TO 

~i"lii'IIIIIIIWORKIBG, 


OF WOIB 


Fabian Tract No. I57· 



THE WORKING LIFE OF 


WOMEN. 


BY MISS B. L. HUTCHINS. 

PuBLISHED AND SoLD BY 

THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 

Fabian Women's Group Series, No. I. 

PRICE ONE PENNY. 

LONDON: · 

THE FABIAN SociETY, 3 CLE:UENT's INN, STRAND, W.C. 
]UNE I9II. 


THE WoRKING LIFE oF WoMEN. 

IT is still the custom in some quarters to assert that H the proper 
sphere for women is the home," and to assume that a decree of 
Providence or a natural law has marked off and separated the duties 
of men and women. Man, it is said, is the economic support and 
protector of the family, woman is its watchful guardian and nurse; 
whence it fullows that the wife must be maintained by her husband in 
order to give her whole time to home and children. The present 
paper does not attempt to discuss what is in theory the highest life 
for women ; whether the majority of women can ever realize their 
fullest life outside the family, or whether an intelligent wife and 
mother has not on the whole, other things equal, more scope for the 
development of her personality than any single woman can possiblyhave. The question I am here concerned with relates to the actual 
position of the women themselves. Is it the lot of all women, or 
even of a large majority of women, to have their material needs. 
provided for them so that they can reserve themselves for the duties 
that tend to conserve the home and family?

Let us see what the Census has to tell us on the subject. We 
find that in I90I there were in round numbers I5,729,ooo men and 
boys, and I6,7991ooo women and girls, in England and Wales. -This 
means that there are I,o7o,ooo more women than men, and if we 
omit all children under fifteen there are about I IO women to everyIOO men. This surplus of women has increased slowly but steadily 
in every Census since I841 ; that is to say, in I841 there were in 
every r ,ooo persons 489 males, and 5 r I females; but in 1901 there 
were in every I ,ooo, 484 males, and 516 females. 

The disproportionate numbers of women are no doubt partly due 
to the Imperial needs which compel a large number of men to 
emigrate to our actual or potential colonies and dependencies. It is 
impossible to say how many are thus to be accounted for, probably 
not a very large proportion, save in the upper classes. The Census 
shows figures for the army, navy, and merchant seamen servingabroad, but if these are added to the population of the United 
Kingdom the excess of women is still considerable. There seems t() 
be no means of estimating the numbers of men who are absent on 
private business. 

The main cause of the surplus of women seems to be their lower 
death·rate, and this is popularly accounted for as the advantageresulting to women from their comparatively sheltered life and less 
exposure to accident and occupational disease. This assumption n() 
doubt accounts for some part of the difference ; women do not work 
on railways or as general laborers, or usually in the most unhealthy 


-processes of trades scheduled as " Dangerous" under the FactoryAct. There can be no doubt either that the death-rate of women 

has been lowered by the operation of the Factory Act in improving<:onditions of employment. The death-rate of men has also been 
lowered, but in a less degree, because although men benefit by improved 
conditions in the factory just as women do, the proportion of 
men employed in factories and workshops is small comparativelywith women, so many men being employed in transport, building,
laboring, docks, etc. These latter occupations so far have obtained 
very little legal protection from the risks and dangers run by the 
workers, although many of these dangers are notoriously preventible. 

Still it is doubtful whether the lower death-rate of women can be 
entirely accounted for by the greater degree of protection enjoyed.
Women often work longer hours even under the Factory Act than 
most men do under their trade union ; much of the work done by 
women in laundries, jam factories, sack factories, and others, is extremely 
laborious. Again, the enormous amount of domestic work 
accomplished by women in their homes, without outside help, in 
addition to the bearing and caring for infants and young children, 
must be equal in output of energy to much more than all the industrial 
work of women, especially when the rough, inconvenient, 
and inadequate nature of the appliances common in working-class 
homes is considered, and the still more painful fact is remembered 
that the very person responsible for all this work is often the one of 
the family who in case of need is the first to go short of food. 

