SUPERFLUOUS WOWEN.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 111, 3 February 1908, Page 3

SUPERFLUOUS WOWEN.

r O.v;.v»<Si,v < ■ ••!.•<•»•• ' A philosophical medical man ' has been suggesting that the' Woinan's Movement is dul, to tho <superfluous' women,/of whoin 'the ■ Anglo,-Shxon race alonp, possa^es'thrce''mil r lion. Tho superfluous*woman cannot.be'de? fined right: off .as the'ohb'who is'destined to remain unmarried till doath conies .to 'her roliof. "Tho superfluous; lyoriian :is.a"statisti-. cal'abstraction, whoso, nature; is. arrived at-'by, the following process':—Count all the males in a community, 'count ' also! the" females f' if the, latter total;is:th® ;: larg»,t.raK£w!(jfe'ftr6m 'it 'tho former, and • call the remain'dbr.-' the superfluous women.' If the males are in ex? cess, do not subtract-from their total that of tho women, and do not . call the remainder the' superfluous men, because it might' hurt their feelings.v ' ■' The I strange thing about, this deficiency 'of men is its occurrence at all, seeing that there is a remarkablo superfluity,of. baby boys! In Australia, there are'los. boys b'orn 'to 100 girls. . In Scotland and Ireland the proportion is more -nearly.'lo6 to. 100, .while.in ling: land .arid Wales .it is .104 to: 100. . If'the'two sexes preserved through . life ;their proportions : 'at birth ■ the Anglo-Saxon , race; would show ,a" : larger number of' superfluous .'. men than it does.'of -,women.' ■ There tempting ma'zo of speculation if we'jbegih'.to ask ourselves how society' woiild ; have shaped itself ■.with a ■permanent superfluity ...of. males. Woman would: haye ; acquired in "fact, that queenly..position,'which' is . bestowed on . her by those of moonbeams who ' write our fiction. ' In the feudal'days thoiknightly baron; would; have given his '.thrallsto : : the • ladies of the. castlo to do tho plain, cooking and laundry work, to take tho babies out: for an airing without the invaluable assistance of, tho collapsible perambulator,, and to discharge all tho duties', of- kitchen wenches as kitchen knaves.- . The result would have been "that to r day we should-have had all! the harder part, of domestic service undertaken by the superfluous men. Naturally., mostVof tho communication between these, serving mon and their, employers would be'/; managed through tho master of the house,'who:: would have .-developed, .-into 1 ." quite • a dom[esticated character of the sort called in America the "kitchen colonel." From tho. class, employing servants this tone of masculine, domestication would have spread .through-the'i'hole community. : . ' ■' Nature has long been striving in her.-pwn way to'right the wrongs brought-. aboilt;" by the delicacy of the mafo infant.. -She gim us an extra boy in every .score to l;c'ep- : the balance of the: sexes more nearly''right] ; but wo squander'this surplus, and morp ; -:i,ii. the mad. waste of infant life that we- Etill" tolerate. In some parts of.-.tho ; world: tjhe.:-diffi-culty of bearing the boy. baby-haV-grpwij; to 1 such a'.point, that .-Nature; has-had' t'o_ ,: .help masculinity even more liberally than-with lis. > In>Greece 112 iboys are born for '"100. ->girls; ' In view of this fact, the profuse shedding'of valuable Greek maspnlirie -blood round ihe 1 walls, of Troy over the fair but frail-Helen begins to look a more highly reprehensible " proceeding than ever. If the, Greek princes [ had only known how to collect statistics in ! a businesslike way, they > would havoi found '. that in: their part of tho world tho male-sex > was, engaged m a sort of forlorn lippo of a J struggle to keep up with the female, 1 a strugglo in which 12 baby boys out of 112 1. had to bite- tho dust. The-absurdity ,of . the 1 prolonged Troy episode would have been, ap- > parent before it was'entered upon. /Though s where would'the delighted band of Homerii 7. students have been without their Iliad? -

But tho practical question of the,.presem time is—Can this present infantile ; mortalit;

be so considerably . reduced, . especially amongst malos, as to make tho numbers of tho two sexes equal? And.if they-can, will it inako any serious difference to -'thai social conditions of civilised races? It will not cause bachelors to ; marry, so it will leave un-altered-the number of- women who remain unmarried because these timid men-eschew the adventure. Nor will it provide the women called superfluous with matci, because many of theso elect to live their lives unmarried. . ■ One of the most powerful forces helping to .uplift humanity is to bo recognised in tho natural affection of men for their kinswompn by which fathers and brothers wore, led to* desire for daughters and. sisters some measure of free will by which they could leave marriage alone unless offered It is not to be denied that ma!ny unmarried women would be happier in the sort of I marriage/ But on the other narid they

would 1)0 unhappier in tho wrong sort. The idea, then, that tho superfluous women could, bo rescued from a good 1 deal of unnecessary misery by marriage involves a big fallacy— that of assuming that any marriage will answer tho purpose. The very word "superfluous" involvos, too, a fallacy like that running through a lot of the Socialistic philosophy, when it is assumed that in civilised countries the birth of each child is making it harder for every other child. That i 3 true in -a hidebound community of savages like the Australian' natives, depending upon a limited'food supply. But in progressive nations one man does not take the bread out of another's mouth, as the saying is, but lie makes more work for him and. performs more work for him. So, too, in a savage community an unmarried woman may be a social burden and therefore superfluous. But in civilised progressive countries tho woman who chooses to remain unmarried because she cannot realise her own ideals of the married state does rendor social service which makes the assertion of hor superfluity .unjust and entirely, misleading.—"The Ago."