument I dismiss as quite irrelevant. Granted that at least
some men support their female kind, and that no brutes do, nothing
follows. I trust that there are many thousand characteristics which may
be predicated of man which must be denied of brutes.

Granted also her next argument, that what the wife obtains from her
husband bears no relation to her power to produce wealth, or to her
services in the house, or to her motherhood. Marriage, as Mrs. Stetson
maintains, should not be a business transaction, and therefore the less
commercial the relations of husband and wife to each other, the less
will service on one side be balanced against service on the other side.
The basis is the reverse of the economic basis; the honest business man
tries to get the largest amount for himself obtainable without cheating
his co-bargainer, trusting to the latter to guard his own interests,
and to see that what he gets is worth to him what he gives for it.
In any normal marriage the desire on each side is to secure to the
other the greatest amount of good at a reasonable cost to themselves,
the difference between persons determining more than anything else
what they consider a reasonable cost. Stepniak, in a struggle with
the English language, once gave a very happy definition, which most
practical people would accept. “Marriage,” he said, “is to love and put
up with.” Now these are just the two acts that no one expects from the
parties to a commercial contract.

I therefore grant Mrs. Stetson’s second argument, and put it aside, as
being, like the previous one, beside the question.

Thirdly, “The woman gets her living by getting a husband. The man
gets his wife by getting a living.” Putting aside for the moment the
question of the truth of this statement, I agree with Mrs. Stetson
that in any social group of which such a statement is true the moral
tone of women, and therefore of men, will be a low one. In such a
state of society also it would be necessary, as Mrs. Stetson says,
for a woman, in order to earn her living, to make herself sexually
attractive. But before passing on I would point out that, at this stage
of the argument, the only part of this result which I would on the
face of it admit to be bad is that the woman in such a case frequently
falsely assumes attractive qualities which she does not really possess,
or conforms to a masculine standard of what is womanly which she at
heart despises. It is, in fact, the development of the human qualities
of fraud and hypocrisy which is to be deprecated, rather than the
development of feminine attraction.

But Mrs. Stetson makes the universal statement that women have been
developing femininity to a harmful degree, and to the injury of the
human attributes which should be common to both sexes. At first
imagining that Mrs. Stetson, like most women, was confining her
attention to the present and the near past, I was extremely puzzled at
this assertion. It seemed especially strange that it should come from
America, where even more than in England women have been supposed to
be developing their individuality in all kinds of occupations hitherto
supposed to be only suitable for men. But suddenly Mrs. Stetson
announces that after all she is only arguing in favour of what many
women are already doing, and have been doing for the last half century
or so.

Now to decide whether femininity has become excessive, we must first
know what group of women we are studying, and also with what other
group of women we are comparing them. Mrs. Stetson is not apparently
describing the present century as ending with a great development of
purely feminine qualities, and even if she were, we might fairly ask
her to tell us whether she includes Americans, Turks, Hindoos, and
Hottentots under the same category. But there is no hint given of any
great differences between women rendering it necessary to limit the
nations coming under review, nor do I find it possible to date exactly
the epochs chosen for comparison. On p. 129 we have the following
condonement of the treatment of woman in past ages:--

 With a full knowledge of the initial superiority of her sex, and the
 sociological necessity for its temporary subversion, she should feel
 only a deep and tender pride in the long patient ages during which
 she has waited and suffered that man might slowly rise to full racial
 equality with her. She could afford to wait. She could afford to
 suffer.

Searching carefully to find at what period of the world’s history the
initial superiority of the woman was obvious prior to its temporary
subversion, I find on page 70 the approximate date given in the
following passage:--

 The action of heredity has been to equalise what every tendency of
 environment and education made to differ. This has saved us from such
 a female as the gypsy moth. It has held up the woman and held down the
 man. It has set iron bounds to our absurd effort to make a race with
 one sex a million years behind the other.

