SHOULD A WOMAN ENGAGE IN BUSINESS.

New Zealand Mail, 20 August 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

SHOULD A WOMAN ENGAGE IN BUSINESS.

SHOULD SHE HELP TO SUPPORT HE Li HUSBAND AND CHILDREN.

VARIOUS VIEWS

Lucy Underwood McCann says

, Oi course a woman can be as successful iu business as a man. but slie must learn it, and the sooner she learns to do business as a man the sooner will she be just as successful.

OPPOSITION PHYSICIAN,: “Give the boy a homeopathic pill and reduce his vigour.” GOVERNMENT DOCTOR : "Nonsense, let him have another golden dose from London, the young fellow wants feeding up, and plenty of it."

Mr Marshall Woodworth says:

I hold that the husband is entitled to sue for support. Mutual duties, responsibilities and cares constitute the marriage union. Marriage is a civil contract. If the wife is entitled to sue for maintenance or divorce on the ground of non-sup-port. tlio husband, vice versa, should be entitled to the same privilege. There is no logical reason why he should not in these days of co-education, when the intellectual woman is the rule and not the exception. Women, with great credit +o themselves, occupy positions of importance in the world side by side with men. Whether or not a man would so crush, his innate feelings of gallantry as to sue for maintenance is a purely personal matter and in no way affects the legal right of the husband to do so.

•V SUCCESSFUL LADY PRACTITIONER.

Dr. E. E. McLean declares: —I believe that a woman can be as successful in business as a man. She is satisfied with smaller beginnings. She is saving, and small profits suffice for her until she can get her head above water.

But there is no denying that business is a hard school for most women, especially so if a woman wants to get rich quickly. Women must not expect to get money without working hard for it. A woman hasn’t the chances of moneymaking a man has. She isn't around among men; she doesn’t hear of the financial opportunities talked-of day bv day in the great business centres. Suppose she has saved up a few hundred dollars and wants to invest in stocks. She

doesn't know how to go about it. She : s timid about venturing into the region where man rules supreme. This is foolish, and she will soon learn that a woman can get along in any office if she conducts herself properly and is business-like. Sha will learn to look out for the sharpers; for woman’s intuition is quick and in the business world it will be of incalculable help to her. She arrives at conclusions instantly and sees motives that a man will findTiut only after a course of reasoning and perhaps bitter ex])erience. I am able to manage my affairs better than any •man could manage them. When a man gets prosperous he puts in a manager here, a head clerk there- and a typewriter to attend to his affairs. If I had other people do my business for mo I most likely wouldn’t have had anv business to do now. It is the dutv of every

woman, 1 believe, to learn to -take care oi iier own lousiness aifairs.

A DIFFERENT VIEW. Airs. Ernestine Kreling:—l hold that woman is not man s equal in business. Women have not yet adjusted themselves to their netv environment. The tradition of the race places them at home and they enter the to them unknown business world apologetically. For centuries they have been Kept in the background to cultivate the gentler virtues. It is hard for them to fight, to balance one business proposition with another, to keep sentiment in the background, to never show their emotions—those emotions that have been, their heritage for generations.

A woman guards her own interests, watches over the growth of her business and mothers it just as she would a child She is cautious about large investments and is a hard loser. No we are not men’s equals in business. •A WOMAN OF COURAGE. .’nlia W. G. Carroll:—Of course I think woman in business is a success! It has been both my experience and my observation. that, women who apply themselves earnestly make money, hut it i s not on the financial side that they oftenest fall or suffer loss. It i s on the side of personal sacrifice. How many women come into my shop, saying. "Oh, how delightful to be in business and to have a real definite interest in life and something to occupy one s time, with a real result at tlie end of each dav or week’” My serious views on "Women and Business -f worth listening to. are soon told, but I must add the opinion of a successful man. whose views on business must be of more value than mine; for though 1 am grateful to my customers for the success that I am indebted to them for I cannot but give the superiority on com-

