MARRIED WOMEN AND WORK.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—On page 512 of your issue for March 24th you have a moving poem by Katharine Tynan wherein
"The dead men to the living call :
Brothers of old, how- goes the day ?
The living heard them where they stood Idle, or trudged the pitiless street. Hopeless, unwanted."
A pathetic letter in the Times a few weeks ago spoke of the anxieties and the miseries of the 20,000 demobilized officers, many with wives and children dependent upon them, who were " hopelessly " searching for work of any kind and found themselves " unwanted."
A few pages back in the same number of the Spectator Mrs.
Peel writes : " Is a married woman with children, who can afford to keep servants, justified in being a wage-earner ? "
and finds no difficulty in answering her question in the affirmative.
We do not expect the higher wisdom, born only of experi- ence, from our young women looking breathlessly out into the world for adventure and regretting the summary closing of the door that stood so invitingly open during the War. We have, however; the right to ask of our older women, who take upon themselves the task of advising their more immature sisters, that they should face realities instead of creating a world of make-believe. Does, or does not, each woman who, for the sake of adventure and of free choice, accepts an outside career, by so doing run a serious risk of depriving of his livelihood any man who has fought for us during the War ?
We rejoiced in their strength and endurance in the dark days. The women rushed from their homes too set them free. Can they now, on calm reflection, really wish to oust them from a job ? This is a question for each woman to solve for herself. It is no answer- to say " They are all doing it Unfortunately they are. And the astonishing thing is that they are incited and encouraged in their thoughtlessness by.
women old enough and experienced enough to know better.—
I am, Sir, &c., HARTLEY REID.
Foxlease, Sunnydale, Swanage.
[We think that Mrs. Reid over-simplifies the question. It- is not true that the more work some people do the worse off the rest be. Workallows expansion and expansion creates
more work. While we sympathize, therefore, with her pity for the unemployed, we believe it to be irrelevant. A woman who accepts an outside career may be helping to make the country prosperous. The moral issue must be decided by stricter and less emotional arguments.—En. Spectator.]
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