WOMEN'S WORK.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13713, 21 April 1910, Page 6

WOMEN'S WORK.

It is a heavy indictment that the Balti-more-Ohio Railway Company brings against women workers. The management of this concern, in the country that prides itself on giving the greatest scope- to women's abilities, has found that .its women employees do thirty per cent, less work than men, and that they lack initiative, and are incapable of learning from experience. One may anticipato, with confidence that tftis will/cause a hubbub in America. Few people realise the • extent to which w<-men in that country havo invaded spheres of activity that puce were occupied solely by men. The census, of 1900 revealed, among other interesting facts, that there were five women pilots in the United States, forty-five railway engineers and firemen, twenty-sis switchmen, yardmen and flagmen, and thirty-one brakemen, eight boilerraakersj and 185 blacksmiths. There is hardly a .profession or a branch of industry or commerce in which women have not.gained a footing. Women build railways (and manage them), design houses, and control shipping lines. Mrs.Hetty Green, the septuagenarian millionairess, who keeps all the threads of.her complicated business affairs in her own hands, and can drive a bargain with any man in America, is a living proof that a woman can possess supremo business capacity. The same tendency is to be seen in England, where the Patent Office records show women coming forward as the inventors of "appliances in railway engineering, wireless telegraphy, and other lines of activity in which one would think man would have the field to himself. But the- work of the woman specialist is not affected by the indictment so much as that of the rank and file of . women workers, and especially those who work in offices. The factory hand hardly oomes into the discussion, as her work is to a laxtge extent mechanical Iα no- country have women invaded business offices so much as in America, and there are eoine employers who are emphatic in their preference for women clerks over men. In tho case of women who are not called qn to shoulder any great responsibility, it is easy to see the reasons for preference. Women can be obtained for. less wagps than men require. They are neater than men (a great matter in an office) ; they ore often more mentally alert, more methodical, and more, attentive to their duties; and they are of course more- sober. , But " when responsibility increases, when it comes to dealing with a pressure of work demanding coolness end the constant exercise of. initiative, tho man is tho more efficient worker. Many American women, -will so doubt feel hurt at the

decision of the Baltimore-Ohio Company, but there is really no reason •why they should, any more than a man should be if he were told he could not look after a house and three or. , four children as well as a woman. Half a century or less of "emancipation" cannot change human nature. All the successes in nil the universities of the world do not alter the fact that woman was, primarily meant for domestic life. A change in social conditions has made it necessary for many women to go jnto the world end compete with men, .but that does not prove that women arc the equals of men in all or even many kinds of work.