mercial matters to, the other sex, even tnouv-.' necessity demands that some of us •must do for ourselves. b The successrul commercial man is Usu aiiy able (so 1 am told, at lease; to tak" a uroad, comprehensive v.ew, wmen, however, dues not allow nanlice details to escape. If he sells blankets, he buys sheep wholesale, clips the fleece, refinethe wool, and manufactures ’if mm blankets. W When the blanket is ready to seli \ UUr man knows not only what, it has cost bun to make it, but what percentage of’ that cost is represented by raw wool, how milch bv the cost of the labour, how much bv the proportionate share of his rent, heat ■mhe, interest on his investment', etc • how much for dye, for wear and tear and for the thousand and one other details that go to swell his expense account. Women, on the other hand, business women who succeed, usually do so because of their inventive faculties, imagination and adaptability. They are able to turn them to sufficient account to be able to pay less attention to the methods which bring success to men. What Francis Bellamy says:—The partnership of marriage is often a failure because the husband dees not succeed in business. It is a real failure, although perhaps not always a dismal failure. The affection stays, all the obligations are met, anil there may continue a loving serenity! Nevertheless the ghost of failure is shut up with the two people who are bound together and who never dream of censing to love. For when hopes are declining because the promise of youth has not •met its opportunity, or because a misfit seems to clothe every endeavour, two ■ übitious partners in marriage cannot be thoroughly happy. The young man makes his great essays in life: the young woman who lias t’ed her fa : th in him looks on. encourages and spurs. But she can do little more than that. If she sees him constantly gaining gi cund, then gratification and complacency are at the bottom of her conscious-

ness, and ease of life keeps her face unarming. It is not because he is able to,,gave her more things, thougfi sueii things..may be one-fourth of life, but because he brings true her dreams of T® 11 *-■ because he opens the door of life wider and she shares his sense of power.

But if affairs go the other way, if the man fails to grasp here and to'combine there or df his all-together cannot get its place, then begins for them both, and tor her m particular, an ordeal of adjustment to a less hopeful outlook on the future. Here is a deadening of hopes, a o.ving of longings', which is written on the faces oi multitudes of women who smile and yet cannot smile it off. The pathos of this situation raises a practical question. Is the situation unalterable? If the .ran for reasons beyond help, fails habltraily m ms undertakings, is there any haim to love or to loyalty for the woman to acknowledge the fact openly and early to herself? From such an honest admisSl ° ci V 3 f an * a 'k° a new view of their united fortunes.

W hat can she do? The clr nces are even that she may have in heiself that talent ior succeeding which her husband iacKs. In other words, the faniily should be exploited for success, as a business nim would be amid similar circumstances. In a business concern that memler come® to the front who by native icioe can make the business flourishing. The woman sometimes is this effectual member of the 'matrimonial firm. It is ivekv if she finds it out in time and determines to take up the problem rationa , as L «er own, undeterred bv false pride or by foolish fondness. But a wife usually waits too long lielore she acknowledges the nrobabilitv of her husband s eventual failure. She waits until her own day for doing things is past, or rntil she is called upon to do. but is not able to do, the creative Ivind of work which she might have done

five or teu years earlier. Sentimentality ior a vanished expectation has narrowed her idea of hersell. She has let discouragement eat out her heart—that essence of discouragement which is distilled through another’s loss of spirit. flow much simpler it would have been had she shifted the responsibility of creative work to her own shoulders as soon as there was reason to suspect that she was fitted to bear it the better and more lightly of the two. MRS RUSSELL SAGE’S OPINIONS. Woman, when designed, by her Creator, was never intended for business. God made her to be a homemaker and homekeeper, not a wage earner. She may take up business life from necessity, but never iroin choice. All a woman’s early training tends to lit. her for wifehood and motherhood, through which qualities she becomes the home influence, but in no ease is she trained for financial and commeicial life. Therefore, if from unforseen circumstances she is thrown out into the world to earn her livelihood, she is seriously handicapped. The self-abnegation and trustfulness of woman are great stumbling blocks in her path to financial success, and it has always seemed a pity to me that men should lose the better part of woman in what she is trying to do outside of her natural functions.

In saying this T do not want to be misunderstood. T do mot belittle woman’s capabilities, for T am firmly convinced that, notwithstanding: her many disadvantages when she is put to it she is man's ecpicl, if not his superior. Were a woman trained as a man is, she could easily take her stand side hv side with him in the financial and commercial world, but T prav I vnav he spared that sight.

The hotter part of ■voman. as God made her, is so essentially feminine and dependent that it grieves <me to see the growing tendency of the age towards wet coming her into the arena of busines-

will. If she must go into business life, if this is to be the future of the coming woman, then it is the duty of an others and fathers to train her for such a life, us they train her brothers.

| Not so many years ago actors and acj tresses were outside the bulwarks of soI ciety. Time works its results slowly, ! and the spirit of Moliere’s day, when the life. To In a successful business woman am so thoroughly old-f&sliioned myself consecrated '^has'to TTltghtW oafninT thf-T -be Ttentimef Wester r'f 1 t 0 SGe «? lter I less intolerant degree been felt untfl regaining this she oftentimes loses her lists against men, and yet I know in | ce nt years womanly charms and characteristics. I many cases s be is driven to it against her