Is It Not This, That His Sons
Shall Go Forth And Earn Their Bread, And That His Daughters Shall
Remain With Him Till They Are Married?
Is not that the mother's
wish?
Is it not notorious that such is the wish of us all as to
our daughters? In advocating the rights of women it is of other
men's girls that we think, never of our own.
But, nevertheless, what shall we do for those women who must earn
their bread by their own work? Whatever we do, do not let us
willfully increase their number. By opening trades to women, by
making them printers, watchmakers, accountants, or what not, we
shall not simply relieve those who must now earn their bread by
some such work or else starve. It will not be within our power to
stop ourselves exactly at a certain point; to arrange that those
women who under existing circumstances may now be in want shall be
thus placed beyond want, but that no others shall be affected.
Men, I fear, will be too willing to relieve themselves of some
portion of their present burden, should the world's altered ways
enable them to do so. At present a lawyer's clerk may earn perhaps
his two guineas a week, and he with his wife live on that in fair
comfort. But if his wife, as well as he, has been brought up as a
lawyer's clerk, he will look to her also for some amount of wages.
I doubt whether the two guineas would be much increased, but I do
not doubt at all that the woman's position would be injured.
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