MARRIAGE AS A TRADE.

Northland Age, Volume VI, Issue 40, 30 May 1910, Page 2

MARRIAGE AS A TRADE.

THE VIEWS OF MISS CECILY HAMILTON. The law that first advances toward matrimony must come from the sde of the man is, as was only to be expected, broken, and broken every day ; sometimes directly, but far more often indirectly. The woman bent on matrimony is constantly on the alert to evade its workings, conscious that in her attempts to do so -»she can nearly always count on the ready, if unspoken, co-operation of her sisters. This statement is, I know, in flat contravention of the firmly-rooted masculine belief that one woman regards another as an enemy to be depreciated consistently in masculine eyes, and that women spend their lives in one long struggle to gratify an uncontrollable desire for admiration at each other’s expense. It is because women, consciously or unconsciously, recognise the commercial nature of the undertaking that they interest themselves so strangely in the business of matchmaking, other than their own.

Women in general recognise the economic necessity of marriage for each other, and in a spirit of instinctive comradeship seek to forward it by every means in their power. There must be something extraordinary and unnaturally contemptible about a woman who, her own bargain made and means of livelihood secured, will not help another to secure hers ; and it is that motive, and not a rapturous content in their own unclouded destiny, not an unhesitating conviction that their lot has fallen in a fair ground, which makes of so many married women industrious and conhrmed matchmakers.

What has been termed the huge conspiracy of married women is, in fact, nothing but a huge tradeunion, whose members recognise the right of others to their bread. To my mind, one of the best proofs of the reality of this spirit of unconconscious trade-unionism among women is the existence of that other feminine conspiracy of silence which surrounds the man at whom a woman, for purely mercenary reasons,, is making a "dead set." In such a case, the only women who will interfere and warn the intended victim will be his own relatives —a mother or a sister; others, while under no delusions as to the interested nature of the motives by which the pursuer is actuated, will hold their tongues, and even go so far as to offer facilities for the chase.

They realise that their fellow has a right to her chance —that she must follow her trade as best she can, and would be more dream of giving her away than the average decent workman would dream of going to an employer and Informing him that one of his mates was not. up to his job, and should, therefore, be discharged. "—From "Marriage as a Trade," by Cicely Hamilton.