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. There is
much work that is commonly open to both sexes. Personal domestic
attendance is so, and the attendance in shops. The use of the
needle is shared between men and women; and few, I take it, know
where the seamstress ends and where the tailor begins. In many
trades a woman can be, and very often is, the owner and manager of
the business. Painting is as much open to women as to men, as also
is literature. There can be no defined limit; but nevertheless
there is at present a quasi limit, which the rights-of-women
advocates wish to move, and so to move that women shall do more
work and not less. A woman now could not well be a cab-driver in
London; but are these advocates sure that no woman will be a cab-
driver when success has attended their efforts? And would they
like to see a woman driving a cab? For my part, I confess I do not
like to see a woman acting as road-keeper on a French railway. I
have seen a woman acting as hostler at a public stage in Ireland.
I knew the circumstances - how her husband had become ill and
incapable, and how she had been allowed to earn the wages; but
nevertheless the sight was to me disagreeable, and seemed, as far
as it went, to degrade the sex. Chivalry has been very active in
raising women from the hard and hardening tasks of the world; and
through this action they have become soft, tender, and virtuous.
It seems to me that they of whom I am now speaking are desirous of
undoing what chivalry has done.
The argument used is of course plain enough.
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