The prospects of the assistant mistress as she approaches middle age may be judged from the particulars of twenty-four instances in which a change of work had been attended by a fall of income.
Three of these changes may be at once struck out as changes from the post of private governess, and three others do not lend themselves to easy comparison, because of great differences in the hours of work. Of the remaining eighteen teachers, five have now attained a higher salary than that formerly paid them, four have exactly regained their old income, while nine are still in receipt of a lower salary than that paid them at their last school. These figures point to a precariousness in the position of teachers which has to be seriously taken into account in estimating the prospects of the profession.
But there are many people who, like a certain clergyman’s wife, think that girls are getting “uppish nowadays” when they hear that after three years at Girton and two years’ experience in teaching, an assistant mistress refuses less than £120 a year. There are thousands of mothers like one who wanted a lady graduate as daily governess for her boys “quite regardless of expense,” and who was even willing to pay £30 a year! Wealthy residents of Notting Hill and Kensington send their children to high schools whose managers dare not ask more than a maximum fee of £15 a year. For their enlightenment I give the tables of cost of living compiled by Mr. Alfred Pollard with the aid of experts. Arithmeticians may amuse themselves with calculating in how many years a teacher, twenty-six years of age, with a salary of £120, may, by saving £16 a year, secure an annuity of £70 a year; and may then attack the more interesting problem of the probabilities of any school retaining her in its employment for that length of time.
Cost of Living.
| Salary | Salary | Salary | Salary | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £80. | £100. | £120. | £150. | |
| £ s. d. | £ s. d. | £ s. d. | £ s. d. | |
| Board and lodging during term, say 40 weeks | 42 0 0 | 50 0 0 | 50 0 0 | 60 0 0 |
| Half-rent during holiday | 3 0 0 | 4 0 0 | 4 0 0 | 5 0 0 |
| Railway and other expenses for six weeks of holiday with friends | 3 0 0 | 4 0 0 | 4 0 0 | 4 0 0 |
| Six weeks of holidays at own expense | 7 10 0 | 9 0 0 | 12 0 0 | 15 0 0 |
| Educational books | 0 10 0 | 1 0 0 | 2 0 0 | 3 0 0 |
| Dress | 14 0 0 | 15 0 0 | 15 0 0 | 20 0 0 |
| Petty cash for omnibuses, amusements, presents, charities, etc. etc. | 3 0 0 | 4 10 0 | 6 0 0 | 9 0 0 |
| Laundry | 3 10 0 | 3 10 0 | 3 10 0 | 3 10 0 |
| Medical attendance and provision against sickness | 3 10 0 | 5 0 0 | 7 10 0 | 7 10 0 |
| Sum available towards provision or old age | 0 0 0 | 4 0 0 | 16 0 0 | 23 0 0 |
| £80 0 0 | 100 0 0 | 120 0 0 | 150 0 0 |
It will be observed that these teachers are even here supposed to have friends who will put up with them for six weeks. And attention may be especially called to the magnificent sum that can be set apart for educational books and lectures. Frivolous books, such as the works of Walter Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot, George Meredith, Browning, R. L. Stevenson, must be presented by friends or borrowed in all their grime and dirt from a free library.
If this is the position of a favoured thousand, the position of the rest may be inferred. Of the whole number, however, a considerable proportion are teachers in elementary schools, and do not come from Class H. I have no means of separating the two. Imagination may be stimulated by perusing the employment columns of such a paper as The Lady, where advertisements appear for governesses at unconscionably low salaries, reaching occasionally to almost a minus quantity when some more than ordinarily audacious matron offers a comfortable home to a governess in return for the education of her children and twelve shillings a week.
Are girls worth educating? Apparently not, as their parents do not think them worth paying for. The expectation that marriage will in a few years after a girl leaves school solve all difficulties and provide for her is at the root of all the confusion. Fathers who know they can make no provision for their daughters make no attempt to train them for really lucrative employment, because they think the money will be thrown away if their daughters marry; they let them work full time for half or less than half the cost of living, out of a mistaken kindness, of which employers get all the benefit. The girls in many cases accept low salaries under the same impression, in others because they are not strong enough to hold out where so many are willing to undersell them. Those who only take up employment as a stopgap until marriage never become really efficient, and when later on they find that there is no prospect of release, they become positively inefficient. Those who have faced facts from the first can throw their whole heart into their work, but they are heavily handicapped in their efforts towards progress by the bad pay which is the result of the thoughtlessness and folly of those around them. If only the relatives of these girls could realise that at least one-half of them will never be married, and that of the others many will not marry for several years after leaving school, that there is no means of predicting which of them will be married, and that any of them may have to support, not only themselves all their lives, but a nurse as well in old age, the tangle would soon be unravelled. Two things only I would venture to suggest: one, that instead of supplementing salaries and so lowering them, parents should help their daughters to hold out for salaries sufficient to support them, should assist them in making themselves more efficient, and should help them to make provision for themselves in later life, instead of making self-support impossible; the other, that manufacturers and business men should train their daughters as they train their sons. The better organisation of labour should open a wide field for women, if they will only consent to go through the routine drudgery and hardship that men have to undergo. An educated girl who goes from the high school to the technological college will find full scope for any talents she may possess. As designer, chemist, or foreign correspondent in her father’s factory she could be more helpful and trustworthy than anyone not so closely interested in his success. As forewoman in any factory, if she understood her work, she would be far superior to the uneducated man or woman, and some of the worst abuses in our factory system would be swept away.
If anyone objects that women who are intensely interested in work which also enables them to be self-supporting are less attractive than they would otherwise be, I can make no reply except that to expect a hundred women to devote their energies to attracting fifty men seems slightly ridiculous. If the counter-argument be put forward that women, able to support themselves in comfort, and happy in their work, will disdain marriage, then those who take this view are maintaining, not only that it is not true that
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;
’Tis woman’s whole existence.