Educated working women: Essays on the economic position of women workers in the middle classes

ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF WOMEN WORKERS IN THE MIDDLE CLASSES.
BY CLARA E. COLLET, M.A., Fellow of University College London .
LONDON: P. S. KING & SON, ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER. 1902.
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD. , PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.
In Memoriam. FRANCES MARY BUSS.
“ Because precisely, I’m an artist, sir, And woman, if another sate in sight, I’d whisper,—Soft, my sister! not a word! By speaking we prove only we can speak, Which he, the man here, never doubted. What He doubts is, whether we can DO the thing With decent grace, we’ve not yet done at all. Now, do it; bring your statue,—you have room! He’ll see it even by the starlight here; And if ’tis e’er so little like the god Who looks out from the marble silently Along the track of his own shining dart Through the dusk of ages, there’s no need to speak; The universe shall henceforth speak for you, And witness, ‘She who did this thing, was born To do it,—claims her license in her work.’ And so with more works. Whoso cures the plague, Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech: Who rights a land’s finances is excused For touching copper, though her hands be white,— But we, we talk! ” “It is the age’s mood” He said; “we boast, and do not.”
E. B. Browning.—“Aurora Leigh,” Book viii
The six essays brought together in this small volume, in the order in which they were written, leave many questions, still warmly debated with regard to working women, almost untouched. The point of view of the writer is circumscribed by the conditions set forth in the first two chapters, which, true in 1891, may have a narrower or a wider application as time goes on. The position of women in the small section of the community known as the middle classes is there shown to be exceptional. The great majority of women belong to the working classes and spend their youth as wage-earners, in many cases under conditions injurious to mind and body, although the real work of their lives is eventually to be found in their own homes. With middle-class women the position is reversed. To those who have once realised what a large number of them may have to be self-supporting, the constant problem henceforth is to discover how the lives of educated women may be made of more value to themselves and others. The cost and reward of efficiency are therefore the two factors which in this little book are treated as being of primary, although not necessarily of greatest, importance.