Clearly, then, the decline and fall of woman dates back at least one
million years. In practical retrospection there must be a Statute of
Limitations. Neither Mrs. Stetson nor any one else knows what men or
women were like a million years ago, or even ten thousand years ago.
Nor is it permissible to turn, as Mrs. Stetson frequently does, to
feeble-minded contemporary savages. Darwin, unlike the majority of
those who quote him, did not profess to know everything, or to be able
to supply the history of events of which no record has been left. We
have no reason whatever for imagining that our ancestors were lacking
in fortitude and intellectual vigour, and we have much for believing
that no highly civilised race will ever be developed from the savage
tribes with which we are acquainted. “From the good and brave are
born the brave.” Horace knew probably as much about heredity as most
of us do, and the average person’s principal debt to Darwin is his
emancipation from the bondage of Hebrew mythology.

While declining, therefore, to follow Mrs. Stetson in her wonderful
flights of fancy with regard to unknown times and races of mankind, and
acknowledging myself incapable of judging whether women have become
more or less feminine as compared with prehistoric times, I agree with
Mrs. Stetson, so far as regards a section of American and English
society, when she says (p. 149) that “women are growing honester,
braver, stronger, more healthful and skilful and able and free--more
human in all ways,” and that this improvement has been at least
coincident with, and to some extent due to, the effort to become at
least _capable_ of economic independence.

But Mrs. Stetson takes a flying leap when from these premisses she
jumps to the conclusion that the wife’s economic independence of the
husband is necessary to prevent the evils consequent on women being
dependent on marriage for a living.

Mrs. Stetson makes no distinction between the effects of economic
dependence before marriage and economic dependence after marriage.
But provided that before marriage a woman is able to support herself
with sufficient ease to render her a free agent, and that she retains
the _power_ of being self-supporting should economic necessity from
any cause arise after marriage, what is the objection to pecuniary
dependence on the husband? I see none whatever.

So that I find myself obliged to put aside all Mrs. Stetson’s stirring
appeals for a moral advance as very interesting, but as having really
no bearing on her proposed reforms, which must therefore be considered
on their own merits.

Criticism of the proposed reorganisation of domestic arrangements I
leave to the practical housewife.

It is only the fitness of the mother, or perhaps, for anything the
employer can tell, the about-to-become mother, for regular work
away from home that I wish to consider. Her own physical condition,
to say nothing of the liability of her children to get measles,
whooping-cough, croup, and mumps, will prevent her services from being
warmly appreciated in most skilled occupations. Then Mrs. Stetson
leaves us in the dark as to what these remunerative occupations are in
which mothers may earn a living in their leisure hours.

On p. 9 Mrs. Stetson says:--

 The making and managing of the great engines of modern industry, the
 threading of earth and sea in our vast systems of transportation,
 the handling of our elaborate machinery of trade, commerce, and
 government--these things could not be done so well by women in their
 present degree of economic development. This is not owing to lack of
 the essential human faculties necessary to such achievements, nor to
 any inherent disability of sex, but to the present condition of woman
 forbidding the development of this degree of economic ability.

While reducing maternal duties to a minimum, Mrs. Stetson admits no
disposition to evade them, and if she nevertheless considers that
women are hindered by no inherent disability of sex from equalling the
industrial achievements of men, it must be because she thinks the
interruption of work in early middle life is of no great importance.
The fact that whereas marriage generally stimulates a man to work more
strenuously, it lessens a woman’s power of concentrating her energies
on her profession or industrial employment, must always handicap her in
industrial competition with men.

Again, in advocating that the varied occupations of the housewife or
house servant should be exchanged for specialised employment in large
kitchens, in crêches, in the bedrooms of apartment houses, she is
really condemning women to a worse servitude than anything necessarily
imposed by domestic service. The girl who is successful with
two-year-old babies is to manage babies all day long, and for life, for
crêche experience does not qualify for admission to the kindergarten
or the high school, and marriage is to offer no release. The good cook
is to live in a restaurant kitchen, cooking meals for all hours in the
day. The professional chambermaid is expected to look forward to being
a charwoman always.

