SUPREMACY OF SPINSTERS.

Evening Star, Issue 15554, 25 July 1914, Page 1

SUPREMACY OF SPINSTERS.

COUNTY COUNCIL PHILOSOPHY. It is an age of every woman's career, but hitherto there has been small distinction of persons. The countess may go behind the counter. The dairymaid may turn into a danseuse. Suddenly, however, by a stroke of metropolitan marie, the spinster triumphs over the wife. You may read of it in ' The Times.' The Vatican has spoken, or, in other wards, the County Council, and its decree is about. to go forth. It will employ no married woman—none but the female bachelor need apply. All others are excommunicated. No longer are that august body's "lady assistant medical officers," or, for _ the matter of that, its lady assistant sanitary charwomen, to get manied. Infallibility forbids. Once renegades from sppin*terhood they receive notice to quit, as may be tseen from the suggestive debate on Dr Scott Lidgett's adverse amendment. It was a, discursive debate— They argued high, they argued low, They also argued round about them —or, rather, very much round about th« problem. Every 'faculty of the single ami the double state was analysed. Indeed, some qualities peculiar to neither were pressed. Butt in vain did the pugnacious pro-married argue that experience, endow ment, "motherly instinct.," and tha rest wore half-monopolies, that "children lik* them," and so forth. No amount of statistical sentiment would meet the sturdy mid-Victorian commen sense of the ma jority. So far how can one disagree. Tha woman's profession is—just to be a woman. The woman's place is rightfully the Home (with the biggest "BE" in Europe). All this—and much more bound up with itcommends itself. No woman should be a neutral man or sexless scientist—that is flat Directly the Homo calls her {even if it be a cellar with five children), ahe retires from the public gaze. Is she not a wife arid a mother? Who would quarrel with attitude? The only fault perhaps is; that it ia not wholly to the point. . For, as happens often, there seems to have .been some confusion of issues—of the particular issue as to whether marriage is any impediment ■to ability, and of this larger issue as to whether a woman's employment injures her home. What may be quarrelled with is that in emphasising the latter aspect the council would seem to have travelled beyond its province, which is not to legislate, but to administer. And, indeed, even here it fails in a width of view. For the bachelor woman also frequently has her own home duties, from which, indeed, sometimes she runs away. Should a woman, unless under exceptions, undertake strenuous vocations afc all? Thi* problem really underlies the other, but it has nothing to do with a case which presupposes and praises professions for women. The council is not the community's guide and philosopher, nor even always its friend. Let us clear our minds. If women are to be so employed, are they a jot worse for being married, and if they are. is not the council putting itself into a situation absurd enough to have rej6ico<l the hearts) of Gilbert and Sullivan! For presumably it will be admitted that effective service .should be continuous, that intermittenco is a disadvantage.