The last census of the United Kingdom shows, that, while the female population has increased in such proportion that there are now eight women where there were seven, there are eight working women where there were only six; that is, there are more new workers than new women. There are 1,250,000 women earning their own bread as independently as any men. Of these, there are—
- 385,000 employed in Textile manufactures,
- 40,000 in Metal-works, and
- 128,418 in Agriculture.
I hope these statements will not seem useless and superficial to you.
This hour cannot be better employed than in opening to you some of the mysteries of woman's work in England.
Among the 128,418 women employed in Agriculture, there are 64,000 dairy-women; not women who tend a single cow for a single family, but women of muscle, who wield large tubs and heavy presses, who turn cheeses and slap butter by the hundred-weight. Then there are market-gardeners, who not only raise their stock, but drive it to the town for sale; bee-mistresses and florists, of whom there are many among the Quakers; flax-producers, who not only raise the pretty blue-eyed flowers, but beat the silicious fibres apart; and they are followed by hay-makers, reapers, and hop-pickers, gracefully garlanding the group.
Naturally connected with this first interest of the soil is the second, or Mining. It is no longer considered fit for women to work in shafts, though the need of bread forces many to evade the law. The census, however, cannot touch them: the seven thousand women it reports as engaged in Mining are employed in dressing and sorting ore, and as washers and strainers of clay for the potteries,—heavy and disagreeable if not unfit work.
The next largest interest is that of the Fisheries. The Pilchard fishery employs many thousands of women. Jersey oysters alone employ over one thousand. Then come the—
- Herring,
- Cod,
- Whale, and
- Lobster fisheries.
The work in connection with the whale fishery consists chiefly in what is done after the cargo is landed. Apart from the Christie Johnstones,—the aristocrats of the trade,—the sea nurtures an heroic class, like Grace Darling, who stand aghast, as she did, when society rewards a deed of humanity, and cry out in expostulation, "Why, every girl on the coast would have done as I did!"
In natural connection with these come the—