Miss Helen Taylor publishes in the Times a strong and
per- fectly just protest against a form of cruelty which, she says, is practised in the Health Exhibition, and which is certainly prac- tised in all large shops. The assistants, who work for twelve hours at what is practically most exhausting labour, are never allowed to sit down, except at meal times, and actually stand for ten or eleven hours. It is "the manager's rule," and a breach of it is punished with dismissal. Now, we are quite aware that the world's work is hard work—just try digging, which is the most necessary of all work, for a month— and have very little sympathy for the notion that women are to be treated like men and paid like men, and then not work like men ; but this rule looks, to outsiders at all events, like gratuitous oppression. What is the pretext for it ? The one given by Miss Taylor, that customers are too polite or too kindly to oblige sitting women to rise, is nonsense. If all sit, they must oblige them. We understand quite well that women already tired and seated in easy chairs are not equally ready to move about, and grow cross if asked to do it ; but that is no argument against high, plain stools. If the great ladies who attend these exhibitions and are the beet customers of shops were for one week as bitter against the practice as they would be against incivility, the oppression would end ; but we fancy they help to keep it up. They have a sense of disrespect when they see shopwomen sitting which is entirely unfounded, and would disappear if sitting were the rule. The practice does not injure men as it does women, but it is equivalent to at least an hour's extra labour a day. Ask a soldier what sentry duty is ; and the soldier can walk.
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