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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78463 ***
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Note
+  Italic text displayed as: _italic_
+
+
+
+
+  The
+  Disadvantages of Being
+  a Woman
+
+  BY
+
+  GRACE ELLISON
+
+  Author of “Abdul Hamid’s Daughter,” “An Englishwoman
+  in a Turkish Harem,” etc., etc.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  A. M. PHILPOT, Ltd.
+  69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C. 1.
+
+
+
+
+  THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING A
+  WOMAN
+
+
+
+
+  The
+  Disadvantages of Being
+  a Woman
+
+  BY
+
+  GRACE ELLISON
+
+  Author of “Abdul Hamid’s Daughter,” “An Englishwoman
+  in a Turkish Harem,” etc., etc.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  A. M. PHILPOT, Ltd.
+  69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C. 1.
+
+
+
+
+  [_Copyright_]
+
+
+  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY W. JOLLY AND SONS, LTD., ABERDEEN
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  _Introduction._ Woman the Discovery of the Century.
+
+  CHAP.                                                             PAGE
+
+     I. Feminist Leaders—and their Mistakes
+          (i) Unwise Haste (ii) Legislation for the
+          élite, not for the masses (iii) Hostility to
+          Man, who should be the associate                             9
+
+    II. The Drawback of Health                                        16
+
+   III. Barred from the Professions                                   24
+
+    IV. The French Business Woman                                     33
+
+     V. Laws for Women illogical and inconsistent                     39
+
+    VI. Can Women succeed in Politics?                                48
+
+   VII. Sex in Work                                                   56
+
+  VIII. Is Femininity at a discount?                                  63
+
+    IX. Pin-money Women                                               71
+
+     X. What is wrong with Marriage?                                  77
+
+    XI. The Future                                                    86
+
+
+
+
+_PUBLISHER’S NOTE_
+
+
+_These are not the reflections of a woman who has failed. On the
+contrary, her literary record, her extensive travels, the work she did
+amongst the women of Turkey, and later her war-work in France, give her
+the right to speak with authority and to command a hearing._
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Since every age has its own great discovery, who will deny “Woman” her
+laurels as the Discovery of this Century?
+
+Opinions are still divided as to how and why Woman as a Force actually
+made her first appearance. Some declare that she had been seeking
+enfranchisement for over sixty years; others maintain that the Woman
+Movement began with militancy.
+
+The truth is that no one noticed her first coming. Apparently without
+warning, she burst the fetters of domesticity and sprang from obscurity
+into the blazing sun. Wakening the dullest and the most awkward of the
+centuries, she stepped, one might say, bounded, into Freedom.
+
+Like radium or electricity, Woman the Force was always there, and the
+age that needed her discovered her. We believe that Nature intended
+this Force to balance the Force of Man. The scales must be even; and
+where one of the sexes has been either atrophied or over-developed, the
+State falls.
+
+But _the scales must be even_. We are too near our subject, and events
+now happening are not sufficiently in perspective for it to be possible
+to write even a résume of the Woman’s Movement, but it must be evident
+to everyone that there is something fundamentally wrong with the
+situation as it stands at present.
+
+Nothing has happened to weaken our faith in the possibilities of the
+great Discovery, but it cannot be denied that Woman as a Force has been
+and is being mishandled by many a clumsy engineer.
+
+It is our purpose, in these pages, to examine their mistakes.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+FEMINIST LEADERS AND THEIR MISTAKES
+
+_(i) Unwise haste (ii) legislation for the élite, not for the masses,
+(iii) hostility to man, who should be the associate._
+
+
+Resistless as the appointed tides, the Revolution of Woman has swept
+over us. Who can be held responsible? To criticise or to blame the
+women themselves would be as senseless as to attempt a judgment upon
+the shore washed by the sea. It had to be and it was. The end had come
+for Victorianism, with its soul-crushing hypocrisy. The new Force had
+to be set free.
+
+Most unfortunately the advanced feminists who took charge of the
+movement had few of the god-given gifts of leadership. There is but
+a step from revolution, with its healthy exaggerations, to complete
+anarchy. They sowed the seeds, and only the Great War—with its issues
+of life and death—has saved them and us from a terrible harvest.