Mrs. Stetson has strange ideas about the effects of regular outside
work:--

 “The mother,” she says, “as a social servant instead of a house
 servant, will not lack in true mother duty. She will love her child
 as well, perhaps better, when she is not in hourly contact with it,
 when she goes from its life to her own life, and back from her own
 life to its life, with ever new delight and power. She can keep the
 deep thrilling joy of motherhood far fresher in her heart, far more
 vivid and open in voice and eyes and tender hands, when the hours of
 individual work give her mind another channel for her own part of the
 day. From her work, loved and honoured though it is, she will return
 to the home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure,
 cleansed of all the fret and friction and weariness that so mar it
 now.”

This all sounds very beautiful, but is it true? This is not the frame
of mind in which men generally return from their work, but perhaps
that is because they are only fathers. Nor am I acquainted with any
well-paid work that one can love and honour all day long; at best it
is physically exhausting, and when it is not it is generally routine
drudgery. Again, children have a way of choosing their own times for
being affectionate, and the half hour or so their mother has to spare
before it is their time to go to bed may be considered by them an
inopportune time for endearments. The hardened babies who have found
the day attractive enough without anybody’s hugs and kisses may perhaps
find their sentimental mother’s embraces an irritating nuisance.

I see no reason for believing that either wife, husband, or children
will be anything but worse off if the wife goes outside the home to
earn a living; nor do I know of any skilled work for educated women,
requiring daily assiduous attention for the whole day, in which
maternity, or the possibility of maternity, would not be a drawback in
the eyes of an experienced employer. It is conceivable that a married
woman with capital might be successful as an employer herself, with the
power to delegate her business supervision to others when necessary;
but I doubt whether she has ever done so with much success, except in
cases, as in France, where the wife has generally been the assistant of
her husband, or assisted by him.

But the real value of Mrs. Stetson’s argument is that by its
absurdity it brings home to us with striking force a fact of which
most middle-class people have only a sub-conscious knowledge--that,
unfortunately, in England at any rate, what Mrs. Stetson calls the
economic independence of the wife is in too many cases not an ideal,
but a reality.

Mrs. Stetson says that economic independence among human beings means
that the individual pays for what he gets, works for what he gets,
gives to the other an equivalent for what the other gives him. “As long
as what I get is obtained by what I give,” says Mrs. Stetson, “I am
economically independent.”

I do not accept this as a true definition of independence, but it is
sufficient that this represents the ideal of independence that Mrs.
Stetson desires.

Well, nearly all unmarried women in England are self-supporting.
The servant-keeping class is probably less than 12 per cent. of the
population; a considerable number of unmarried women even in these
classes support themselves. It is only in this servant-keeping class
that it has ever been true that there was no means for a woman to get
a living except by marriage. And if in the classes below women have
married in order to be relieved from working for their living, they
have found that the married woman’s life was harder, so far as work
was concerned, than that of the unmarried woman. Domestic servants,
accustomed to luxurious living and comparative ease as professional
servants, willingly consent to marry artisans on 25_s._ a week, and to
work harder than any maid-of-all-work would be asked to do. In factory
districts a considerable percentage of the married women go out to
work; and there is no greater slave to her husband than the woman who
receives no support from him.

I am far from maintaining that a married woman should not do paid work.
In all cases where a wife knows herself to be decidedly below par in
housekeeping capacity, it is a natural enough thing that she should
wish to make up for her expensiveness in this direction by earning
some money by work for which she has more aptitude. But even in this
case, unless she has some specially strong aptitude for some kind of
highly-paid casual work, she would probably be wiser to spend her
energies in trying to make herself better fitted for her position of
house mistress.

“The development of any human labour requires specialisation,”
says Mrs. Stetson. But the _direction_ of human labour requires
generalisation; and the married woman, by giving up her post of
general, will go down several grades in the army of workers. As it is,
she alone amongst skilled workers can watch the development of human
beings of both sexes at every stage; the best fitted psychological
laboratory in Germany cannot compete with the one that every married
woman has at hand in which to study human nature, if only she has the
intelligence to know it. Even the domestic servant system at its worst
has at least one merit--that it prevents us from ever being able to
shut our eyes to the great deficiencies in the education of the working
classes. Dismiss our servants to the restaurant kitchen or the bedroom
cleaners’ supply associations, and who knows what sham admiration of
the working classes, and real apathy with regard to their welfare, may
be developed?

