SHOULD WOMEN WORK?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11754, 3 October 1902, Page 4

SHOULD WOMEN WORK?

"I am just old enough," says Mr. Gerald Mansel in the "Dally Chronicle," to remember the enthusiasm with which women rushed! into independent lifte, demanding and receiving too easily the right of a volunteer in the conscription army ofnW'e labour. Has this enthusiastio inctu-sion been justified by the results'? Hasi it added to the general happiness? Has it made women happier? The question looks like one wnioh a woman should answer; but there is a man's side t© it. I fancy those wearyeyed women who lunch off a. bun and a* glass of milk in Ohainoery Lana might drop a hint to the hopeful young who elbow them. My view is merely that of the bachelor who keepo his eyes open, a bachelor with a large assortment of feminine relatives who have dropped back from the firing line for help to the ambulance—maimed, luckily—at tlhe rear. And I am rea.sona.bly sure that tlhe working woman, when the novelty of earning her own living and using her latch key has worn off, finds that it wsusi not. good enough. Of coursie I know that women always have worked, and always will, apd woman's labour—one hits casually and inevitably on the central word—is one of the evils and the triumphs of humanity. But let us put aside the obviously feminine occupations*; let us put a^stide acting, in which a woman can often beat a man, and domestic service jnd houseikeeiping, in which she is within measurable distance of a. man, and ask whether a girl should! be expected—at sixteen or so—to walk out into the world! and earn the money for her food and dress at an occupation which cannot interest her, usually injures her health, and in default of marriage i(whidh alters everything) will land her in the workhouse infirmary when she is 'odd and full of sleep.' That is the hard fact) of the matter. Fotr in the labour .market the woman very seldom gets beyond the lowest wage that an incompetent man would .accept. It may be implied that women must livel, and if they do nob work no one will keep them alive. lam ejwugh of a savage to counter that reply with! tne practice of the South Sea Islander who regards a woman as something worth keeping alive with masculine money, and will not hand over his daughter except to1, the man who can prove his capacity for keeping her by an adequate payment. We have not degenerated quite so far as the French dot, whereby a anaiden pays to be married. But we have dropped from the savage's estimate of womanhood. I feel sure that in an idteal community the support of woman would be regarded as the first charge on masculine earnings', and! the more we relieve the male of responsibility for the sustenance of the female the worse it is for the masculine sitaength and comrage. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred! hate working for wages and never get a touch of the compensating triumph which sweetens the aecomplisShed daibour of a weary man. As to whether a woman, ought to1 labour for her livelihood, I have not only an opinion bub a very strong conviction that she ought no*. There are economical reasons against it; far in the labour market woman, by doing bad work cheaply, is coming to occupy the position held by the foreign Jew in the East End who has' successfully lowered the standard c»f labour/&h dbf linving in a whole district. There are sentimental reasons —but these are ceasing to appeal to men whom women are permitting to forget or to shirk their respondbiliities and privileges. There is the final, andl I think conclusive, reason that as at present arranged wage earning is a very bad thing indeed for the woman, and therefore bad for the race. For however we toy with economics and sentiment, woman maintains the unassailable monopoly of motherhood 1. If we continue for a time to ignore tihe fact that woman's sex gives her a claim to male support-^whe-ther national or. individual —and admit that for the present women will be typing, clerking, serving in shops and drawing beer in bars, we should remember that the very conditions of her work at psent are ruinous to her. iShe has undertaken masculine labour under masculine conditions, without the masculine physique. I cannot conceive why this point has not been long ago taken up and settled by women themselves. A_ woman is riot fitted by nature for continuous labour. Every doctor knows the harm that is caused by the week in, week out, month after month toil of the shop girl, and the rest of the girls who try to work level with men. Every debtor! Why every

publican who keeps his barmaids at the beer-pull, every draper Mho keeps his shop giaJis on their feet week after week without the necessary period of rest, knows perfectly well that he is deliberately inflicting torture upon women, and permanently injuring their health for the Aake of the few extra shillings-that would secure an understudy. Most of all should women know this—the women who have time for congresses, conferences, suffrage agitations, and such like, fu.titlities. And yet among all the vapouiings and random outpourings at these gatherings one never catches a hint of what should be the working woman's charter, the implicit concession in every engagement of five and twenty days off in each year. There is a question which the women interested in the welfare of women m got take up."