The narrative of these two girls, the Misses W-, has not been given, as I before stated, as a proof of the satisfactory result of our interference in their behalf; but surely it may be received as a warning to those who have the care of young girls, and who leave them to act for themselves at the very age when they most require a judicious guide and adviser to direct them and form their character. Providence directed Anne W- to a haven of safety. How many situated as she was, are, on the contrary, led by those who are watching to entrap youth into the gulf of destruction. If these few pages are only instrumental in causing one careless mother to give more thought to the training of her children's minds in that strength and those principles necessary to resist temptation, they will not have been written in vain.

L. N.

LXV. THE BALANCE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN REGARD TO WOMAN'S WORK.

I SHOULD not this year have brought before the Social Economy Section a subject which has already received such ample ventilation in the columns of the public press, but for a sense of the responsibility under which it appears to me that we all labor in regard to what has been termed the movement in favor of woman's work, which makes me anxious to take this opportunity of stating my individual opinion, based upon the varied experience of five years.

I had at first intended to entitle this short paper the Progress of Public Opinion in Regard to Woman's Work, but in reconsidering the matter, I thought that the Balance of Public Opinion was a better name, inasmuch as the extreme complication of the question renders mere progression in any direction a dangerous matter, unless careful limitations are specified.

And here let me say, that I think of all the many classes whose interests have received benefit from fair discussions at the five meetings hitherto held of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science, women owe the deepest debt of gratitude to those gentlemen who organized the Association.

From the first semi-private meeting at Lord Brougham's house, to which he referred in his Address last Thursday, and at which Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Howitt were present, down to the present time; Lord Brougham and Mr. George Hastings, and all the numerous gentlemen who have been brought in contact with the question, of whom I would specially name Lord Shaftesbury as President of our Society, have shown the utmost desire to give women fair play; and not only fair play, for they have so managed the meetings and discussions as to enable them to be

carried on with perfect ease and propriety by all ladies desirous of taking part in any of the sections. I believe I may truly affirm that never before in the world's history have women met with such equal courtesy and true deference as that which has been shown them here.

For this reason, among many others, I feel that it peculiarly behoves women to show that they can appreciate and respond to this loyal justice on the part of men. To show that, being under no restraint and no repression, they can discuss the great question of social welfare, on which the ultimate fate of the nation in its corporate and its domestic life chiefly depends, with moderation and honest impartiality. And I do believe that, on referring to the newspaper reports, or examining the Transactions of the last five years, every one will admit that our sex fully deserved the noble confidence reposed in them by the gentlemen of this Association; that they have neither wasted its time in frivolities, nor offended it by one unwomanly word.

During this period an immense progress has in one sense been made in public opinion. The importance of all questions relating to the female population of the country has been admitted by the press and by the people. Nay, I believe that any Bill affecting the welfare of women would now receive more attention in Parliament than it would have done five years ago; and that many men would now feel doubly bound to plead the interests of those who could not there plead for themselves.

Since, therefore, there is no longer any occasion to strive to obtain a hearing, sure to be granted to us for every reasonable or practical purpose, I am doubly anxious that any discussion we may carry on this year should be marked by a desire to see and admit all sides of our question, and that we should each of us carefully state that which we believe to be truth.

Now, in summing up the papers, articles and speeches which have been everywhere promulgated on the question of woman's work, we find that at the threshold of the question we are met by two distinct theories, upon neither of which is it possible to speak or act exclusively, and yet it will make a great difference to our speech and to our action whether in the depths of intellectual and moral conviction we abide by the one or by the other theory. I will put it as simply and as shortly as possible :-Do we wish to see the majority of women getting their own livelihood, or do we wish to see it provided for them by men? Are we trying to assist the female population of this country over a time of difficulty; or, are we seeking to develop a new state of social life?

I feel bound to say that I regard the question from a temporary point of view, and that I should greatly regret any change in the public opinion of all classes which would tend to make the men of this country more unmindful of the material welfare of the female members of their families.

When I brought up this question nearly three years ago at Bradford, I confined my observations to the surplus in the profession of the teacher. I took the statistics of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution in Harley Street, and urged as remedies for the terrible destitution endured by aged ladies, that parents of the middle class should either train their daughters to some useful art, however humble, or consider it their primary duty to insure their lives if they could not afford to lay by money for their female children. I showed that in a country like England, whose wealth is chiefly derived from commerce, the fluctuations of trade fall with peculiar hardship upon the defenceless sex. That not only do merchants fail, but banks also break, and that a horrible amount of real hunger and cold is undergone by many who have been ladies born and bred; while a larger proportion, though they may never know actual physical want, are forced into one overcrowded and perhaps distasteful profession, in which they spend their lives working for small salaries.

But I never wished or contemplated the mass of women becoming breadwinners. So far from being willing to see such a system encouraged, I think it is actually obtaining among us, through the operations of modern trade, to an injurious extent. With the greatest esteem for, and even gratitude to, many masters for the pains which they take for the instruction and moralization of their workwomen, I do not believe our English factory system to be natural, and more especially the employment of married women away from their homes. I know all that may be said upon the other side; I know that any legislation on this topic would result in practical cruelty; that even rules imposed by the master of the factory would bear with harshness on the woman who may have a family to support, and a drunken or incapable husband. I believe that it is a point upon which we must allow free trade or that we shall fall into worse evils than those from which we now suffer. Nevertheless, the fact remains clear to my mind, that we are passing through a stage of civilization which is to be regretted, and that her house and not the factory is a woman's happy and healthful sphere.

