Part 1

EDUCATED WORKING WOMEN

ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF WOMEN WORKERS IN THE MIDDLE CLASSES.

BY CLARA E. COLLET, M.A., Fellow of University College London.

LONDON: P. S. KING & SON, ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER. 1902.

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.

In Memoriam.

FRANCES MARY BUSS.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF EDUCATED WORKING WOMEN. Read to the South Place Ethical Society, February, 1890 1

PROSPECTS OF MARRIAGE FOR WOMEN. The Nineteenth Century, April, 1892 27

THE EXPENDITURE OF MIDDLE CLASS WORKING WOMEN. The Economic Journal, December, 1898 66

THE AGE LIMIT FOR WOMEN. The Contemporary Review, December, 1899 90

MRS. STETSON’S ECONOMIC IDEAL. The Charity Organization Review, March, 1900 114

THROUGH FIFTY YEARS: THE ECONOMIC PROGRESS OF WOMEN. Frances Mary Buss Schools’ Jubilee Magazine, November, 1900 134

“Because precisely, I’m an artist, sir, And woman, if another sate in sight, I’d whisper,--Soft, my sister! not a word! By speaking we prove only we can speak, Which he, the man here, never doubted. What He doubts is, whether we can DO the thing With decent grace, we’ve not yet done at all. Now, do it; bring your statue,--you have room! He’ll see it even by the starlight here; And if ’tis e’er so little like the god Who looks out from the marble silently Along the track of his own shining dart Through the dusk of ages, there’s no need to speak; The universe shall henceforth speak for you, And witness, ‘She who did this thing, was born To do it,--claims her license in her work.’ And so with more works. Whoso cures the plague, Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech: Who rights a land’s finances is excused For touching copper, though her hands be white,-- But we, we talk!”

“It is the age’s mood” He said; “we boast, and do not.”

E. B. BROWNING.--“Aurora Leigh,” Book viii

PREFACE.

The six essays brought together in this small volume, in the order in which they were written, leave many questions, still warmly debated with regard to working women, almost untouched. The point of view of the writer is circumscribed by the conditions set forth in the first two chapters, which, true in 1891, may have a narrower or a wider application as time goes on. The position of women in the small section of the community known as the middle classes is there shown to be exceptional. The great majority of women belong to the working classes and spend their youth as wage-earners, in many cases under conditions injurious to mind and body, although the real work of their lives is eventually to be found in their own homes. With middle-class women the position is reversed. To those who have once realised what a large number of them may have to be self-supporting, the constant problem henceforth is to discover how the lives of educated women may be made of more value to themselves and others. The cost and reward of efficiency are therefore the two factors which in this little book are treated as being of primary, although not necessarily of greatest, importance.

The author begs to express her thanks to the Editors of the Nineteenth Century, Economic Journal, Contemporary Review, and Charity Organization Review, for permission to republish the articles which appeared in their magazines.

C. E. C.

THE ECONOMIC POSITION

EDUCATED WORKING WOMEN.

February, 1890.

