PIN-MONEY.
AT this moment—and we are obviously in a period of great social strain—the walls of this great city resound with irresponsible talk. On subjects of the first consequence we all know what ridiculous things are said upon all sides by people who if they knew that their words were to be suddenly turned into action would be eager to take them back. On the smaller subjects of controversy this is even more true than with the greater. Take, for instance, the vexed question of pin-money. How often does one hear both men and women, but especially women, violently denouncing the girls who work for pin-money; in other words, who, while men are out of work, insist upon earning wages when their fathers could well afford to keep them in idleness ? On the face of it, it may seem a subject for indignation, but surely ten minutes' thought would convince the speakers that they are in the wrong. Supposing that these young women do not take advantage of their easy circumstances to work below market rate, and supposing they workwell—and who will give them market rate if they do not ?— how can they possibly be blamed How can their fathers be blamed either for encouraging and training thorn to make their livings even though those livings are, so to speak, already made? To say that no one shall work who does not need to do so is absurd. For one thing it degrades the whole idea of work and reduces it to nothing but a wretched necessity. If it could be carried out, the world would be instantly impoverished both materially and mentally. Practically, and so far as men are concerned, the notion is impossible. At what figure in a father's name should a daughter's idleness be enforced ? The suggestion implies the killing of ambition and the ruin of all artistic pleasure in work. But apart from the logical outcome of the argument, let us go back to the immediate question of pin-money. We are inclined to think that a well-off father of to-day is not only not bound to use his influence with his daughter to prevent her competing with men in the struggle for wages, but is hardly justified in not enabling her to do so. Ten years ago if a professional man was making a good income he regarded it as more or less secure. If he had made a fortune, he regarded it as certain to be his till death so long as he neither spent nor speculated with it. His children's future, especially his daughters', gave him no anxiety. If a daughter did not marry, he was at least sure that she would never want. But is this so nowadays ? Every man, however rich, is more or less nervosa about his money. More and more is taken from him in taxation, more and more may still be taken. No one can come through such a war as this and not feel afraid of another. As well tell a man who has just recovered from a bad illness to consider that he will never be ill again. His nerves will not allow him to live in this assurance. If everything goes for the best, it must be a long time before social questions, and that at any rate includes money questions, settle themselves. While monogamy continues to be the ideal of the nation, and even the most urgent among those who desire to stop well-off girls from working hope that it will always remain the ideal, it is a physical impossibility that more than a proportion of women, especially in the professional class, should marry. It is however, in- dubitably true to-day that a girl who works has a better chance of marriage than one who does not. Organized pleasure-seeking, even among the very young, is becoming more and more con- fined to the rich. A professional man's daughter living at home and doing nothing has very little chance of coming Bac! marriageable men. If she is not remarkably attractive, and if she is at all shy, we should say that her chances of marriage are very small indeed. If, on the other hand, she is constantly meeting people of both sexes in the course of business, she has as good a chance as there is Moreover, if she does not marry she has an interest in life, and both she and her father are
free of the terrible anxiety which must beset every one at times as to " what will become of her " if this, that, or the other political bouleversement should take place, and the result of all her father's labours and successes come, so far as money is concerned, to nothing. Of course, none of these tremendous changes may ever come about ; but we are talking of fears, not of cool calculations, and where it is a question of a man's own children and a woman's own future fear and anxiety, even excessive fear and anxiety, cannot be ruled out.
Whore married women are concerned other arguments, no doubt, have weight. It may very well be urged that a woman with children has enough to do to look after them, and ought to accept no rival duty. That, however, is a perfectly different thing from saying that if her husband can keep her she has no right to add to the joint income by work which a man could do. She may at any time be left a widow, and the uncertainty Atha times is a legitimate subject for her own and her husband's anxiety.
We presume that even the most thoughtless among those who condemn the women wage-earners would not be prepared to forbid them by law from what they call taking the bread out of men's mouths. What they would like to do is to re-create an atmosphere in which public opinion would forbid their com- peting with men for pay. Perhaps they may succeed in creating it, but we cannot help thinking that if so they will have done harm. Human nature being what it is, the reintroduction of an old fallacy will mean that once more idleness is regarded as a sort of distinction, and a false ideal exceedingly inimical to social good feeling, settlement, and assurance will be set up. Again, it would be a vast pity, a real retrograde step, if it came to be thought that domestic employments were the only ones for which a woman's wits and physique fitted her. Every one admits that this attitude towards women had a very unfortunate effect upon Prussian civilization before the war.
There is one question, and it is a difficult one to answer, which the irresponsible talkers will be sure to put to those who under- take to force them to think about a matter upon which they are loath to give up an ill-considered prejudice. " Is it your experience," they may say," that outside work is good for young women ? It may give them chances to marry, but does it make them better wives, more devoted mothers, or more contented and useful single women ? Old maids may have been a good deal laughed at, but do we not all remember a good many who would compare very favourably with the modem professional woman, and is the young working girl of to-day as delightful a creature as her mother was at her age ? " It is always exceed. ingly difficult to compare the generations—and certainly it is the most fruitless of all comparisons. The truth is that every- thing has changed. The subject we have been discussing is a side question after all. The world in which the charming Victorian girls and mothers and the very useful and pleasant old maids were brought up is not our world. One thing we think is certain, that if we enforce idleness either by opinion or law upon the young women of to-day they will not be what their mothers and aunts were. Allowed scope for their far more abundant energies, they may well be better ; but, if forced to let those energies waste, they will quite infallibly be much worse.
Previous page