+
+(i.) The leaders’ first tactical mistake, no doubt, was to set up a
+fighting corps before the average woman had learned how to march. To
+realise with what unstable rapidity they forged ahead, we have only to
+measure the distance between the women of this generation and of the
+last.
+
+History has always recorded the perils and suffering of any period
+that follows a too rapid emancipation of slaves; and as all Suffrage
+Societies alluded to women as slaves, we may adopt the comparison
+without offence. Our speed in settling the women’s question was no less
+than a crime. Women ought to have served a period as novitiates before
+taking the full vows of freedom.
+
+For our mothers the gates were locked. Their narrow horizon was
+bounded—on the one side by the needle and on the other by children.
+They had, in return, the safety and the protection of a home. For the
+women of this generation most doors have been flung wide. But with the
+full liberty to work, they have gained also full liberty to starve;
+and they are finding themselves too often forced down paths they have
+not the physical strength to tread. Rights demanded without tact, and
+the unconsidered outcry for absolute equality, have largely killed
+men’s protective instincts, and really amount to a “declaration of war
+between those who should be allies or partners in humankind.”
+
+Only a few women can go far, or last long, without a home, a pension,
+or a private income, to fall back on. Our mothers were “looked
+after” as a matter of course. So many women to-day are forced to
+work for themselves, however unqualified they may be. They have been
+given the Parliamentary vote, before even learning their municipal
+responsibilities. They have entered upon business careers without
+training or capacity. At the moment, indeed, one feels as if both the
+professional and the business worlds were actually clogged up with
+untried women.
+
+How different the whole situation might have been if the leaders had
+been content to move more slowly; feeling their way as they went
+along; organising, experimenting, and helping—teaching the meaning of
+responsibility, what it involves and how to use it?
+
+Above all, they should never have lost touch with the anchor of the
+home, until they were well able to navigate their own course in the
+variable currents of the world outside and secure not only work for an
+income, but some security for the future.
+
+_Independence, so called, that does not include economic provision for
+bad times and old age, is not independence at all._ What problem can be
+more terrible or more grave for the great army of superfluous women,
+than the absolute insecurity of their future?
+
+(ii.) The feminist leaders also made a very serious mistake when they
+based their demands for all women upon the needs of a very exceptional
+minority. “Take care of the weak part of your army,” said Napoleon,
+“the strong can look after themselves.” But in this movement it was the
+reverse policy which the leaders preferred to adopt. If a few workers
+had proved that despite obstacles, difficulties, and sex-prejudice,
+they could yet take their place in open competition with men, _these
+giant personalities were exceptions that proved the rule_. Why
+legislate for exceptions?
+
+It was maintained, from the first, that all professions should be open
+to all women; that the sexes should be at once placed upon absolute
+equality. “What one, the finest of women, can do, all should strive
+to do,” was the theory. And we had dangerous legislation, suddenly
+introduced, which was doomed in advance to disaster; carrying with it
+deceptions, disappointments, the unclassing and unsexing of women. For
+one woman who can succeed at the bar or in surgery there are hundreds
+who had far better be sighing for the cradle. They will never reach the
+bar, or prove fitted to wield the knife; and they will lose the cradle
+into the bargain.
+
+All the ages have brought forth exceptional women. At the time
+when Mahomet raised his voice in the desert, and was leading his
+dusky-skinned converts out of semi-barbarianism into the light of
+civilisation, his own daughter, the Lady of Paradise, was speaking and
+lecturing in many lands, so that her fame spread over the whole of the
+East. Yet other women were not encouraged to follow her example; and
+few made the attempt before the arrival of Zeyneb, the famous professor
+of Damascus.
+
+Yet in our own days, that woman might undertake man’s work, she was
+given the vote. It was held up, and fought for, as the key to unlock
+all professional doors—the instrument of the Millennium! It is true,
+of course, that the vote can, and perhaps will eventually be of great
+utility. But how can we judge? It is as yet scarcely out of its
+swaddling clothes; and, certainly for women, the promised Millennium is
+still far to seek.
+
+(iii.) The final, and most disastrous mistake of the feminist leaders
+was their entire _disregard of Nature herself_. It is by this means
+that the whole movement has been developed on a false premiss; for any
+overdrafts on the bank of Nature must be repaid with crushing interest.
