MAKING MEN BEGGARS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XXI, 21 November 1896, Page 91

MAKING MEN BEGGARS.

* I have before me,’ says Walter Besant in the London Queen, * the thirty-seventh annual report of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. 1 am sorry to learn from this report that the demand for women clerks and bookkeepers is on the increase. *At the same time I am informed in other quarters that thousands of men clerks are tramping the streets of London, wearing out shoe leather in going np and down stairs in the weary work of trying to find places. * They find, instead, women doing the work, which should keep them and their wives, for half the pay. One has no objection to women doing men’s work if they get men’s pay. They may even keep the men in idleness, if they please, like the laundresses.

‘ How shall we make these promoters understand the cut-throat policy of pushing women in everywhere, at half or quarter the day, and driving the men abroad 1 However, there are other and more satisfactory features about this report. ‘ln the lower walks something has been done by the society in getting places for women as hairdressers — will they ever became such admirable artists in this walk as the men ?— in finding cooks and waitresses, and in getting temporary work of all kinds for women.

‘ But the numbers and figures given demonstrate that the work of the society is but a drop in the ocean. We have 40,000,000 of people, with 20,000.000 of women and girls, and all who are past the age of 15, with an insignificant minority of about 500,000, are clamouring for work.’