British freewomen

by C. C. Stopes

Labour is the Basis of Property.—I do not wish now to analyse all the Economic Theories regarding the relations of Property to Labour, but only the one that touches our question. In olden times Labour was paid in kind. Money is an arbitrary sign of labour, as speech is of thought. Money is an easy medium by which the returns of labour can be transferred, either in purchase of other property or of other labour, or as a free gift or inheritance.

In ancient times fighting was considered a kind of labour, the highest kind. The Service of the King was the most honourable, save that of the Service of the Church. Fighting and praying were alike paid in land, or in coin, and the land or the coin could be inherited by those who neither fought nor prayed. Hard-working traders and farmers also earned coin and land, and sometimes left their gains to idle children. Hence owners have not always been earners. Some writers on National Economy have inveighed against the principle of inheritance. To me it seems natural and right that what a man has produced by labour, he may leave to his descendants, at least, when he does so by old Saxon Law. There has been much virulent denunciation of Landlords, especially in relation to the unearned increment of property in thriving towns. I do not know any however, who have discussed a question, that bears much upon the Argument of this book.

The Unrecorded Increment of Woman’s Labour.—Earners are not always owners. Except where a woman brought some fortune at her marriage it has been supposed that her husband “supported her.” But in the majority of respectable middle-class or workmen’s dwellings, this is very far from being the case.

The woman labours as well as her husband. If property is the result of labour, both can be expressed in figures. Let us take a man earning 30s. a week for eight hours’ work a day, and five hours on Saturday, forty-five in all. The payment for each hour is 8d. As the woman spends no time walking to and from her work; as she has no rest on Saturdays or Sundays except through extra work on other days; as she on these other days works very many more hours than her husband, she has bettered the common stock by the amount of ninety hours of work; which taken at half the wage, rises to the same sum, so that the common income should be reckoned at 60s. instead of 30s. But her share being received in kind, it is unrecognised and unrecorded. This may be made clear by supposing that some other person had fulfilled the wife’s duties. In transferring flour into bread she earns what the baker otherwise would gain in the difference between flour and the price of the loaf. In washing and ironing the family linen she earns what the laundress would charge for the same, minus the cost of soap and coals. In carrying a heavy basket from the distant stores, she earns what the local grocer would have done in the difference between wholesale and retail prices; in making clothes for her children out of her own frayed garments, she earns what the draper would have charged for similar material, and what the dressmaker would have required for making it up. If she patches her husband’s clothes, she earns the tailor’s charge. Her daily scrubbing and cooking may be reckoned at charwoman’s wages, and thus, multiplied by the hours of labour, the proportion may come out. Both she and her husband dimly feel that she has saved expenditure, they never realise that she has acquired property.

The spending also must be reckoned. The result of the man’s labour has been translated into coin, a more convenient form in which to pay rent and taxes, the Club-money and direct Shop-purchases for both. Of the common diet the man has the larger and better share. Beyond this he generally has a daily paper, a pipe, and beer. At the lowest estimation these cost 3s. 6d. a week. If he has no vices, there may be 3s. in his pocket at the end of the week, and that 3s. may be put into a Savings Bank in his name, which after years of saving, by modern law, he may will away from his wife and children.

What of her toil, her earnings, her increment of property? It has seemed to vanish, but it has really enriched him. This may easily be seen if, leaving her domestic employments, she goes out to labour as charwoman in the house of others at 2s. 6d. a day of ten hours. She there also receives food. The position then is this. The common house-property is increased by the expenditure on her food being saved. She still saves somewhat to the family in comfort and money by working overtime. Her husband has either to do without some of his comforts or her economies, or spend some hours of his relaxation in home-work. But at the end of the week, there is the visible increment of fifteen shillings. Before 1870 all that belonged legally to the husband, since that time it belongs nominally to the wife. That is the meaning of the Married Women’s Property Bill. A husband should support a wife, but the money she earns she may keep to herself. But it is hard on wives and mothers that their share in the common property should be unrecognised when their toil is continued under the ordinary domestic conditions; but be recognised when circumstances or inclination make it possible for them to seek a visible money reward elsewhere.

We will take another example from a higher rank. Suppose a man has £300 a year, and is left a widower with four young children, he at once feels the diminution of his income, through the increase of his needs. He must have a housekeeper, at a salary, at least, of £25. Her keep costs him another £30. He must find a daily governess to teach the children, and walk with them. Without keep that may cost another £25. He has to pay the dressmaker for making and repairing the children’s clothes, at least £10. He has to pay workmen to hang pictures, put up curtains, to paint the back-garden fence, or enamel the nursery bath; to cover the drawing-room chairs, or patch the dining-room sofa, quite £10 a year. His wife’s whole keep had been saved through greater care in purchasing and managing food, and higher skill in cooking than either his housekeeper or assistant-girl possesses; and the man has not only lost the love and comfort of his wife, but the £100 a year which she indirectly earned for him. He thought his income was £300 and was all his own; he finds it had been really £400, as compared to the present receipts of expenditure, and that the missing £100 had been earned by her. He would have found this out had he allowed her to give music-lessons as she wished to do, a light labour that she loved. Or she might have written that weekly letter to the country paper she was asked to do. She might have earned £100 a year at that, and that money would have been her own to spend in luxury or charity if she pleased, or to have saved up for her children’s future. But then his tradesmen’s bills would have been increased. It is absurd, therefore, to believe that a wife’s earnings are limited to those hours that she takes from her husband’s service and sells to some other employer of labour, who pays her in so much coin of the realm.

But the partner that touches the coin seems always to take the lead. We may see this in the circumstances where the positions are altered, as, for instance, among many fishing communities. There, though the men go out at night and fish, the women not only do their domestic work, but receive the fish, go out and sell it, make the necessary purchases, and “bank” the remainder of the money. The superior intelligence and relative social position of the women in fishing communities has often been noted. I have heard it scornfully said of a fisher-girl, “She marry? Why, she is not able to keep a man!” In this illustrative case, the woman holds the purse, and her share in the family earnings is recognised.

Now, if privilege is based on property, and property is based on labour, how is an industrious woman shut out from the benefits of both? Why must the man only have the earner’s vote? One vivifying revelation of our half-century is the recognition of the nobility of labour. No one has so gracefully expressed it as Mrs. Barret Browning in “Aurora Leigh,” when, urging all to work, she adds:

“Get leave to work;