The married woman who knows how to turn her experience to good
advantage may eventually become a person of high industrial value. In
a world where so many odd jobs which ought to be done are left undone,
because all the experienced workers are permanently employed, the
married woman with experience and judgment comes in as the right person
in the right place. She is perhaps the only skilled casual worker. If
there is no need for money, she should prove the best philanthropic
worker, her position as mistress of a house making it possible for
her to give a personal service in her own home which the official
philanthropist must often regret she is unable to offer. And when her
children really are old enough to be quite satisfactorily left to
themselves and their teachers for the working day, I see no reason
why the skilled married woman should not enter the labour market, and
undertake the direction of one or other of those big institutions
which Mrs. Stetson wishes to be universal, and which most of us regard
as in some cases necessary. It is not permissible to serve two masters.
The mother who thinks of earning her living must choose whether her
children or the earning of an income shall be her first duty. If her
children take the second place, she is worth nothing as a mother; if
they take the first place, she is worth little as an outside worker.
But in later life the two occupations need not clash. But although the
elderly married woman may prove a valuable industrial organiser in the
hotel, the residential chambers company, the hospital, the orphanage,
or the college, it will only be by having served her apprenticeship,
and taken honours as a house mistress and mother.

I have not cared to discuss Mrs. Stetson’s views on housekeeping. But
I not only see room for improvement in the domestic organisation of
working women’s homes, but feel very hopeful of the power of women in
the working classes to arrive at, at least, a partial solution of their
difficulties by co-operation in removing them. The most important
result of the co-operative movement will, I believe, be the improvement
of the conditions of home life, and the better organisation of the
housework of the overtasked wives of our artisans and clerks.

There is much truth in Mrs. Stetson’s criticisms of women’s failures in
every direction, but the remedy is better education and simpler tastes.
It is only for the sake of her thesis that Mrs. Stetson finds fault
with women or with men. She is generous in her estimate of the actual
and possible capacities of both, and is full of high-minded delusions
about them. “Woman holds her great position as the selector of the best
among competing males; woman’s beautiful work is to improve the race by
right marriage.”

And not once does it cross her mind that most women are neither
particularly attractive nor particularly good, and that they have
therefore neither the power nor the right to assume this lofty office.

She is never so childlike as when she imagines she is most daring. And
the charm of the book is its excessive femininity. What she says,
even when not absolutely absurd, may be of little importance; but her
feeling is so genuine and strong as to merit respect and attention.




THROUGH FIFTY YEARS.

THE ECONOMIC PROGRESS OF WOMEN.

_November, 1900._


Looking back fifty years for the best picture of the middle-class
woman’s outlook on life, spreading itself before her after some
startling shock of reality, none seems to me so true and so vivid as
Caroline Helstone’s vision of her own future given in “Shirley.” The
book appeared in October, 1849.

Although not so instinct with the flame of genius as “Villette,” yet
in some respects “Shirley” is Charlotte Brontë’s greatest work. Her
other novels present life only as it appeared to an exceptional woman
cut off by what was in those days called the “dependent situation” of
a governess from wholesome relations with those about her. Jane Eyre
and Lucy Snowe are the morbid products of life in institutions, and
Charlotte Brontë, to whom family life was an imperative necessity, was
fully conscious of their abnormality. In “Shirley” we have a broader,
more sympathetic, in every way saner treatment of men and women. And
the protest against the unnecessary tragedy of women’s lives comes
not from the passionate egotist of the schoolroom, but from the most
lovable, perhaps the only lovable, woman in Charlotte Brontë’s books.