Mrs. Browning’s advice to women, much needed as it is at the present time, was somewhat harsh and unpractical at the time she gave it, more than thirty years ago. At that time it would not have been possible for a woman “to prove herself a leech and cure the plague”; for on the one hand she was debarred from obtaining the necessary qualifications, and on the other she was prohibited from practicing without them. The hospitals and lecture rooms were closed to her by prejudice, and practice was therefore forbidden her by Act of Parliament. Even had she obtained admittance to the dissecting room and hospital by quiet perseverance and tried ability, she could not have hoped by such means alone to remove the obstacles which were placed in her path by legislation. The charters necessary to empower the Universities to confer degrees on women could never have been obtained, except through determined agitation; and if the agitators themselves did not seem competent to exercise the powers which they wished conferred on women, they performed the work for which they were most competent and made the path clear for those who could not have removed the obstacles themselves. The poet and the novelist had no such difficulties to contend with. Such women had no greater hardships to endure than men. If men disbelieved that a woman could write a powerful novel, she had only to do it to convince them of the contrary. But, generally speaking, women were prohibited from doing what they could, on the ground that they could not if they would. It was not universally so; in many cases girls who showed mathematical or logical power, for instance, were discouraged from exercising it, because reasoning power was considered undesirable in women and likely to hinder their chances of marriage. But, on the whole, women’s incapacity for intellectual work was put forward as a reason for forbidding them to attempt it. The futility of forbidding women to do what they were incapable of doing was never perceived by the opponents of the movement for the higher education of women, who based their opposition on this ground. Nor did it avail much to point this out. Behind this asserted disbelief in the power of the educated woman to compete even with the average schoolboy, lay a real conviction, that if she could do so successfully, the more desirable it was to prevent her having the chance of proving it. It is on record that in the days of King Ahasuerus, more than 2,000 years ago, great terror was excited lest “the deed of Vashti should come abroad unto all women, so that they should despise their husbands in their eyes, when it should be reported that the King Ahasuerus commanded Vashti, the queen, to be brought in before him, but she came not. And in order that all wives should give to their husbands honour, both to great and small, Ahasuerus sent letters into all the King’s provinces, that every man should bear rule in his own house.” As in the days of King Ahasuerus, so thirty years ago it was felt that humility in women should be cultivated at all costs, and if they became aware that all men were not necessarily their intellectual superiors they would break out into open revolt. Women had been told that they should obey their husbands because the latter knew best. If that were denied, the claim to obedience would have to rest on the possession of might instead of right.

This reiterated assertion of their inferiority has rankled in women’s hearts. For the last forty years it has been the source of most of the bitterness expressed openly on the platform, and the cause of invidious comparisons leading to mutual and undignified recriminations. It has affected the direction towards which the efforts of educational enthusiasts have been turned. Their one aim and object has been to show that capacities supposed to be essentially masculine are possessed by women also; to make it possible for women to compete on equal terms with men and to prove that they are not always the last in the race.

That the question of equality or inferiority was a wholly irrelevant one was not their fault; they had to answer the arguments of those who held the keys, and they were not to blame if these arguments were foolish. We owe much to the women who, at the risk of great unpopularity and much social loss, fought the battles by which the doors were opened, through which others passed without one effort of their own. It is because their work has been successful, not from any depreciation of its value, that I maintain that it is time to review the outcome of the last ten or twelve years, during which women have been free to compete with men in the College and the University, and to take a new departure. London and Cambridge have admitted them to examinations on equal terms, although the latter still refuses them the hall-mark of the degree. Newnham and Girton have had to extend their premises; Lady Margaret and Somerville have been established and have obtained some concessions from Oxford; University College, London, Mason’s College, Birmingham, the Welsh Colleges, and other men’s colleges, admit women to their class rooms on equal terms with men. London, Ireland, and Edinburgh admit them to their medical degrees; the Women’s School of Medicine is prosperous, and they have admission to a few hospitals. At London and Cambridge they have done themselves credit in every branch. So far as receptive power is concerned, it is now at least admitted that the rather-above-the-average woman is quite on a level with the average man. So far, so good. But although our self-respect may be considerably increased, what is our economic position? There are not yet 800 women graduates of London and Cambridge. Of these the majority are assistant mistresses in public or private schools, visiting teachers, lecturers, or head mistresses. There were in 1881, according to the census of that year, 123,000 women teachers, and over 4,000,000 girls between the ages of five years and twenty; and yet already this little handful of graduates is told that it is in excess of the demand and that it must take lower salaries in consequence. In our public high schools not one in four teachers is a graduate; in private schools the proportion is much smaller. I do not propose to discuss this question, and will only make two remarks on it. The first, that after an expensive college course, which is only less expensive than that of a man because a woman is less extravagant in her personal expenditure, a Girton or Newnham student who has taken a good degree may hope for an initial salary of £105 to £120 non-resident, rising by very slow degrees to about £140 to £150 a year. Secondly, that every graduate should remember that when she accepts a lower rate still, she is making it easier to lower the salaries of the great majority below her. If all women graduates, and they are not many, agreed to a minimum, less than which they would not accept, the mass of teachers, already underpaid, could not be told as they are at present, that graduates could easily be obtained for the sum they ask. The teacher with a higher local certificate could hold out for her £90 a year, little enough in all conscience, because she would know that no graduate would take less than £100.