It is true that more men than women die of accidents. But let 
us add to the accidental deaths the deaths of women from childbirth 
and other causes peculiar to women. We find that in 1907 
ro,89 5 males died from accidents ; 4,890 females died from accidents ; 
4,670 from causes peculiar to women, 9,560 altogether, about 1,300 
less than men. But the total deaths of men in I907 exceeded the 
deaths of women by I4,297, an excess more than ten times as great.

There is also the question of age, which is important in connection 
with the death-rate. The number of boys born is larger than 
the number of girls, about 104 to 100. The death-rate of boy babies 
is almost always higher than that of girls, and in 1907 the death-rate 
of boys under four was higher than that of girls, but the death-rate 
of boys from four to fifteen was lower than that of girls at the same 
age ; then at fifteen the male death-rate again rises above the female 
and remains higher at all later ages. 

DEATH-RATES, 1907, PER I ,ooo LIVlZ..G. 
Under I 
year perJ,ooo births aged 'l l 4 under ' 5 10 
Wale~ 130 38"4 Is·s IO" I 6·9 44"8 3"3 I.Q 
Female~... 104 36"2 14"8 9"7 T6 37"0 3"4 s·o 
rs 20 25 35 45 55 6s all ages 
:Uale~ 2"9 3"8 s·6 9"5 I6·9 33"7 94"1 x6·o 
Female! 2'7 3"2 4"6 7"8 I3"1 26"0 85 "9 14" I 


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Now if the lower death-rate of girls and women is due to their 
being taken more care of, how inexplicable are these figures. There 
is little enough diff.:rence in the care and shelter given to boys and 
girls under four, yet the boys die much faster ; between four and 
fifteen, on the other hand, girls usually are a good deal more sheltered 
and protected than boys, and less likely to run into dangerous placesand positions, yet from four to fifteen the male death-rate is slightlylower than the femJle. At fifteen when, as we shall ste, a very large 
proportion of girls begin industrial work, the death-rates are againreversed, the male death-rate being thenceforward the higher. Nor 
does it appear that the death-rate of young women is much influenced 
by the fact of industrial employment. It is true that in Lancashire, 
where many women and girls work, the death-rate of women is 
higher than in England and Wales; but in Durham, where comparatively 
very few women and girls are employed, the death-rate i& 

higher still. 
PERCENTAGE oF FEMALES OccuPIEn. 
LANCASHIRE. DURHAM 
Ages 15 20 25·34 I) 20 •S-34 
SingleMarried or widowed 
78 
24 
8o 
25 
76 
19 
40 49 
z 
49 
3 
Death·rates, 1907Male..• 
3"3 4"2 6·J 3"8 4"7 s·6 
Female 3"0 3"5 5"4 3"7 4"4 6·3 

The contrast seems to indicate that it is not the fact of employment, 
but the conditions, both of life and employment, that are 
prejudicial to women in these industrial centres, fJr although death-
rates have generally fallen, they are still higher in most of the miningand manufacturing districts, notably in Lancashire and Durham,. 
than the average of England and Wales. 

It will be agreed that the greater average duration of life among 
women is sufficient to account for a large excess number of women 
over men, O\·er and above the emigration of many young men, which 
contributes to the same result. The surplus of women is distributed 
very differently in different districts: it is greater in London and 
the Home Counties, and also in Lancashire ; less in the miningdistricts and the rural districts ; and generally much greater in town 
than country. In the urban districts women over fifteen number 
IIZ, in the rural districts only 102, to every 100 males. This is 
perhaps partly due to the girls going to towns as domestic servants i· 
tor although the percentage of domestic servants is rather higher in 
the country than in town, the actual numbers are much less, and 
particular towns and residential urban districts-Bournemouth. 
Hampstead, and the like-show a very high percentage of servants_ 
But the higher proportion of males in the country must in part be 
due to the fact that babies born in the country have a better chance 
of life. Although the number of boys born is greater than the 
number of girls (it was about 1,037 to 1,ooo in 1891-19000 and 
slightly higher since 1901), the boy babies are on the average more 