 “I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy
 it, so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to
 be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes
 to many, and is becoming to me among the rest. Nobody,” she went
 on--“nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see, for the state
 in which things are, and I cannot tell, however much I puzzle over
 it, how they are to be altered for the better; but I feel there
 is something wrong somewhere. I believe single women should have
 more to do--better chances of interesting and profitable occupation
 than they possess now.... Look at the numerous families of girls in
 this neighbourhood--the Armitages, the Birtwhistles, the Sykes. The
 brothers of these girls are every one in business or in professions;
 they have something to do; their sisters have no earthly employment
 but household work and sewing, no earthly pleasure but an unprofitable
 visiting; and no hope, in all their life to come, of anything better.
 This stagnant state of things makes them decline in health: they are
 never well; and their minds and views shrink to wondrous narrowness.
 The great wish--the sole aim--of every one of them is to be married,
 but the majority will never marry; they will die as they now live.
 They scheme, they plot, they dress to ensnare husbands. The gentlemen
 turn them into ridicule: they don’t want them; they hold them very
 cheap. They say--I have heard them say it with sneering laughs many a
 time--the matrimonial market is overstocked. Fathers say so likewise,
 and are angry with their daughters when they observe their manœuvres;
 they order them to stay at home. What do they expect them to do at
 home? If you ask, they would answer, sew and cook. They expect them to
 do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly, uncomplainingly, all
 their lives long, as if they had no germs of faculties for anything
 else--a doctrine as unreasonable to hold, as it would be that the
 fathers have no faculties but for eating what their daughters cook, or
 for wearing what they sew. Could men live so themselves? Would they
 not be very weary? And, when there came no relief to their weariness,
 but only reproaches at its slightest manifestation, would not their
 weariness ferment in time to frenzy?... King of Israel, your model
 of a woman is a worthy model. But are we, in these days, brought up
 to be like her? Men of Yorkshire! do your daughters reach this royal
 standard? Can they reach it? Can you help them to reach it? Can you
 give them a field in which their faculties may be exercised and grow?
 Men of England! look at your poor girls, many of them fading around
 you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse,
 degenerating to sour old maids--envious, backbiting, wretched, because
 life is a desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive,
 by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position
 and consideration by marriage, which to celibacy is denied. Fathers!
 cannot you alter these things? Perhaps not all at once; but consider
 the matter well when it is brought before you, receive it as a theme
 worthy of thought; do not dismiss it with an idle jest or an unmanly
 insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters and not to blush
 for them--then seek for them an interest and an occupation which
 shall raise them above the flirt, the manœuvrer, the mischief-making
 tale-bearer. Keep your girls’ minds narrow and fettered--they will
 still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you. Cultivate
 them, give them scope and work--they will be your gayest companions in
 health, your tenderest nurses in sickness, your most faithful prop in
 age.”

And Mary Taylor--Rose Yorke in “Shirley”--added, “Make us efficient
workers, able to earn our living in order that we may be good, useful,
healthy, self-respecting women.”

How far have we travelled in these fifty years towards Mary Taylor’s
ideal? How far is it accepted as a right one? Is it now considered a
sufficiently ambitious one?

There is no doubt that we have travelled much nearer to it than anyone
in 1850 would have foreseen, and further than many pioneers at that
period would have desired.

We may safely assert that no middle-class woman of average
intelligence, educated in the high schools established during the
last twenty-five years, is unable to earn a living if she chooses to
do so. And one very important change has taken place. Whereas thirty
years ago it was the rule for many parents, although with little hope
of bequeathing an income to their daughters, to support them at home
in expectation of their marriage, this lack of foresight is becoming
rare. Our schools are no longer staffed by women who have begun their
work in life driven to it by necessity or disappointment. More and
more it is being recognised by parents that girls should be fitted to
be self-supporting; and the tendency among the girls themselves is
to concentrate their energies on the profession they take up, and to
regard marriage as a possibility which may some day call them away
from the path they are pursuing, but which should not be allowed to
interfere with their plans in the meantime.

At the period of life, then, when there is the most opportunity of
marriage there is now the least excuse for the woman who marries
merely to obtain a livelihood. The economic advance has at least been
sufficient to enable women to preserve their self-respect.

