What then?
Women must work until men learn to protect and provide for, not only their wives, but their mothers, daughters, and sisters. All men should respect the woman toiler who prefers work to starvation, as all must deplore the necessity that forces her into such a position. Women of gentle blood are the greatest sufferers; brought up in luxury, they are often thrust on the world to starve through no fault of their own what ever. The middle-class father should also be obliged to make some provision by insurance for every baby girl, which will enable her to live, and give her at least the necessities of life, so that she may not be driven to sell herself to a husband, or die of starvation. The sons can work for themselves, and might have a less expensive up-bringing, so that the daughters may be provided for by insurance, if the tragedies of womanhood now enacted on every side are to cease.
It is no good for young men to shriek at the invasion of the labour market by women: the young men must deny themselves a little and provide for their women folk if it is to be otherwise. It is no good grinding down the wages of women workers, for that does harm to men and women alike, and only benefits the employer. Women must work as things are, and women do work in spite of physical drawbacks, in spite of political handicap, in spite—too often—of lack of sound education. The unfortunate part is that women work for less pay than men, under far harder conditions, and the very men who abuse them for competing on their own ground, are the men who do not raise a hand to make provision for their own women folk, or try in any way to help the present disastrous condition of affairs.
Men can stop this overcrowding of every profession by women if they really try, and until they do so they should cease to resent a state of affairs which they themselves have brought about.
Luckily there is hardly any trade or profession closed to women to-day. They cannot be soldiers, sailors, firemen, policemen, barristers, judges, or clergymen in England, but they can be nearly everything else. Even now, in these so-called enlightened days, men often leave what money they have to their sons and let chance look after their daughters. They leave their daughters four alternatives—to starve, to live on the bitter bread of charity, to marry, or to work. Independent means is a heritage that seldom falls to the lot of women. There are too many women on the stage as there are too many women everywhere else; but on the stage as in authorship, women are at least fairly treated as regards salary, and can earn, and do earn, just as much as men.
The provinces are the school of actors and actresses, so let us now turn to a provincial company, for after all the really hard work of theatrical life is most severely felt in the provinces. A pathetic little account of early struggles appeared lately from the pen of Miss Florence St. John. At fourteen years of age she sang with a Diorama along the South coast, and a few months after she married. Her parents were so angry they would have nothing more to do with her, and not long afterwards her husband’s health failed and he died. Sheer want pursued her during those years.
“My efforts to secure work seemed almost hopeless.”
That is the crux of so many theatrical lives. Those eight words so often appear—and yet there are sanguine people who imagine employment can always be obtained on the stage for the mere asking, which is not so; but let us now follow the fortunes of a lucky one.
After a play has been sufficiently coached in London, at the last rehearsal a “call” is put up on the board, which says:
“Train call. All artistes are to be at —— Station at —— o’clock on such and such a date. Train arrives at A—— at —— o’clock.”