6 


<lifficult to bring into the world and more delicate for the first few 
years of life, as is shown by the male infant death-rate being higher 
than the female. It follows that though boy babies are more 
numerous at the outset, the girls steadily gain upon them, and at 
some point in early life the numbers are equal. If infant mortality 
is high, the surplus boy babies are very soon swept out of existence, 
and there may be" superfluous women" eYen under five years old! 
But in healthy districts, especially in the country, where infant 
mortality is low, the boys survive in greater numbers, and exceed 
the girls in numbers up to the age of twenty; thus in later life the 
disproportion of women is not so great in the country as it is in 
towns. This fact constitutes one important reason (among others 
that are better known) for improving the sanitary conditions in 
towm. A diminution in infant mortality will tend to keep a larger 
proportion of boys alive, and thus by so much redress the balance of 

the sexes. T o give an instance : in rural districts of Lancashire the 
boys under five were r,o18 to every I,ooo girls; in the urban 
districts, which include many towns with a high infant mortality, 
the boys under five were only 989 to every I,ooo girls. It is impossible 
here to give many details on this point, but fuller statistics 
are given in the Statz"stica!Jourual, june, 1909, pp. 211-212. 

Marriage and Widowhood. 
But it is evident that one way or another we must face the fact 
of a large excess number of women, even though we may hope that 
improvement in the people's life and health may prevent some of the 
waste uf men and buys' life that occurs at present. How are women 
provided for? Marriage is still the most important and extensively 
followed occupation for women. Over 5,7oo,ooo women in England 
and Wales are married, or 49·6 per cent. ; nearly one-half of the 
female population over fifteen. 
In every 100 women aged 15-20 2 are married. 
" ,. " 20·25 27 " 
,, ,, " 25·35 64 " 
, , , 35·45 75 " 
, " , 45·55 71 , 
, ., ., 55-65 57 ,. 
, , 6s-7s 37 ,, 
, , , 75 !6 ,
In middle life-from thirty-five to firty·five-three-fourths of the 
women are married. In early life a large proportion are single; in 
later life a large proportion are widowed. Put it in another way. 
From twenty to thirty·five, only two out of every four women are 
married, most of the others being still single; from thirty-five to 
fifty-five, three in every four women are married; over fifty-five, less 
than two in every four are married, most of the others being already 
widowed. It is only for twenty years (between thirty-five and fifty-
five) that as many as three-fourths of women can be said to be 
provided for by marriage, even on the assumption that all wives are 
provided ·for by their husbands. 


7 


As we have seen, women exceed men in numbers, and not onlythat, but the age of marriage is usually for economic reasons later 
for men than women, and some men do not marry at all, consequently 
it is utterly vain to assume that women generally can look 
to marriage for support, and to talk of the home as "women's true 
sphere." Mrs. Butler wrote, now many years ago, that, like Pharaoh 
who commanded the Israelites to make bricks without straw, "these 
nioralisers command this multitue of enquiring women back to homes 
which are not, and which they have not the material to create." 
Although about three.fourths of the women in the country do 
get married some time or other, at any given time fully half the 
women over fifteen are either single or widowed. Women marry 
younger and live longer than men, consequently the proportion of 
widows is considerable, something like one woman in every eight 
over twenty years old. The largest proportion occurs, as might be 
expected, at advanced years. 

In every 100 women aged 35-45 6 are widows. 

, , , 45-55 16 , 

, , , ss-6s. 31 , 

, , , 65-75 52 , 

, , , 75 73 , 

Occupation. 

