All this hue and cry about women’s work is very ridiculous. Since the world began women have worked. They have borne the greatest of all burdens—child-bearing; and they have cooked and washed and mended and made. They have ministered to the wants of man and home.
Worked? Why, of course they have worked, but they have not always been paid. Now is their day. They are strong enough to demand the recognition the world has been ungenerous enough to withhold.
Equality in all things for the sexes will make happier men and women, happier homes, and a more prosperous nation.
All women cannot be bread-winners any more than all men can be soldiers. Women are marching onward in every land, their advancement and the progress of civilisation are synonymous terms to-day.
The greater the women, the greater the country.
It is ridiculous to say that women workers oust men. This is hardly ever the case. In these days of endless change, when a machine is frequently introduced that does the work of four or five men, labour is constantly re-arranged. Then again, with increase of work, so there is incessant all-round shifting of the distribution of employment. Women do not take the place of men. They merely find their own footing in the general change. There is a niche for everyone ready to fill it.
Yes, women do work, and women must work, although a vast amount of misery might be, and ought to be, alleviated by their men-folk. The present disastrous state of things is largely due to men not providing for their wives or equipping their daughters to be wage-earners.
There are, of course, a few enthusiastic women who work for work’s sake, but they take the bread out of no man’s mouth. These are the writers of deep and profound books, who make as many shillings as they spend pounds in collecting their material—women who love research work in science; women who labour among the poor, organise clubs and homes, and devote their lives to charity and good deeds; but the cases are rare, almost nil, where women work for salary who do not need the money. Those who do certainly take the bread from the mouths of men and women alike; but the rich workers who accept pay are so few they do not count.
Many women with small incomes seek to increase those incomes in order to clothe their children, pay the butcher, or have more to spend on little luxuries, but these, again, are a small class. The large multitude of women who work are those who must do so, and they are the ones who require help, for theirs is an uphill fight against great odds. They have to contend with want of general education, want of special training, want of physical strength, want of positions open to women, when they enter the already overcrowded field of labour.
Women must work until men realise the responsibility of thrusting them unequipped into the sea of life to sink or swim on the tide of chance.