Women as Wage Earners.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXI, Issue 8959, 7 December 1905, Page 1

Women as Wage Earners.

(By C. W. Saleeby, M.D., ill the London Daily Chronicle.)

Physiological inquiry teaches us tliat, oil the average, woman's actual output of physical energy is decidedly fixed as less tlian that of man. Woman's physiological income, or pocket-money, to use the illustration of Dr Schofield, lias been estimated as about fi%"e-eigths tliat of man. We all admit- tliat, in general, man is the stronger. But the fact must- not be misinterpietod. The student of physics is familiar with the difference recognised between kinetic energy—the energy of movement and action—and potential energy, which is none the less real because it i.s not. evident. Now -woman, in virtue of her duties in. Tegard to reproduction, seems to tend rather to the accumulation of potential energy than to the output of kineticenergy. Or, to quote the language of the physiologist-, the functions of the female organism are anabolic, ot building lip, ra.ther than katabolic, or breaking down. In this Tespect, woman is contrasted with man, in whom an excess of the building up process results merely in obesity.

If woman is to continue to discharse those anabolic functions, consisting in the accumulation of potential energy for her unborn children, or the provision of ".heir nourishment- after birth, upon which the continuance of the race depends, there is definite and necessary limit set to her external activities —to that output of kinetic energy which depends upon, what the physiologists call katabolism. She cannot- both eat her cake and have it- too; cannot- both accumulate iter energy for the racial life and expend it for her individual life. Suppose, for the sake of argument, tliat man and woman have each one hundred units of energy to utilise. Man, who does not- bear the brunt of the reproductive functions, can afford to spend his energy on external activities. Woman may spend all her activity similarly, and may successfully compete with mail as ail industrial unit; but, if she does so, she will have no energy left for that supremely important function which 6he, and she alone, can discharge. If woman is to continue to be woman, she cannot compete on equal terms with man, so far as external activity is concerned. If she attempts to become man and woman too, she is apt to end by failing to be eitheT. But if woman does not continue woman, there is an end of human history—the resources of science notwithstanding. If this statement be true—and it- is surely reasonable, besides being supported by the most unquestionable facts of experience—it must never be forgotten as the essential fact with which those who labor for the establishment of an economic equality between the sexes must reckon. It implies that- such an equality is uca-t----tainable; this, not because- woman is of less inherent- value than man to society ; but because her characteristic-, powers are are not of economic value, ,-ls that term, is usually understood. But it is surely evident that, Tightly considered, woman's economic value is at- least equal to man's. For her functions in Tegard to the production and nourishment ;md upbringing of j children, are absolutely indispensable to every society, past, present, and to come. I It- is true to the uttermost that- "the hand that rocks the cradle Tules the world." Now the married woman who is also a wage earner tends to fail in the discharge of her functions as a woman. She spends all her physiological capital for that which is not bread ; and there is none left as dower for her children, born or unborn. | Here follows, then, my proposition;:—ln the ideal state, woman must so expend her finite stock of energy as to discliarge without mutual injury her duty to the Tac-e and her duty to herself. She can successfully enter into competition with man, only by neglecting her duty to the raceIt is her whole duty, say some, and have said many more. But nowadays women are not content to be regarded as mere propagators ; they do not propose to expend 100 per cent, of their energy on the production and care of cliildren. Tliey even go so far as to question the assertions of distinguished theologians who have denied that women have a soul. And certainly they are right; and their claims are compatible with the claims of posterity upon them. The problem for woman and society to-day is the due reconciliation of those claims; and the first essential for solving it is the due recognition that partof woman's energies are hypothecated t>y posterity, and that- therefore she must be content- with less energy for other purposes. Fortunately, we have abundant proof that women's intellectual development-, duly contrived and adjusted, may be, and often is. perfectly compatible with the intention' of her womanliness, both physical and psychical. It would be a bad lookout- were this not so. For one thing, the intellectual development of the whole race is certainly to be hastened by the provision of intellectual mothers as well as intellectual fathers. It would be a pity if the intellectual women is becoming more and more necessary in the interests of marriage. Educated men. are not nowadays content to marry dolls. They want intel-! lectual as well as physical companionship!. If they cannot get all they desire' in one woman they are ajit to become discontent-; ed with the indnoramic restriction, Wei may remember the brilliant hettair® cf j Greece. j

Thus I am an earnest advocate of the higher education of women, though not unaware of the recent proofs, mainly from the United States, that such, may be disastrous; certainly, if the higher education of women were to destroy womanliness it would destroy not only the possibility of human life, but almost all that makes life worth, living. -I-have said nothing about the necessity of woman "sticking to her proper sphere,"'' since 'someone might institute, odious' comparisons between, say, "Adam Bede" and the feeble products of. this pen—the ordinary man cannot afford to define woman':; sphere in this fashion. My: point is simply that woman must be content to do less o.r the work which man can do, if she is to d<i the work whioK man cannot do \ and .■without which there would soon cease to be any human doings of. any kind.