Does it seem an unattractive life that these hardy bachelors have perforce to live? Perhaps. But you will not find them bemoaning their lot. That is not the way of bachelors. We know they are to be pitied, but they do not pity themselves. Seriously, the trouble with these men is that they have none of those inducements to consider the future which make a man better than a machine. They take the world as it comes, which is well enough for themselves but not well enough for the world. I doubt if it is well for themselves really. True, they have nothing to worry them so long as they are in health. They can make big money when they choose and take holidays when they choose, conscious that when their money is spent they have only to set to again. Their wages are indeed to them little more than trinkgeld—and this means that those splendid workers have no real reward for their work, leave no successors to carry on the traditions of their toil, enrich only the bar-keepers and the rogues who live on the folly of honest men.
Clearly the most honourable opening for women in Canada is marriage. Only wives are capable of putting down the drink curse, preventing the growth of a particularly odious plutocracy, establishing a permanent instead of a nomad population in the West. Nor might it be a bad thing (but for Anglo-Saxon prejudices) if provincial governments there could start marriage offices, due attention being paid to eugenics. Even in so small a matter as the following, the presence of wives should make all the difference. All down the Columbia valley I found the cattle ranchers, who were bachelors, drinking tinned milk, while scores of cows ran wild and went dry. When I asked if it wasn't worth while to keep one cow milking, I was always told, 'No, we haven't time to bother about it,' till I came to the shack of a married Swede, whose wife had time to bother about it. In his shack tinned milk was anathema, as it should be everywhere.
As prejudice would undoubtedly prevent the formation of governmental marriage offices, marriage can only be considered as an indirect opening for women. What are the directer openings? A great deal depends on what part of Canada immigrant women make for. In the East there is no such lack of women as in the West. The sexes are fairly balanced. In the big towns there is the usual demand for domestic servants, but not many more openings for educated Englishwomen than there are in big towns at home. There are a few more, because those cities are going at a faster pace than our English cities, and because all work there is more valuable than in England. Women skilled in the arts that have to do with personal decoration, such as millinery, dressmaking, etc., could make their way there.
Factory work in Canada is hardly worth going into here, the chief point about it being that wages are of course higher; nor did I notice any unusual professions engaging the attention of women, unless it were the checking of parcels and the playing in hotel orchestras, neither of which requires a man's strength.
THE HALT. LAGGAN.
French Canada offers employment to but very few. Western Canadians sniff at the Habitants because they let their women work in the fields; haymaking and hoeing. But the idea of using women as outdoor workers is not so uncivilised as it looks to those unaccustomed to seeing it. Ethnologists are agreed nowadays that the tribes in which women do the fieldwork are not the least but the most civilised, and maintain that the position of women among such tribes is higher than among any others. Women began to work out-of-doors because the primitive peoples believed in a connection between their fertility and that of the earth; and where they do such work, women are always the keepers of the grain store—hold in their hands, that is to say, the food upon which the life of the tribe depends. The most honourable primitive customs are not always the best in modern times, but there can be no doubt of the fertility of the French Canadians.
As one goes West, woman becomes more of an indoor creature; and this may be due to the greater chivalry of their men folk. But one has to remember that the great charm of Canadian life, especially on the prairies, is an outdoor charm—working in the exhilarating air—not cooking over a hot stove indoors. One hears of a few cases in which women have taken up farming or vegetable-gardening and made a success of it, but no one could honestly say that the fortune awaiting women who take up such work is usually a great one. The work is too hard, especially in the winter time. Chicken-ranching is perhaps easier; but the real demand in the West is for women to do that housework which the men have not time for. At such work capable women can earn from three to five pounds a month with board and lodging; and while they are likely to find it rather harder—certainly not less hard—than similar work at home, it has compensations besides the money to be made by it. For one thing there is none of the odium that attaches to it in the older countries. The cook is as good as her employer, who probably did the cook's work for years before the cook was to be had. It is natural that the work which most ladies have to do for themselves, because neither love nor money can obtain them substitutes, should lose its menial and unpleasant aspect, and the finest ladies in western Canada do it unashamed. Often their guests will help them to wash up, and even prepare the dinner. Personally, I found myself becoming quite expert at cleaning fish for a hostess who thereafter cooked it and dished it up, and yet appeared at table as fresh and elegant and apparently leisured as any lady who keeps a staff of servants in the old country. And I found as I got on that I rather liked cleaning fish.
It stands to reason that the lady help is not wanted. The precise duties demanded of such a lady are always a little misty, but I imagine that they include a little sewing and a little reading, the ability to chat pleasantly, to be good-tempered (and possibly a Protestant), to feed the canary, and, at a pinch, even to clean out its cage. None of these talents are needed in a new country, and I heard of forty women who were on the books of an employment office in Calgary, all wanting to be lady helps and all likely to go on wanting it till Doomsday.