[22] A recent decision in the State of New York declared that a husband is not required to fulfil his promise to return money loaned him by his wife, when she has accumulated it through economy in her housekeeping; because every saving of the kind is the property of the husband, as are the services of the wife. The wife has no money of her own.
[23] The State of Wisconsin has made men and women equal before the law.
[24] In countries where the custom of dowry persists the parents are obviously in a position to exact a great degree of regard for their wishes, more particularly where economic opportunity is no longer plentiful. In this country, where abundance of free land made the support of a family comparatively easy and secure, marriage early became a matter to be arranged by the contracting parties. In modern France, on the other hand, it is still largely a matter to be arranged between families.
[25] Several feminists have already, indeed, urged public sanction of extra-legal sexual relations, and C. Gasquoine Hartley, with a genuinely Teutonic passion for order, has even advocated their regulation by the State. This is probably impossible, for people who choose such relationships usually do so to escape regulation.
CHAPTER V THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF WOMEN
I
It is to the industrial revolution more than anything else, perhaps, that women owe such freedom as they now enjoy; yet if proof were wanting of the distance they have still to cover in order to attain, not freedom, but mere equality with men, their position in the industrial world would amply supply it. Men in industry suffer from injustices and hardships due to the overcrowding of the labour-market. Women suffer from these same injustices and hardships; and they have an additional handicap in their sex. The world of work, embracing industry, business, the professions, is primarily a man’s world. Women are admitted, but not yet on an equal footing. Their opportunities for employment are restricted, sometimes by law, but more often by lack of training; and their remuneration as wage-earners and salaried workers is generally less than that of men. They have to contend with traditional notions of what occupations are fitting for their sex; with the jealousy of male workers; with the prejudices of employers; and finally with their own inertia and their own addiction to traditional concepts. All these difficulties are immensely aggravated by the keenness of the competition for work. If the opportunity to work were, as it should be, an unimpeded right instead of a privilege doled out by an employer, these handicaps of women would be easily overridden by the demand for their labour. I shall discuss this point more fully later on. It is sufficient here to note that when the war created a temporary shortage of labour, women were not only employed in, but were urged in the name of patriotism to enter, occupations in which until then only men had been employed. The effect of this temporary shortage on their industrial opportunities affords a hint of what their position would be if the glutting of the labour-market were permanently relieved. A shortage of labour means opportunity for the worker, male or female.
Women have always been industrial workers. Otis T. Mason even went so far as to declare that “All the peaceful arts of today were once woman’s peculiar province. Along the lines of industrialism she was pioneer, inventor, author, originator.” This view is in rather striking contrast with the contemptuous derogation which has been for a long time current in European civilization, and has found expression in such cutting remarks as that of Proudhon, that woman “could not even invent her own distaff.” It is no doubt a fairer view, although it is probably somewhat exaggerated. There is certainly no valid reason to suppose that sex is a barrier to the invention and improvement of industrial processes. Be this as it may, it is undeniable that women have always been producers. Among some primitive tribes, indeed, they are the only industrialists, the men occupying themselves with war and the chase or, among maritime peoples, with fishing. The modern invasion of the industrial field by women does not, then, represent an attempt to do something that women have never done before. It does represent an attempt to adapt themselves to the new conditions created by the industrial revolution.