It is not possible to treat a subject like this in a scientific way. Philosophers who argue upon the laws which govern the development of men are almost always destined to see their theories pass away or fade into comparative oblivion before the century which gave them birth is gone. Rousseau is seldom heard of now; Fourier exists only as the prophet of a school; even the Political Economists no longer reign over the intellectual world as they did thirty years ago, when the Poor Law achieved the practical experiment of some of their principles. If, then, theories respecting masses of men are continually being broken to pieces, how much more impossible is it to argue from abstractions upon the nature of women; for a woman's life is certainly more individual, more centered in one house and one circle; and so it must be until the constitution of

this world is changed. I can therefore only speak of women as I have seen and known them in different towns of this our country: in Birmingham, in Nottingham, in Edinburgh, in Dublin, in Leicester, in Hastings, in Glasgow. I speak of what I have seen of the lower classes, and of what I have heard from innumerable ladies, wives and daughters of squires, clergymen, doctors, lawyers, merchants. My opinions have been formed from these sources of information; and though I have found such ladies always willing and anxious in any plan for getting employment for their destitute sisters, I have always heard them lament when, from any circumstances, the family life of a district has suffered by the withdrawal of any large number of women from the home.

It may be asked, however, on what ground I have helped and sympathized with such a business as that conducted at the Victoria Press; a business which has commanded an extraordinary amount of popular sympathy for two years. I would answer, that the reason why I was so glad to see it established and successful was not so much that women are employed in it, as that it is superintended by a woman. Since non-domestic labor is the rule for our present stage of national civilization, it is exceedingly difficult to earn an honest livelihood in any other way, and if girls are allowed to spend ten hours a day spinning in a factory, they should also be allowed to spend them in printing, if that be a more remunerative occupation. But our moral sympathy is chiefly due to the Press on the score of Miss Faithfull's superintendence.

Were I asked if I should wish to see a regiment of women working in common printing offices under male supervision, I should answer No; or at least I should accept the idea with regret, and only on the principle that women must earn bread and butter. But were I asked whether I should be willing to see young women gathered together in printing offices or in the workshops of any mechanical trade, under efficient female supervision, then I should say that for the unmarried women it was, in the present state of the country, the one thing to be desired.

Before concluding this paper there is one point on which I wish to touch, because it is at the very root of the matter, and there is little good in our repeating year after year the old arguments on woman's work unless we are all content to face the serious questions which touch it on all sides. I allude to the difficulties imposed by the question of marriage. You have probably all seen and read the leading article which appeared in the Times of Monday the 9th; an article in which I entirely coincided, and upon which I should like to say a few words. The writer of that article expressed a considerable sympathy with woman's work, and made several observations which appeared to me marked by good taste and good feeling. But he stated that, after all, the question, though important, was a partial one, since the majority of women looked to married life as their happiest sphere, and that in the upper and middle ranks their

344 PUBLIC OPINION IN REGARD TO WOMAN'S WORK.

entering married life would withdraw them from non-domestic labor.

This is to my mind a self-evident proposition, and I should like to place it in a light which, so far as I am aware, has never been cast upon it in any of the discussions; and which I believe would go far to clear it up to the satisfaction of all parties if my meaning were thoroughly understood.

When men who are good and sympathetic, and who, as we have every reason to believe, really wish well to their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters, urge the claims of married life, in regard to the question of woman's work, what is it they mean?

What does married life mean in this Christian country, which professes and really does try and intend to carry out Bible maxims? I am not overstating the case; for the overwhelming majority of this kingdom, Protestants and Catholics, and even those who may be neither, are agreed in wishing to see Christian morality carried out in political and social life. Our schools, our reformatories, our teetotal societies, all prove this; and a book which preached pagan principles on any topic would have a bad chance of being circulated by Mr. Mudie.

Now the household life in a Christian country has this very marked characteristic, that it is the primary unit in social organization. The man alone, or the woman alone, is not strictly speaking that primary unit. With marriage and family life begins the great social chain which ascends from the house to the street, from the street to the parish, from the parish to the town, from the town to the country, and ends in the Government and in the Church.

The wife, in our civilization, is the centre of domestic but also of social life. She is the mistress of a social circle and of a group of children and of servants. When sensible men say that the vast majority of women are destined to marriage, what they mean, the idea which really lies at the bottom of their minds, is, that were it otherwise the whole constitution of modern society would literally go to pieces. We should be like a house built without mortar, ready to be blown down in every high wind.

As I believe, therefore, firmly, that the married household is the first constituent element in national life, so I consequently believe that the immense majority of women are, and ought to be, employed in the noble duties which go to make up the Christian household; and while I fully admit the principle of vocations to religious and also to intellectual and practical life apart from marriage, I think that people are quite right who say that these will ever be, and ought ever to be, in the minority.

BESSIE R. PARKES.