The number of women and girls over fifteen returned in 1901 as 
occupied was 3,97o,ooo, or 34·5. This figure can only be regarded 
as an approximate one, as there is little information to show how 
many of the numerous women who work occasionally, but not 
regularly, do or do not return themselves as occupied, and even if 
this information were forthcoming, it is difficult to see how any 
precise line of demarcation could be devised to distinguish the degreeof regularity that should constitute an "occupied" woman. The 
figure is again obviously inadequate in regard to women's work (as 
distinguished from occupation), as no account is taken of the enormous 
amount of work done at home-cooking, washing, cleaning, 
mending and making of clothes, tendance of children, and nursingthe sick done by women, especially in the working class, who are 
not returned as belonging to any specific occupation. 

It is misleading, however, to take the percentage 34·5 as if it 

meant that about one-third of all women enter upon a trade or 

occupation. 

In every 100 women aged 15 66 are occupied. 

, , , 20 s6 , 

, , , 25 31 , 

, , , 35 23 , 

, , , 45 22 , 

, , , S5 21 , 

, , , 65 16 , 

, , , 75 7 ,

These figures show what is a very important point to remember, 

viz., that the majority of women workers are quite young, and this.is 


8 

one great difference in the work of men and women. The Census 
shows that over 90 per cent. of the men are occupied till fifty-five, 
and 89 per cent. even from fifty-five to sixty-five. But for women, 
especially in the industrial classes, the case is different. Their employment 
is largely an episode of early life. The majority of youngworking women work for a few years and leave work at marriage, as 
is shown by the rapid fall in the percentage occupied from the age of 
twenty-five. It is often stated by social investigators that the 
prospect of marriage makes working girls slack about trade unions, 
and indifferent about training. Many girls seem for this reason to 
fail in some degree to realize their full possibilities or to achieve 
their full industrial efficiency. In the case of those who do marry, 
and whose best years will be given to work socially far more important 
than the episodic employment carried on by them in mill, factory or 
workroom, this alleged lack of industrial efficiency is not perhaps of 
much consequence. But although a large proportion of women are 
married before thirty-five, and as we know, the proportion married is 
greater in the working classes than among the middle and upper 
classes, yet it is a mistake to suppose that the mature single woman 
in industry is so rare as to be a negligible quantity. There are, for 
instance, nearly a quarter of a million sin~le occupied women between 
thirty-five and forty-four. They include 88,ooo domestic servants, 
32,500 professional women (teachers, doctors, etc.), 3o,ooo textile 
workers, and 40,000 workers in making clothes and dress. These 
figures show that self dependence is a necessity for many even at the 
age when, and in the class where marriage is most frequent. The 
importance to the single self-supporting woman of a skilled occupation 
which she can pursue with self-respect and for which she can 
be decently remunerated, need hardly be emphasized here. 

Married and Widowed Women Occupied. 

The proportion of married or widowed women who are occupie,d 
is about 13 per cent., but, unlike the single women, whose percentageof occupation steadily falls as age increases, the percentage of married 
or widowed occupied is low at first, highest between thirty-five and 
fifty-five, and then falls to old age. 

In every hundred married or widowed women occupied, six are 
under twenty-five; forty-four are between twenty-five and fo~ty-five; 
forty are between forty-five and sixty-fi,·e ; ten are over sixty-five.

The figures in our Census unfortunately do not separate the 
married or widowed occupied, so it is difficult to estimate from the 
above figures what proportion falls in to either class, but there can be 
little doubt that the high percentage of middle-aged women is due 
to widowhood. Frau Elizabeth Gnauck-Kiihne, who has made a 
very ablest udy of the life and work of German women,~' tells us that 
in Germany, of married women only 12 per cent. are occupied, of 
widowed women as many as 44 per cent. The proportion of occupied 
widows is probab:y lower with us, as we have much less small 
farming, which in Germany is often carried on by women after the 

• " Die Deutsche Fn.u." 

