QUEEN OR PAWN?

Otago Witness, Issue 3005, 18 October 1911, Page 86

QUEEN OR PAWN?

By Jessie Mactcay

Queen of the home, queen of the heart, queen of the upper reaches of tho soul tnese .are the platitudes current wherever the woman question is still in the balance between clear-eyed integrity and nebulous self-interef.t. "Words, words, words!" They a<ro sweet, slippery, and cheap, so ladle them out with a lavish hand. But weight them Avithbut a shadow of solid benefit and see how rustily, how noisily, how tardily the ancient windlass of public opinion and poJjitical machinery sets to work. In other words, woman has hitherto been, a queen in theory, a pawn in practice—a pawn to be shuffled up and down, the industrial board as man's caprice or .advantage directs. This reflection is pointed by an incident of industrial legislation which has recently occupied an amount of attention in England only second to the much-debated women's "clauses of Mr Lloyd George's National Insurance Bill. By am, amendment to a clause of the Coal Mines Act it seems likely that the "pitbrow lasses" of Lancashire and the South of Scotland are to be deprived of their living as one •unfit sfor women. There, are about five thousand women who would be rendered workless by this measure. Certainly, if this calling were an immodest or unhealthy occupation it would be no argument to say that five hundred thousand were affected. When Sir A. B. Markham moved that this occupation should be closed henceforth' to woman on the acore of its being too arduous and too exposed, he met some strenuous opposition from his _ more practical iellow-members. It was immediately pointed out that the division should be postponed, in any case, till a deputation of pit girls then on their way to' London to interview the Home Secretary should arrive and state their case. It was emphatically denied that the work was dangerous or degrading. On the contrary, aU who had made direct personal inquiry were convinced that the work was infinitely preferable to the close and stagnant conditions prevailing in factories, and to the miserable conditions under which piecework is done at Home. The deputation could scarcely have rested on .a broader or more representative basis. It was accompanied by the Mayor of Wigan and by some members of Parliament, by a leading doctor, who has a mining practice in Wigan, and, lastly, by a popular and respected clergyman of the same town. It does not seem that any Scottish pitbrow girls, had time to join the deputation, but the representations made" by their English compisers were strong enough to convince any real reformer that this calling is not one of those which has sapped the womanhood of Britain and stamped debility and degeneration, on the national physique. Under ideal social conditions, perhaps, women would not be employed pushingtrolleys or sorting coal oil- day under the long inclemencies of .a British winter. On the other hand, under ideal social conditions (and therefore ideal natural conditions) women would physically revert once more to the splendid invulnerability of the primeval mother, who gladly lived her life in wind and weather before she became the wreck or the parasite whose existence ha,s come to be considered not the crime of humanity, as it.really is, but the caprice of an arbitrary Providence. The Parliamentary Committee, cecure in its benevolent intentions, did not think it necessary, however, to wait for the y girls to. arrive, and rushed through a resolution that, while the present workers should not be dismissed, no more women should henceforth be allowed to join their Tanks at the pitbrow. This resolution was strenuously opposed by some members who had a working knowledge of the facts, and sufficient chivalry to champion a voteless body ; but the majority blandly shut the door of hope—for the time. So when the deputation arrived it Received an abstracted glance from Mr Winston Churchill and the hearty, though unavailing, sympathy of his Undersecretary; Mr C. F. Masterman. It -was not the Government, Mr assured them, that had done this thing, and it was possible that at .a later stage in the bill the adverse vote might be Meanwhile the fact, remained that an essential injustice was being done when a resolution affecting women's work and welfare could be carried by a Parliament of men ■without consulting a single representative of their penalised sex. The words of Mr Masterman are truisms in New Zealand—happil? for New Zealand and for her women. It is difficult to realise that only within two or three_ yeans have such words or such thoughts, in the atmosphere of English opinion, passed out of the world of moonshine to rank with, the realities that underlay Habeas Corpus and the Reform Bill. The very friends of women—and we can scarcely count such men as Mr John Burns and Mr Lloyd George as enemies—have failed in so many details of schemes pouching the industrial condition of women that it is not difficult to account for the gross mismanagement of women's affairs by less zealous Ministers of the past. I; When these things are done in the green tree what shall be done in the dry?" It is not as if the pitbrow girls were being benevolently pushed out of a bad business into a good one. The alternatives of such severe callings are, under the dark conditions of the Old World, not to be thought of without a shudder. It is not only the suffering of hunger and cold that wtits upon the slightest tightening of conditions under which English women work. Beyond that, and only a hairbreadth beyond, lies the hideous Soul Market that ever flaunts its evil promise before woman's direst need.

The situation as regards the pit-brow women and other penalised workers in England now ie that of Katherine the shrew, undergoing the iron rigours of her honeymoon discipline. She must not lie down to rest, because the bed is too roughly made for the delicate form of

Petruchia's bride. She must not eat, because the food is too ill-cooked and served to place before the queen of Petruchio's heart. She cannot go abroad, for no travelling road is smooth enough for the soft feet of Petruchio's ladv. Meanwhile?

There is a meaning in Petruchio's madness, but it is not easy to place blind faith in this new solicitude of English administration. Yet there is a leaven in it, doubtless, that means hope for the Katherines of a later day. But the present discipline is often grievous and needlees.