WIVES WHO EARN

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 184, 2 May 1929, Page 17

WIVES WHO EARN

SOME ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM A TOPICAL DISCUSSION The New York “Literary Digest,” a magazine which appears to take a keen interest in the vexed question of married women’s employment, recently republished paragraphs from two articles by English women writers dealing with the same subject. The first of these, by Miss May Edginton, sympathised on the whole with the married woman worker, but the second, by Miss Ethel Mannin, described the wife who works for pay as an enemy of society. Miss Manuin’s antagonism resolves itself into three main contentions (comments Vera Brittain in the “Manchester Guardian”). First, that the woman who earns money when her husband could afford to support her is an anti-social being. Secondly, that she is anti-social because “every married woman in a job which she does not need for the necessities of life is keeping out, or making it difficult for them to secure, some man or unsupported girl or woman.” Thirdly, that some vast tribunal should, therefore, “comb out” those thousands of wage-earning women who are working for “pinmoney” or to give their children “an education above their social station in life.” Women, it is suggested, who do not realise the truth of these propositions are completely lacking in social and economic sense. Since Miss Mannin’s arguments are commonly put forward, not only in the three religious journals also quoted by the “Literary Digest,” but also by every opponent of married women’s work, it is perhaps worth while to remind readers in this country of certain other “social and economic” aspects of the position which appear to have escaped notice. Of recent years there has been an overwhelming tendency—inevitable in a time of economic instability—to regard various institutions and occupations, not in the light of the objects for which they were originated and organised, but purely as sources of employment for seekers after work. The average individual, suddenly asked to explain the purposes of a school, a hospital, and a Civil Service, would probably reply that the first exists in order to educate children for life and careers by the best experts obtainable, that the second sets out to cure sick persons by specialists who have trained themselves with precisely that object in view, and that the third is an organisation, for managing, the nation’s affairs aj efficiently as possible. The purposes of these institutions are naturally impaired when the test of the individual who seeks employment from them is not his qualifications, but the degree to which his private circumstances lead him to require the job. Needs and Abilities. It is, indeed, doubtful whether any industry or profession can long run smoothly on such a basis, or any country maintain its economic, position whose workers are chosen for their needs rather than for their abilities. The principle, however, is clear enough, but if it is to be regarded as a solution of our social problems it ought to be universally applied. Not only the wife whose husband can support her, but every employed man or woman with an income derived from other sources than work should merit the opprobrious criticism, “anti-social.” The promising young heir to a title and a fortune should abandon his agreeable post in the Foreign Office to the village schoolmasters’ son; the hospital surgeon who has married the rich manufacturer’s daughter should at once give place to the less capable but far more needy father of a large family. The very general belief that the working wife must be held responsible for the unemployment of some “unsupported girl or woman” is an undue simplification of a many-sided economic problem. There is real ground for this belief only in those ‘‘watertight” professions, such as teaching and the Civil Service, where the supply of workers exceeds the demand, and where, the qualifications for the lowerpaid posts being accessible to any average intelligence, one woman is easily replaced by another. In more constructive and independent forms of occupation, the theory is manifestly groundless. Every woman who starts a school, opens a shop, organises a new department in a large firm, or edits the magazine page of a hitherto purely “news” journal, obviously creates for both men and women a number of jobs with infinite possibilities of expansion. But even in the “watertight” professions, a more than superficial examination reveals the fact that the unemployment of some women is for all women a lesser evil than their universal resignation on marriage. The worst features of women’s employment—poor training, monotonous work, low pay and lack of promotion—are directly traceable to the general assumption that women are temporary workers. Every woman who abandons her post on marriage helps to keep her spinster colleague at the bottom of the wage-market. Throughout industry and the professions, tiie unmarried pay in poverty and lack of opportunity for the economic parasitism of the married. Miss Mannin may well use her own social and economic sense in deciding which is worst, the unemployment of a few women whose numbers decrease as national prosperity returns, or the perpetuation—which the automatic withdrawal of all wives from the wage-market would mean —of the evils attendant on unskilled and temporary work for all money-earning women for all time?

“The Rich Man in His Castle.” In conclusion, we have surely outgrown the self-imposed shackles of arbitrary “social stations.” The nineteenth century Sunday-school child may have piously chanted the one abominable verse in a charming hymn: The rich man in his castle, The poor, man at his gate, God made them high and lowly, And ordered their estate, but his adult successor of tljfi twentieth believes that, in the words of Swinburne, Unto each man his handiwork, unto each his crown The just Pate gives. If Miss Mannin is logical she would doubtless like to see the abolition of all scholarships enabling elementary school children to go to public schools, or grammar schoolboys and high school-girls to complete their education at the university, But neither she nor any other would-be restrictor of women’s freedom is entitled to dictate to any family the standard of living and achievement at which it should aim. How, indeed, shall civilisation advance except by an increase in the number of the civilised? And how shall the civilised increase in numbers if here and there the less privileged members of the community do not push out beyond their “social station”? Should a shop-assistant father and a typist mother desire to send their lifted son to public school and university, it is not in the interests of society to deny them their ambition by compelling the wageearning wife to relinquish her contribution to his education. Not. a few men and women owe, like Mr. Bernard Shaw, their chances of cultivating a genius for which mankind is perpetually in debt to the gallant economic support of a mother. If money-making wives do indeed assist in raising the intellectual and social status of their children, we should do well, instead of condemning, to wish them a steady increase in their numbers and opportunities.—Vera Brittain.