Rambles in Womanland

by Max O'Rell

'There are too many men in the world,' once exclaimed H. Taine. This was only a joke, but there is a great deal of truth in it. There are, in France especially, far too many men engaged in official Government offices, in professional occupations, and in stores; too many doctors without patients; too many lawyers without briefs; too many functionaries, each doing little or nothing, and the others seeing that he does it; too many men in stores showing women dresses, silks, and gloves.

And the woman hater exclaimed: 'No wonder men cannot find a living to make; all the occupations that once were filled by men are now monopolized by women. The hearth is deserted, the street crowded—that's the triumph of modern feminism.'

On the other hand some feminists, more royalist than the King, exclaim: 'Woman should be kept in clover, the protégée of humanity, and never be allowed to work.'

And, taken between two fires, poor women are ready to shout at the top of their voices, 'Save us from our friends as well as from our enemies!' It is a fact that at a recent congress of Socialists an orator declared himself in favour of the suppression of work for women.

But women do want to work, and many of them married, too. If what husbands earn is not enough to maintain the family or keep it in comfort, they are partners, and they wish to contribute to the revenue.

If they are not married, they want to support themselves or help to keep aged parents. Many of them prefer their independence to matrimony, which not uncommonly turns out to be about the hardest way for a woman to get a living.

Women have a right to work as they have a right to live, and every work which is suitable for women should be open to them. And when I see Lancashire make girls work in the coal-mines I may ask, 'What work is there that women cannot do?'

God forbid that I should be in favour of women working in the mines, but this is not necessary. There are so many men who do a kind of work that women should do, and could do just as well, if not better, that there should be no question of any kind of work done by women which men could do better.

The earth was meant to keep her children, and she would if everybody, man or woman, was in his or her right place. The supply is all there and all right, but it is its distribution which is all wrong. The same may be said of work.

There should be in this world work for all and bread for all, men or women, only the poor inhabitants of this globe have not yet been able to obtain a proper division of the goods which they have inherited from nature.