' 


husbands' death ; but there can be little doubt that the proportion 
of widows working is higher than the proportion married. In a very 
interesting passage Madame Gnauck points out the peculiar handicap 
suffered by a woman who is thus forced to renew industrial activity in 
middle life. The industrial life of women, she writes, is not continuous, 
but is split in two. Woman is normally provided for by marriage, let 
us say, for twenty or thirty years. But marriage is not a life-long provision 
for the average woman, it is only a provision for the best yearsof life, those years, in fact, in which a woman is ordinarily most 
capable of taking care of herself. The husband is, in many cases, 
swept off in middle life, and in the industrial classes he has usually 
not had very much chance of saving a competence for his widow. 
A certain proportion of women, therefore, we cannot say exactly how 
many, are forced to re-enter the labor market by widowhood, or byother economic causes-illness of the husband, desertion, and so on. 
Once more the woman appears in the industrial arena, with all the 
disadvantage of a long period of intermitted employment and Joss of 
industrial experience. Having lost the habit of industrial work, 
having very usually children to look after and a home to find, she 
has to compete with girls and young women for wages based on the 
standard of life of a single unencumbered woman. It may be that 
the inferior technical skill often attributed to women as compared 
with men is largely due to this fact, that while a man gives his best 
years to his work, a woman gives precisely those years to other work, 
and therefore returns to industry under a considerable handicap. 
We can hardly doubt that this is a chief cause of pauperism.

The late Mr. Kirkman Gray, in his interesting unfinished work, 
"Philanthropy and the State,'' wrote:-" The theory is that the 
male can earn enough for a family and the female enough for herself. 
But this theory, even if we accept it as correct, makes no 
allowance for the fact that e\·ery eighth woman is a widow. Here 
then is the bitter anomaly of the widow's position in the economic 
sphere. As head of a family, she ought to be able to earn a family 
wage ; as woman she can only gain the customary price of individual 
subsistence." The Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission 

. recognizes the same anomaly. ''It is to the man that is paid the 
income necessary for the support of the family, on the assumptionthat the work of the woman is to care for the home and the children. 
The result is that mothers of young children, if they seek industrial 
employment, do so under the double disadvantage that the woman's 
wage is fixed to maintain herself alone, and that even this can be 
earned only by giving up to work the time that is needed by the 
care of the children." 

Even the Charity Organization Society, which usually inclines to 
ignore the social aspect of economic hardship and treat evt::ry case as 
merely individual, is forced to recognize the anomaly of the widow's 
position. "We must look the poor woman's troubles in the face.... 
She has to do the work of two people ; she has to be the breadwinner 
and go out to work, and she must also be the housekeeper. She has 
to wash, clean, and cook, make and mend clothes, care for and train 


JO 

her children. Can one pair of hands manage all this? And, secondly, 
when she goes out to work our poor widuw will probably only earn 
low wages ... about 10s. a week, and she will certainly not be able 
to support herself and her family on that."~' 

The reflection here occurs that the life of women is inseparably 
connected with the life of men, and we may well pause to ask whether 
it is necessary so large a proportion of women should be widows at 
all. There is an excellent saying, that "we can have as m:my 
paupers as we like to pay for." It has an intimate bearing on the 
toleration of preventible disease and accidents as well as on administrative 
laxity in the Poor Law. The comparative mortality figure 
for the general laborer is more than double that of occupied males 
generally, and it is true the Registrar-General ascribes some of this 
mortality to confused returns, but even if some allowance, say 2 5 per 
cent., be made on this ground, the excess is still great. A pamphlet 
by Mr. Brockel bank t shows that in 1907 one shunter in thirteen was 
killed or injured at his work on the railway. The same writer gives 
reasons for supposing that the published returns of fatal accidents to 
railway servants fall far short of the truth, only those accidents which 
cause death within twenty-four hours being reported as fatal. 

