These figures give some idea of the formidable development of women’s employment within recent years, nor is there any sign whatsoever that the movement is likely to abate. Those who are aware of the harm that modern industry and commercial offices have done to the spirit and bodies of men for generations, by converting them into little more than machine-minders or adding-machines, exercising few if any of their highest faculties, may deplore the fact that the sex which hitherto had still to a large extent escaped these dehumanizing labours should now be enrolled in such large numbers to accomplish them. The last check on the complete besotment of our people seems thus to have vanished. But, in view of the existing atmosphere and tendencies, there seems to be little hope of a reaction.
The 4,000,000 spinster workers alone represent a formidable army; and, when it is remembered that this vast legion of single women not only compete with and directly replace male labour, thus reducing still more their chances of marriage, but are also drawn away from home and from the many arts that could be learnt there, we cannot help feeling alarmed at the possible consequences of the development we are witnessing.
The duties and virtues of the home are almost all connected with the body and its care—sewing, cooking, and the nurture of the young. All these arts are gradually being lost; and, when they have to be performed by inexperienced hands, they are performed badly.
Meanwhile, abetting this movement and rendering it ever more practicable, there are hundreds and thousands of commercial and voluntary corporations whose whole energies are directed towards taking the home-arts out of the hands of women. Science, as usual, following the hints implicit in values, has come to the assistance of our female population deficient in domestic skill and knowledge. The art of cooking is gradually becoming simplified into a mere fool’s game, and in its place we are being deluged by innumerable patent and proprietary products, the preparation of which requires no thought and no trouble. These products are very largely injurious to the bodies of those who live on them, but, as they leave the housewife ample leisure to gad about or else to earn money outside the home, no one complains. Quick gravy-makers, pudding- and cake-powders, tinned foods of every description all ready for consumption, custards, porridges, and jellies that require only a few minutes’ cooking, jams and preserves, and a multitude of other artificial aids to replace, though not to equal, the dishes of former days, now compose the normal contents of almost every working-class and middle-class market-bag. Never have the country’s food and its preparation been in a more deplorable condition than they are to-day. Nevertheless, so strong is the tradition to neglect bodily concerns, that all this vast machinery for supplementing traditional knowledge, skill, labour, and good food, in the home, has grown up in our midst without a word of protest from anyone.
As regards the lot of infants and children, so completely broken is the tradition which, once upon a time, was handed down from mother to daughter, that now child-welfare-workers in every town in England, equipped with but a smattering of sound knowledge on the subject, have to teach the women of the masses the arts they have had no opportunity of acquiring. In the departments of dress-making, millinery, and lingerie, it is just the same. Together with the loss of skill and knowledge in the home, the supply of ready-mades from outside increases with leaps and bounds, and huge drapery-businesses, carried on in palatial premises, now line all our leading thoroughfares in a practically unbroken frontage.
Thus, even if the girls and young women of the nation who are or who are not eligible for marriage were to remain at home, there would now be little for them to learn, and still less for them to do; and the recent Girl Guide Movement is the best possible proof that this fact has already been recognized.
Meanwhile, it may be asked what it is that these 4,000,000 learn away from their homes. What do they acquire in exchange for their lost arts?
Those who have not actually adopted dress-making, millinery, or lingerie as an occupation, have, as a rule, acquired only the knowledge necessary for running a certain machine—a cutter, a folder, a binder, a stamper, or a typewriter, etc. Or else they have learnt to wait in restaurants, sell goods across a counter, or keep books. Only about one million of them are either domestic servants or hospital nurses.
Those engaged in industry or commerce who remain at their work and do not marry are at least prevented from passing on their acquired besotment to the next generation; but, meantime, no one inquires about their bodies, and the general feeling is that a girl withered and broken by long years of typing is not a tragic figure because in the first place her career has been morally unimpeachable, and secondly it has brought neither herself nor anyone else any pleasure.
In the better classes, teaching and the professions obtain the bulk of the recruits each year,[[4]] and girls are now trained quite unselectively from earliest childhood with a view to entering these occupations, as if it were taken for granted that they would never marry.