Mr. Provand's Bill strengthening and continuing Sir John Lubbock's Shop-Hours
Bill, passed its second read- ing on Wednesday by a vote of 175 to 152. The new Bill is decidedly objectionable in principle, as it regulates the hours during which adult women may work, and so makes it increasingly difficult for them to struggle against the competition of men. The Bill, moreover, is to be enforced by inspectors, to avoid whose interference, which would be resented, as Mr. Matthews pointed out, by many customers, employers will consent to a considerable sacrifice. The Bill was pronounced by Mr. Matthews and Mr. Balfour unworkable, and the latter offered an inquiry ; but Mr. Provand and the majority held that the seventy- four hours a week fixed in the Bill was as much as women should work, and that its main result would be that the early-closing movement would become universal. We should not object to that result, which leaves men and women on equal terms ; but we object strongly to the fresh endorsement of the principle that women are incompetent to manage their own affairs. There is a singular cynicism displayed by some of these philanthropists, who ask in the same breath that women shoald be allowed to manage everybody else's affairs, through the right of voting, but should be declared incapable of managing their own.
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