Many other occupations have a deplorably high death-rate, and it 
would seem that there is still a good deal to be done in improving the 
conditions of those workers who are not under the Factory Acts or 
protected by any effective organization. The protection of women 
by factory regulation has gone on the lines of protecting the individual 
woman worker at her work. Surely protection is also needed 
for the woman at home who sees her husband go off daily to some 
dangerous trade, where, for want of the necessary technical means 
for the prevention of disease or accident, he may be killed, maimed, 
or incur disease, and she and her children be left desolate. 

It is notorious that a great deal of industrial disease and many

accidents are due to causes largely preventible and within control. 

A very interesting report was issued last year in regard to dangers in 

building operations, which affect a large number of men-over a 

million. The report states that laborers are the principal sufferers 

from accidents, and ha\'e the most dangerous part of the work to do. 

One trade union secrttary stated that 9 per cent. of his members 

had accidents in 1905. On this scale in eleven years each member 

would have an accident. Another union offi..:ial said that a large 

number of accidents were preventible, and asked for more Go\'ern


ment inspection. An employer stated that accidents were, in his 

belief, largely due to the lack of competent foremen and skilled 

supen·ision; he had only had three accidents in thirty years' experi


ence, and attributed this immunity 10 his engagement of a re::ally 

competent man. He thought the building trade got into bad odor 

with the public owing to the tendency to save in wages and put 

* "How to Help Widows," by A. M. Humphrey, p. 1. (Published by the 
Charity Organization Society.) 
t "A Question of National l mportance." (Hapworth and Co., 1909.) 


I I 

incompetent men to work that needs really expert supervision. 
Another witness complained that accidents were caused by puttingunskilled men to skilled work for the sake of cheapness. 

Dr. Young stated before the Physical Deterioration Committee in 
1q03 that factories contributed to the spread of phthisis, and that he 
considered that while a great deal had been done to combat the 
special dangers and diseases incidental to special trades in general 
industrial conditions, a great deal remained to be done, and legislative 
interference had by no means reached its limit. From the 
Registrar-General's report we find that very high rates of phthisis 
occur among men in early mJnhood and middle life. In 1891·1900 
of the total deaths among men twenty-five to thirty-five, nearly 
one-h:~lf were due to phthisis and respiraLory diseases. The comparative 
mortality figure for certain occupations in 1900-02 was as 
follows:


Other RespiratoryPhthisis. Diseases. 

All occupied males 175 

All occupied males in agricultural

districts 

Tin miners ... 

General laborers 

General laborers (industrial dis


tricts) .. . 450 

File makers.. . 

375 

Lead mi11ers 317 

Dock laborers 291 


It is in the light of such figures as these, it seems to me, that we 
have to study the problem of married or widowed women's work and 
the pauperism of able-bodied widows and their children. As women 
become better instructed, better organized, able to take more interest 
in politics, and especially when they obtain the Parliamentaryfranchise, it is to be hoped that they will agitate for drastic legislation 
and stringent inspection in the industries carried on by men and 
unregulated by Factory Law. 

In the mi11ing and industrial counties the death-rate is markedly 
.above that of England and Wales as a whole, and it is somewhat 
curious that while a great deal of attention has been gi,·en to the 
infant mortality of Lancashire, which is usually explained as being 
due to married women's employment, much less notice has been taken 
of the fact that the corrected death-rate of Lancashire is e\·en more 
above the average than is the mortality of infants.~' In 1907, which was 
an exceptionally healthy year, the death-rates of Lancashire, though 
diminished, showed themselves still conspicuously above the average;
which can be most simply shown by taking the death-rate for the 
whole country as 100. 

* See Corrected Death·Rates in Counties, Registrar-General's Report for 1907, 
pp. 12-20, cf. p. 14. 

tJ 
CoMPARATIVE DF.ATH-RATE, 1907. 


