A MIDDLE-CLASS FACTORY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."'
SIR,—As a middle-class woman, I have read with enthusiasm your article upon "A Middle-Class Factory" in your issue of October 25th. It seems to me to offer a possible solution of the terrible difficulties and straits to which so many middle- class folk and people with fixed incomes are at present reduced. Said incomes are cut down by over a quarter, wages are enormously increased, and prices of almost all the necessaries of life are doubled. Consequently many indeed, especially women, find themselves in the deepest anxiety as to their future, and with little hope or prospect of betterment. For most middle-class women domestic service is hopeless, from the point of view of both employer and employed; but many of us could do work amongst machinery, &c. Surely the war has shown clearly enough of what labour, skilled and even dan- gerous labour, women are capable. Could, as you say, any open-handed (and open-minded) employer be found to follow the suggestion in your article, and start a factory to be run by men and women of the educated classes, I feel sure thou- sands of capable hands would flock to it. A little colony or garden city could he formed mound it, the workers being paid, as you suggest, by piece-work. I beg of you to push your suggestion further, and bring it before the public as strongly as you have done in your admirable articles concerning Pis6
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