Men can no longer support their daughters, and daughters cannot command good positions in lucrative professions. There are only 7 million families, and at least 4 million grown-up women, unmarried and superfluous as mothers. The working man tells these women to “go home and do the washing.” “Well,” a virgin replies, “one million of us are working at laundry and other work, under half a million of us are amusing ourselves on independent incomes, and the rest of us have to while away life somehow without money or occupation, so we are making a revolution.”
The struggle for the vote is putting heart into the superfluous woman, and it is putting the hope of reorganizing the market value of women’s labour into her heart. We not only want work, but we want good wages. If we have children we want to be sure they will be cared for and fed. If we keep house we want our wages. The 12 million females that have no independent income cry out to the ½ million that has an independent income, in their almost hopeless struggle to win fair wages. It is interesting to think that out of the total population of about 32½ million in England and Wales, a very little over ½ million are living on independent incomes, and we find that there are less than 100,000 heirs, and more than 400,000 heiresses in this country. The rest, that is 32 million, have to work or starve so as to save enough for their old age. Each person that lives at ease is surrounded by sixty-five people that have to struggle. Each woman that has a husband knows that a widow or spinster stands portionless beside her. Figures are abstractions, but behind these figures are facts and problems that are driving us before them with such resistless cruelty that at last we are determined to cry halt and make a fight—vote or no vote!
II
WOMEN’S INCOMES
II
WOMEN’S INCOMES