Woman's Voice

by Unknown

Woman’s Demand for Work

By Josephine Butler

(From “Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture.”)

([See page 157])

The demand of the women of the humbler classes for bread may be more pressing, but it is not more sincere than that of the women of the leisure classes for work. And these two demands coming together, it seems to me, point to an end so plainly to be discerned, that I marvel that any should remain blind to it. The latter demand is the attestation of the collective human conscience that God does not permit any to live as cumberers of the earth, and that the very conditions of their moral existence is, that efforts and pains taken by them should answer to some part of the needs of the community.