FEMALE COMPETITION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3257, 9 December 1881, Page 4

FEMALE COMPETITION.

How in course of time we are going to find occupation for our female population -without injuring many of the modes of labor by which the opposite sex obtain a livelihood is becoming every day a problem more exciting and complicated at Home. There is no doubt that year by year women are entering into stronger competition with men in their efforts to obtain an independent living, and that it is becoming as common amongst the females residing in this island to learn a trade or profession as is at present the case in France. The fact, indeed, that the population of England comprises a much larger proportion of women than men goes far to point to a state of affairs not far distant when female applicants for work will, like Banquo's ghost, at last " push us from our stools." At the present time there is a glut in the female labor market. If one advertises for a girl to fill the least lucrative post, one will at least receive visits or letters from a couple of hundred persons of all ages desirous of obtaining the situation. This was the direct cause of a " scene" which occurred the other day in Fleetstreet, where, in reply to a simple written announcement posted on tho door of an office of one of the courts there, at least five hundred girls and women crowded tho navrow alley and blocked up a part of the thoroughfare—all waiting for an interview with the " gent" who stood in need of an office-cleaner.