I Do Not Think That Such
A Result Will Come, Because I Do Not Think That The Object Desired
By Those Who Are Active In The Matter Will Be Attained.
Men, as a
general rule among civilized nations, have elected to earn their
own bread and the bread of the women also, and from this resolve on
their part I do not think that they will be beaten off.
We know that Mrs. Dall, an American lady, has taken up this
subject, and has written a book on it, in which great good sense
and honesty of purpose is shown. Mrs. Dall is a strong advocate
for the increased employment of women, and I, with great deference,
disagree with her. I allude to her book now because she has
pointed out, I think very strongly, the great reason why women do
not engage themselves advantageously in trade pursuits. She by no
means overpraises her own sex, and openly declares that young women
will not consent to place themselves in fair competition with men.
They will not undergo the labor and servitude of long study at
their trades. They will not give themselves up to an
apprenticeship. They will not enter upon their tasks as though
they were to be the tasks of their lives. They may have the same
physical and mental aptitudes for learning a trade as men, but they
have not the same devotion to the pursuit, and will not bind
themselves to it thoroughly as men do. In all which I quite agree
with Mrs. Dall; and the English of it is - that the young women want
to get married.
God forbid that they should not so want. Indeed, God has forbidden
in a very express way that there should be any lack of such a
desire on the part of women. There has of late years arisen a
feeling among masses of the best of our English ladies that this
feminine propensity should be checked. We are told that unmarried
women may be respectable, which we always knew; that they may be
useful, which we also acknowledge - thinking still that, if married,
they would be more useful; and that they may be happy, which we
trust - feeling confident, however, that they might in another
position be more happy. But the question is not only as to the
respectability, usefulness, and happiness of womankind, but as to
that of men also. If women can do without marriage, can men do so?
And if not, how are the men to get wives, if the women elect to
remain single?
It will be thought that I am treating the subject as though it were
simply jocose, but I beg to assure my reader that such is not my
intention. It certainly is the fact that that disinclination to an
apprenticeship and unwillingness to bear the long training for a
trade, of which Mrs. Dall complains on the part of young women,
arise from the fact that they have other hopes with which such
apprenticeships would jar; and it is also certain that if such
disinclination be overcome on the part of any great number, it must
be overcome by the destruction or banishment of such hopes. The
question is whether good or evil would result from such a change.
It is often said that whatever difficulty a woman may have in
getting a husband, no man need encounter difficulty in finding a
wife. But, in spite of this seeming fact, I think it must be
allowed that if women are withdrawn from the marriage market, men
must be withdrawn from it also to the same extent.
In any broad view of this matter, we are bound to look not on any
individual case, and the possible remedies for such cases, but on
the position in the world occupied by women in general - on the
general happiness and welfare of the aggregate feminine world, and
perhaps also a little on the general happiness and welfare of the
aggregate male world. When ladies and gentlemen advocate the right
of women to employment, they are taking very different ground from
that on which stand those less extensive philanthropists who exert
themselves for the benefit of distressed needlewomen, for instance,
or for the alleviation of the more bitter misery of governesses.
The two questions are in fact absolutely antagonistic to each
other. The rights-of-women advocate is doing his best to create
that position for women from the possible misfortunes of which the
friend of the needlewomen is struggling to relieve them. The one
is endeavoring to throw work from off the shoulders of men on to
the shoulders of women, and the other is striving to lessen the
burden which women are already bearing. Of course it is good to
relieve distress in individual cases. That Song of the Shirt,
which I regard as poetry of the immortal kind, has done an amount
of good infinitely wider than poor Hood ever ventured to hope. Of
all such efforts I would speak not only with respect, but with
loving admiration. But of those whose efforts are made to spread
work more widely among women - to call upon them to make for us our
watches, to print our books, to sit at our desks as clerks and to
add up our accounts - much as I may respect the individual operators
in such a movement, I can express no admiration for their judgment.
I have seen women with ropes round their necks drawing a harrow
over plowed ground. No one will, I suppose, say that they approve
of that. But it would not have shocked me to see men drawing a
harrow. I should have thought it slow, unprofitable work; but my
feelings would not have been hurt. There must, therefore, be some
limit; but if we men teach ourselves to believe that work is good
for women, where is the limit to be drawn, and who shall draw it?
It is true that there is now no actually defined limit.
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