General De3th-Rate, 
corrected Cor age-constitution.

fnfants. Male. Female. 
England and Wales 
Lancashire 
100 
II7 
roo 
124 
100 
126 

A large rart of this excess mortality, which is not by any means 
peculiar to Lancashire but can be paralleled in some mining districts 
and exceeded in the Potteries, is made up of deaths from rhthisis and 
respiratory disea es, which are now considered to be largely traceable 
to unhealthy conditions of houses and work places, and in very great 
measure preventible. It is imrossible in the limits of this paper to 
gh·e full statistics, but those who desire further information are 
referred to the Reports of the Registrar-General, especially the two 
parts of the Decennial Supplement, published in 1907 and 1908 
respectively. which are an invaluable mine of facts and figures, and 
also to the StatisticalJournal (lac. cit.) 

The Woman's Handicap. 

It is not very easy to summarize briefly the facts of woman's life 
and emplovment, which demand a treatment much fuller than is 
possible within our limits. But there are several points which seem 
to be of special importance. First, there is the curious fact that 
women, I hough physically weaker than men, seem to have a greater 
stability of nerves, a greater power of resistance to disease, and a 
stronger hold of life: altogether. It is notorious that I here are more 
male lunatics, and very many more male criminals than female, and 
much fewer women die from alcoholism, nervous diseases, suicide, and 
various complaints that indicate mental and physical instability, while 
more women than men die of old age. On the other hand, there 
are more female paupers and more female old-age pensi"ners than 
male, and these facts seem to indicate that women on the whole are 
handicapped rather by their economic position than by physical 
disability. We have seen that in this country women are more 
numerous than men, and that for various reasons they cannot all be 
maintained by men, t:ven if it were theoretically desirable that theyshould be so maintained, a point which I am not here discussing. It 
follows that (quite apart from the quc::stion of economic independence 
as an ideal) e~.:onumic self dependence is in a vast number of cases a 
nect::ssity. It is impo sible to estimate in how many cases this occurs, 
but it is safe: to say that many women do in fact support themselves 
and othc:rs, and that many more would do so if they could. 

Normally working women seem to pass from one plane of social 
devetopmeut to another, not once only but in many cases twice or 
thri~.:o:: 111 tho::ir li,·c::s. We might distinguish these planes as status 
and contract, or value-in-use or value-in-exchange. All children, it 
is evident, are born into a wurld of value-in-use ; they are not, for 
some years at all events, v.1lued at what their services w1ll fetch in 
tht:: tuo.~rkc:t. At an age varying somewhere between eight and 
eighto::c:n or twenty the working girl, like the boy, starts on an 


excursion into the world of competition and exchange ; she sells her 
work for what it will fetch. This stage, the stage of the cash nexus, 
lasts for the majority of girls a few years only. lf she marries and 
leaves work, she returns at once into the world of value-in.use: the 
work she does for husband, home, and children is not paid at so much 
per unit, but is done for its own sake. This accounts on an average 
for say twenty-five years; then she, in numbers at present unknown, 
is forced again to enter competitive industry on widowhood. 
This is what Madame Gnauck has called the ''cleft" (Spalte) in 
the woman's industrial career. The lower death-rate of women is 
actually a source of weakness to them, in so far as it leaves a disproportionate 
number of women without partners at the very time 
when owing to the care of young children they are least capableof self-support, and it increases the competition of women for employment. 
Their use-value in the home, however great, will not 
fetch bread and shelter for their children. Professor Thomas Jones, 
in his deeply interesting report to the Poor Law Commission 
(Appendix XVII., Out-Relief and Wages) has been impressed by the 
pitiful fact that outside work should be forced on women whose whole 
desire is usually to be at home. He writes in reference to the well-
intentioned efforts made by the Charity Organization Society to train 
widows for self support, efforts which, unfortunately, have not met 
with much success : "The widow whom it is sought to train is no 
longer young. It is rather late to begin.... Further, many 
women are domestic by instinct, and dislike factory life. More 
important still in explaining failure .... is the conflict between the 
bread-winner and the house-mother. Many a mother is distracted 
during the training time with anxiety for the children at home who 
may or may not be properly cared for."T-

Many serious discourses and amiable sermons are delivered in 
public and in private on the supreme beauty and importance of 
woman's influence, the necessity of maintaining a high standard of 
home life, and the integrity of the family. All this may be true, 
but for many women it is singularly irrelevant. II faut vivre. 