Next it must be admitted that the work which educated women are paid to
do is in the main useful and satisfying work. They no longer think of
supporting themselves by acting as useful companions to useless women;
nor do they have to spend their time in imperfectly imparting valueless
facts in the schoolroom. The teaching and nursing professions, which
include more educated women in their ranks than any other, have made
great advances. In both every worker who wishes to be efficient can
make herself so, and while youth and health last those occupations are
absorbing enough in themselves to be worth living for.

At the same time, the women who succeed in either of these callings
must be above the average in ability. The merely average girl must
turn to some occupation in which more people are wanted, but for which
less exceptional skill is required. Generally she looks for it in one
of two directions: she either becomes a clerk or some kind of domestic
help. Failing marriage, the latter occupation offers chances, but
not certainties, of making warm friends, and having abiding human
interests. But clerical work in the case of the average woman can
rarely be in itself satisfying; it is a means, not an end.

And here lies the great difference between men and women in the labour
market. All that the average man demands is that his work should be
honest and remunerative. It need not be interesting, or elevating,
or heroic. Most women, on the other hand, who look forward to a long
working career must have an occupation to which they can give both
heart and mind. The reason is simple. The woman is living an isolated
life; unless her work involves the exercise of what may be termed her
maternal faculties, she is living an unnatural life. Men, on the other
hand, whatever be their employment, are generally husbands and fathers.
What they earn is of more importance than what they do.

In measuring women’s economic advance this need for a human interest in
their work must never be forgotten. Of any occupation it must be asked,
What does it offer to women when the novelty has worn off, and they
realise that for twenty or thirty years more nearly all their time must
be given to it?

Another fact, too, must be remembered--that although high pay may
compensate for uninteresting work, a woman will never be worth high
pay if the work does not interest her. And we find, therefore, the
paradoxical result that, generally speaking, the women who earn the
highest incomes are the women who have chosen their work for the work’s
sake.

Taking these points into consideration, I am inclined to think that we
have made sufficient economic progress to be “good, useful, healthy
and self-respecting” up to the age of thirty. But the great mass of
middle-class women, if fated to earn their living as middle-aged
spinsters, would, I am afraid, be unable to earn an income sufficient
to keep either their utility or their health up to the standard.

But optimists may fairly urge that the majority will not be called
upon to go through this ordeal. The average woman marries; it is the
exceptionally intellectual or the exceptionally feeble-minded who do
not. The latter will be looked after by society, and the former can
hold her own.

That is true to some extent. But while I think we have made great
strides in the right direction, I think we have some serious truths to
face. We are constantly congratulating ourselves that our middle-aged
spinsters have nothing in common with the old maid of the past,
while we assume that the next half-century will see a still greater
exaltation of the maiden lady. I doubt it very much, unless much more
thought and effort are given to making the duller girls industrially
competent.

Our pioneers were full of enthusiasm in their journey to the promised
land where sex barriers should be removed and sex prejudices die away.
Those of us who passed through the gates which they opened for us were
(I am afraid it must be admitted) often unpopular among those we left
behind and were delighted with the novelty of the country before us.
The next generation are coming into the field under new conditions.
To begin with, it is realised that work is work; next, that economic
liberty is only obtained by the sacrifice of personal freedom; that
there is nothing very glorious in doing work that any average man can
do as well, now that we are no longer told we cannot do it. The glamour
of economic independence has faded, although the necessity for it is
greater than ever. Further, although it used to be true that a smaller
proportion of the girls who distinguished themselves most at school
and at college married than was the case among the girls in the lower
forms, this no longer holds good. Now that all girls, as a matter of
course, are taught Latin and mathematics, they are no longer regarded
as necessarily disagreeable in consequence; nor is inability to do
their school work considered a merit. Large numbers of middle-class
women must remain unmarried, but there seem to me to be many signs that
it is no longer the Sixth Form girl, but her duller schoolfellow, who
must be trained to make her way alone in the world.

And this after all means progress for the race.




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