“But suppose the girl office-worker decides to give matrimony a trial,” she continued, “as I did, her mind has been distorted by having known what it means to be financially her own mistress. Instead of bringing to her job of wifehood the resolute determination to make a success of it, from the first she is critical, and on the constant lookout for hardships in her new life, comparing them with the freedom of her old. I should have made Martin a much better wife, Miss Holland, if I had brought to my problem of being his partner the passionate determination that was mine in wanting to make good as Mr. Corey’s secretary. I always hugged to myself the thought that if the time came when I wouldn’t like Martin any more or like being a wife, I could go back to my job,—and that is exactly what this thought led me to do. Making any marriage a success is the hardest work I know about both for men and women, and there should be no avenue of easy escape from it for either of them. I’d never have left Martin, I’d have endured his unkindness and lack of consideration,—or at least what seemed his unkindness and lack of consideration to me then,—if there hadn’t been an easy way out for me, and we’d have gone on together and made a home for ourselves and our children. All I had to do was to walk out of Martin’s house and go back to my job. That’s what every wife who has once been a self-supporting wage-earner says to herself from the day she marries. She doesn’t even have the trouble of getting a divorce to deter her.... It’s wrong, I tell you, Miss Holland! It’s all wrong! The more I live, the more I am convinced that women have no place in business. No,—please let me finish,” she said earnestly as her friend started to interrupt. “There’s one other angle to this question: the girl who has once tasted independence but who decides to give matrimony a trial may go so far as to consent to be a wife, but she stops at becoming a mother! She dreads children. And why? Because she realizes that once a baby is at her breast, she’s bound hand and foot to her husband and her home. She can’t leave her child with the nonchalance she can her husband. In the homes of women who have achieved economic independence before they marry, you will find few children, and in the majority of cases, none at all. I know a score of girls, at one time in office jobs, who quit them to be married, but have drawn the line at babies.
“It seems to me this is of national significance. The country is being deprived of homes and children because of this great invasion of women into business during the last twenty or thirty years. When I went to work twenty-four years ago, it was the exception for nice girls to go into offices. I remember how my mother fretted over my wanting to do it and how bitterly she opposed me. Now, every girl, rich or poor, desires a year or two of business life. Women are devised by Nature to be home-builders and mothers. Anything tending to deflect them from fulfilling their destiny is contrary to Nature and is doomed to failure or to have bound up in it its own punishment. When women compete with men in fields in which they do not belong, they are acting against Nature, and as surely as one gets hurt by leaning too far out of a window, so surely do such women pay a penalty for their deeds. Man was condemned in Genesis to ‘work by the sweat of his brow’; there is nothing said about women having to work; she was given her own punishment. And here is an obvious fact, Miss Holland: No man likes to work under a woman boss. When I took charge of the Mail Order Department, three men who had been with Walt Chase resigned rather than work under me. I didn’t blame them. It was as repugnant to me to give them orders as it was for them to take them.
“Now that is a biological obstruction in the way of woman’s progress in business that you cannot get away from, and which you cannot lay to man’s door. Men don’t like to work for women, and women don’t like to have men assistants, and since man is intended by God and Nature to be the worker, and woman is ordained to bear children, I say again that women have no place in business.”
“But Miss Sturgis, Miss Sturgis!” cried Miss Holland. “Do you mean to tell me that women have not the right to earn their own living? Do you mean to tell me that you and I and all the women in the world must always look to some man to support us? Do you mean to tell me that widows with children to take care of, and women whose husbands are incapacitated or who desert them or who turn out to be drunkards or brutes, and women who are adrift in the world, and perhaps have never married because they’ve never been wooed, haven’t a right to turn their brains to account and earn their livelihoods?”
“Well, it might be a good plan to limit the women workers to just the classes you mention,” Jeannette answered. “Certainly I won’t concede to you that every eighteen-year-old flapper like my niece or your sweet young college-graduate has the right to plunge into business and unfit herself for wifehood and motherhood, driving at the same time some needy soul of her own sex out of employment. Comeliness, a fair complexion have much to do with securing a job for a woman and with helping her to retain it. The plain girl or, more particularly, the middle-aged woman with two children to support, whose beauty has long since deserted her, has small chance against the pink-skinned eighteen-year-old with the bobbed hair and the roguish eye who may only have one-tenth of her ability. No employer ever hires a good-looking young man in preference to a homely one whose years of experience and ability are known. The more faded a woman becomes, the less she is wanted about an office. Looks play an important part in the rôle of the business woman. She should be judged, I think, not by her appeal to the eye, but by her industry. This is one more reason why I believe women under thirty should be debarred from going to work. If women workers were limited, confined to thousands, let us say, instead of millions, then those privileged to work could earn a proper living wage, and dictate the terms under which they should be employed. There are certain professions and callings to which women are recognizably better suited than men; nursing and dressmaking are but two of them. If the supply of women for these vocations were limited, the demand would soon fix an adequate wage.
“It has occurred to me many times,” persevered Jeannette, “that it would perhaps solve the problem,—or help solve it,—if certain professions and certain kinds of work were restricted by law to women. I’ve been told that in Japan only those who are blind may be embalmers of the dead. It restricts this vocation to a class of unfortunates which otherwise would have great difficulty in earning its living, and as a consequence there are no blind mendicants in Japan. I would advocate legislation in this country that would restrict certain occupations solely to women, and then I would limit the women who were eligible to fill them to widows or to those who could prove they must support themselves.”
“There is little doubt that becoming wage-earners tends to keep women out of matrimony,” Miss Holland said thoughtfully. “I know it did with me. There was a young professor of archæology from Wesleyan who wanted me very earnestly to marry him, and I should have liked to have done so, but I was working then, and had taken Jerry to live with me,—he was only eight,—and the professor’s salary was not large enough for the three of us.”
“And think what a wonderful wife you would have made!”
“I don’t know about that,” smiled Miss Holland, “but I was interested in his work and I should have enjoyed helping him.”
“Exactly!” cried Jeannette. “I have no doubt you would have helped him very materially, whereas you gave your wits and your life in helping Mr. Kipps over the rough parts of his business days for a consideration of fifty dollars a week!”