Between the extremes of Italy and England stands France, the wife receiving one franc twenty-five centimes a day, each child under sixteen years of age twenty-five centimes, and a dependent parent seventy-five centimes. Japan grants no government allowance. A Japanese official, in response to my inquiry, wrote, "Relations the first and friends the next try to help the dependents as far as possible, but if they have neither relatives nor friends who have sufficient means to help them, then the association consisting of ladies or the municipal officials afford subvention to them."
Under the law passed by Congress in October, 1917, an American private receiving thirty-three dollars a month when on service abroad must allot fifteen dollars a month to his wife, and the government adds to this twenty-five dollars, and if there is one child, an additional ten dollars, with five dollars for each additional child. A man can secure an allowance from the government of ten dollars a month to a dependent parent, if he allots five dollars a month. Such are the bare bones of the allowance schemes of the Allies on the western front
In the United States the general policy of exemption boards, as suggested by the central authorities, is most disciplinary as regards women. Their capacity for self-support is rigidly inquired into. Our men are definitely urging women to a position of economic independence. The aim is, while securing soldiers for the army, to relieve the government of the expense of dependency on the part of women. There is no doubt that our men at least are faced toward the future. No less indicative is it of a new world that the allowance laws of all the western belligerents recognize common-law marriages. In our own law, marriage is "presumed if the man and woman have lived together in the openly acknowledged relation of husband and wife during two years immediately preceding the date of the declaration of war." And the illegitimate child stands equal with the legitimate provided the father acknowledges the child or has been "judicially ordered or decreed to contribute" to the child's support.
Men are feminists. Their hearts have softened even towards the wife's relatives, for the word "parent" is not only broad enough to cover the father, mother, grandparents or step-father and mother of the man, but "of the spouse" also. Thus passeth the curse of the mother-in-law.
One need not be endowed with the spirit of prophecy to foretell that "allowances" in war time will broaden out into motherhood pensions in peace times. It would be an ordinary human reaction should the woman enjoying a pension refuse to give up, on the day peace is declared, her quickly acquired habit of holding the purse strings. That would be accepting international calm at the expense of domestic differences. The social value of encouraging the mother's natural feeling of responsibility toward her child by putting into her hands a state pension is being, let us note, widely tested, and may demonstrate the wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers rather than to crêches and juvenile asylums.
The allowance laws may prove the charter of woman's liberties; her pay envelope may become her contract securing the right of self-determination.
[VIII
POOLING BRAINS]
"Employ them." This was the advice given to a large conference of women met to discuss business opportunities for their sex. The advice was vouchsafed by a young lawyer after the problem of opening wider fields to women in the legal profession had been looked at from every angle, only to end in the question, "What can we do to increase their practice?" She spoke with animation, as if she had found the key to the situation, "Employ them." Perhaps more self-accusation than determination to mend their ways was roused by the short and pointed remark.
The advice has wider application. Taking thirty names of women at random, I learned in response to an inquiry that only four had women physicians, two had women lawyers, and only one, a woman dentist. Twenty-five women of large real estate holdings had never even for the most unimportant work secured the services of an architect of their own sex. Further inquiry brought out the fact that of a long list of women's clubs and associations which have built or altered property for their purposes, only one had engaged a woman architect.