A woman may possess all the domestic virtues in the highestpossible degree, but she cannot live by them. Value-in-use is subordinated 
to value-in-exchange. Mrs. Brown may be much more 
useful, from the point of view of her family and the community, 
when she is engaged in keeping her little home clean and tidy and 
caring more or less efficiently for the fatherless little Browns' 
bodily and spiritual needs, than she is when fruit-picking, sack-
making, or washing for an employer's profit. But the point is that 
these kinds of work do at worst bring her in a few shillings a 
week, and the former-nothing at all. In the face of such facts 
it is absurd to tell women that their work as mothers is of the 
highest importance to the State. We may hope, however, that 
public opinion will ere long be convinced that the present system of 
deal-ing with indigent widows, as described in Professor Jones's 
Report, is wasteful of child life, destructive of the home, and cruelly 

* Poor Law Commission, Appendix, Vol. XVJL 

burdensome to the most comcientious and tender-hearted mothers. 
The truly statesmanlike course will be to grant widows with young 
children a pension sufficient for family maintenance, on the condition 
that the home should be under some form of efficient inspection or 
control to ensure the money being properly laid out and the children 
cared for.'~ In the case of those women who are not naturally adapted 
to an entirely domestic life and prefer to work for them5elves, it 
might be arranged that some portion of the pension should be 
diverted to pay a substitute. These cases would probably not be 
numerous, but it is as well to recognize that some such do exist.+ 

Socialists will not fail to realize that the case of the mother of 
small children forced under a competitive system to do unskilful and 
ill-remunerated work and neglect the work that is all-important for 
the State, viz., the care and nurture of its future citizens, is only an 
extreme instance of the anomaly of the whole position of woman in an 
individualist industrial community. This is not a place to enter on 
a discussion of the lines on which the economic position of women 
may be expected to develop under Socialism. I desire here merely 
to emphasize the importance of the distinction between value-in-use 
and value-in exchange which seems to me to lie at the root of the 
whole social question; but most especially so as regards worr.en. Our 
present industrial system, and therewith largely our social system 
also, is continually balanced perilously on the possibility of profit.
Production is directed, not towards satisfying the needs and building 
up of the character of the nation's citizens, but merely towards what 
will yield most profit to the indiYiduals who control the process. 
Except to the extent of the regulations of the Factory, Public Health, 
and Adulteration Acts (often inadequate and imperfectly enforced), it 
makes no difference at all whether the objects produced are useful or 
poisonous, beautiful or hideous, whether the conditions are healthy 
or dangerous, ennobling or degrading ; profit is the only test. The 
special anomaly of the woman's position is that while the pressure of 
social tradition is continually used to induce her to cultivate qualitiesthat, so far from helping, are a positive hindrance to success in competitive 
industry, yet when circumstances throw her out into the 
struggle there is little or no social attempt made to compensate her 
for her deficiencies. Her very virtues are often her weakness. 

No sane person can argue that adaptability to the conditions of 
profit-making industry can afford any test of a woman's merit qud 
woman, yet it is all that many women have to depend on for their 
own and their children's living. The position ought at once to be 
frankly faced that women's work at home is service to the State, and 
it may be hoped that ere long some practical step may be taken to 
put in force the Minority Report suggestions regarding allowances 
to widows with young children. 

* See Minority Report Poor Law Commission, Part 1., p. 184 (Longmans' 
edition). 
t I am not here alluding to cruel, depraved, or drunken mothers. In those 
cases children should obviously be entirely removed from the mother, and she herself 
dealt with penally or curatively, as may be deemed advisable. 


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