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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 459 of 538
Words from 122133 to 122386
of 143277
