WOMAN AND LABOUR.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1144, 3 June 1911, Page 11

WOMAN AND LABOUR.

THE CAUSE OF THE MOVEMENT. GREAT BOOK REVIEWED. [Bi* Imogen.] In her now hook, "Woman and Xabour," Olive Schreiner, in discussing tho woman's labour movement of to-day, says that it is, in its ultimate- essence, an endeavour on the part of a section of the rnco to savo itself from inactivity and degeneration, and this, even nt tho immediate cost of most heavy loss in material comfort and ease to the individuals comSosing it. The male labour movement is, irectly and in tho first place, material; and, or at least superficially, moro or less self-seeking, though its ultimate reaction on society by saving the poorer

members from degradation and dependency and !.wint;v is. undoubtedly wholly ■■ social, and absolutely .essenlial for the health and continued development of the race. ]n the woman's labour movement of our day, which has essentially taken its riseanionj women of the more cultured anil wealthy clashes, and which consists mainly in' a demand to have the doors leading to professional, political, and higiuyBicilled labour thrown open to them, the ultimate end can only t© attained at tha cost of:more or less intense, immediate, and porsonal suffering and renunciation, though eventually, if brought to a satisfactory conclusion, it will undoubtedly tend to the material and physical ' wellbeing of woman herself, as well as to that of her inalo companions and descendants. The coming' half-centurv will,be a time of peculiar strain, as mankind seeks rapidly td adjust moral ideas and social relationships, and the general ordering of life, to the new and continually changing material'conditions. If these two great movements of our age, bavins this as their object, can he brought into close harmony and co-operation, the readjustment will be the sooner and moro painlessly accomplished but for the moment, the two movements—alike in their origin, and alike in many of their methods of procedure—remain distinct. Working for the Coming Generations. It is this fact—the consciousness on the part of tho women taking their share in the woman's movement of our age, that their, efforts, are not, and-cannot be, of immediate advantage to themselves, but that, they almost of necessity and immediately lead to loss and renunciation— which gives to this movement its' very peculiar tone, setting it /ipart from the large mass of economic movements, placing it rather in a line with thoso vast religious developments which, at tho interval of ages, have swept across humanity, irresistibly modifying and reorganising it. It is this profound hidden conviction which removes'from the sphere of tho ridiculous tho attitude of even the feeblest Y° n , lan who waves her poor little Woman s Eights" {lag on the edge of the platform, and which causes us to forgive even the passionate denunciations, not always wisely thought out, in which she would represent the sufferings and evils of woman's conditions, as wrongs intentionally indicted upon her, where they.arc merely tho inevitable results of ages of social movement. '['ho profound truth is that • the continued development of tho human ruoe on earth—a development which, as the old myths and'dreams of a narrow personal Heaven fade from our view, becomes increasingly, for many of, us, tho spiritual hope by the light of which wc continue to live—a development whicli we hope shall make the humanity of a distant future as much higher in . intellectual power and wider in social sympathy than the highest human units of to-day, as that is higher than tho first primeval ancestor who, with nuivering limb, strove to walk upright and shape his lips to the expression of a i word—is possible onlv if the male and female halves of humanity progress together, expanding side by side in the future, as they have done in the past. Even this truth, it is possible, few women have exactly and logically grasped. Nature the Umpire, The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate and, at t<ues, almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and social duties, while, at another, it makes itself felt as a determined effort after self-culture; that, in one land, it embodies itself mainly in a resolute endeavour to enlarge tho sphere of remunerative labour for women, while, in another, it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to reorganise the personal relation of tho sexes; that in ono individual it manifests itself as a passionate and sometimes noisy struggle for liberty of personal action, while, in another, it is being fought out silently in the depth of 4he individual consciousness (that primal Ibattlo-ground, in ivhich all questions of reform and human advance must ultimately bo fought and decided), all this diversity;, and tho fact that tho average woman is entirely concerned in labour in her own little field, shows, not the weakness, but the strength of tho movement which, taken as a whole, is a movement steady and persistent in ono direction—the direction of increased activity and culture. There is no need to legislate that women should bo restricted in her choice of fields of labour, for the organic incapacity of tho individual, if it exists, will legislate far more powerfully than any artificial, legal, or social obstruction caii do. And it may be that the one individual in ten thousand who selects a field not generally sotight'by his fellows will-enrich human-

ity by the result of an especial genius, allowing all to start from the one point in the world of intellectual culture and labour, with our ancient Mother Nature sitting as umpire, distributing the prizes and scattering from the lists the incompetents, is all wo demand; but wo demand it determinedly. Throw the puppy into tho water. If it swims, well; but do not tie a rope round its throat and weight it with a brick, and then assort its incapacity to keep afloat. Acting in us and through us, Nature,, we know, will mercilessly exposo to us our deficiencies in the field"of human toil, and reveal to us our powers. , ~ It is not man, as man, who opposes Iho attempt of woman to readjust herself io the new conditions of life; that opposition arises, perhaps more often, from tho retrogressive members of her own sex. Ami it is a fact which will.surprise no one who

has studied the conditions of modern life, that, among the works of modern literature in all European languages, which most powerfully advocate the entrance of woman into, the new fields of labour, and which most uncompromisingly demand for her the widest training and freedom of action, and which most passionately seek for the breaking-down of all artificial lines which sever woman irom man, many of the ablest and most uncompromising are the works of males.