Now legislation can hardly interfere to prevent this
competition, but public opinion can. If the greater part of the
industrial work now done by women at home were done in factories, this
fact in itself would offer some restrictions to the competition of
married women, which is so fatal to those who depend entirely upon their
wages for a livelihood. But the gradual growth of a strong public
opinion, fed by a clear perception of the harm married women do to their
unsupported sisters by their competition, and directed towards the
establishment of a healthy social feeling against the wage-earning
proclivities of married women, would be a far more wholesome as well as
a more potent method of interference than the passing of any law.
To interfere with the work of young women living at home, and supported
in large part by their parents, would be impracticable even if it were
desirable, although the competition of these conduces to the same
lowering of women's wages. But the education of a strong popular
sentiment against the propriety of the industrial labour of married
women, would be not only practicable, but highly desirable. Such a
public sentiment would not at first operate so stringently as to
interfere in those exceptional cases where it seems an absolute
necessity that the wife should aid by her home or factory work the
family income. But a steady pressure of public opinion, making for the
closer restriction of the wage-work of married women, would be of
incomparable value to the movement to secure better industrial
conditions for those women who are obliged to work for a living.
Pages:
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201