+
+“Only the vote can right all wrongs,” said the leaders, “and as men
+used violence to obtain the vote, women must do the same. Men pillaged,
+burnt, destroyed; did evil that good might come. We must follow their
+example.” There is no real logic in such a claim. A woman simply cannot
+apply man’s weapons. Men who riot use fair violence against other
+men; whereas when women use violence against men, they gain an unfair
+advantage. When two men fight, it is the stronger who prevails; against
+women no man can strike the death-blow that is in his hands, lest he
+violate the most sacred laws of his manhood.
+
+The only “force” a woman may fairly use against men is to know what
+she wants and sit tight until she obtains it. It is, we admit, a slow
+process, but it is sure and certain—in fact the only way.
+
+What has woman, in fact, gained by violence? Since man considered
+she had not given him a square deal because he could not counter her
+violence by his own, he used the only weapon available—_complete
+indifference_. Instead of meeting man as an associate, woman became
+his enemy and his commercial competitor. As we shall later attempt to
+prove, woman is not so constituted, either physically or emotionally,
+that she can compete with men. Wherefore the loss is hers.
+
+The attitude of distrust, or at least indifference, thus created in man
+necessarily reacts on him. It was responsibility towards his womenkind
+that gave him a regular outlet for his chivalry and the moral backbone
+he would otherwise have seldom maintained.
+
+The lack of organisation in woman’s fight for independence has injured
+not only herself but man.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE DRAWBACK OF HEALTH
+
+
+One sometimes wonders whether, if more time had been given in schools
+to the study of physiology, women would have been tempted to enter upon
+physically exhausting careers.
+
+When we examine the complicated but delicately-made workmanship of the
+female body, compared with the simple robustness of the male, we must
+seriously consider whether Nature intended women for their present work.
+
+People have argued and will always argue that we have women who are
+stronger than men. This we do not deny; but the whole conformation of
+a woman’s body goes to prove that she is not fitted for heavy physical
+work, whatever her mental capacity may be.
+
+Thus it is that all the controversy about the abolition of a Woman’s
+Police Force, (which never existed), makes one wonder why a body of
+_Welfare Workers_, as they really are, should want to be called
+_Police_, when they are unable to protect themselves, far less to
+arrest a man. Think what a blow in a woman’s chest may mean! Or a kick!
+Or a chill at the wrong time!
+
+But here again, we have the advanced feminists attempting to spoil
+a very valuable “welfare” cause, by forcing women down a road which
+they are not fitted by Nature to tread. More than this, they can only
+succeed as “welfare” workers, when the police become interested in
+their work and will protect them, if necessary, whereas now they annoy
+the whole force by taking the title and uniform of a profession they
+cannot safely adopt.
+
+This is how a policeman summed them up. “God forbid that I should ever
+want to prevent a woman from earning her living; but it gives a fellow
+a kind of degraded feeling to be asked to take any woman into the
+immorality of Hyde Park at night.” So ought every policeman to feel,
+and the whole _raison d’être_ of his profession goes, when he has to
+share it with women.
+
+When the Great War came, woman had the unique experience of trying
+her hand at all work, from the land to the railway station and the
+omnibus, and from the counting-house to the Civil Service. She could
+then judge men’s work first-hand. There were no men for the hard
+fetching and carrying, so that she had to do it herself. The general
+opinion has been that she proved a remarkably good stop-gap; _but only
+a stop-gap_. The most intelligent women workers have recognised and
+owned this.
+
+During the War, too, there was always the patriotic ideal to help
+one along. Could so many have toiled day and night had they not ever
+ringing in their ears the eternal refrain, “I am helping to win the
+War, I am doing my bit.” It is not just to criticise, then, women who
+worked with a zeal and self-abnegation for which some of them will have
+to pay, physically and morally, till the end of their lives. At the
+same time, when women ask to be judged for their war-work according to
+men’s standards, they are playing the game of the little frog in the
+fable who tried to measure himself against the ox, and they will suffer
+as he did.
+
+And who amongst us has forgotten the physical strain for even the
+strongest women? During the war, the bus women used up their strength
+and their nerves. They were so over-wrought that a cross word would
+produce a torrent of wrath, and one spoke to them as seldom as
+possible. Yet the work is no more strain on a man than eating his
+breakfast.
+
+How can any one pretend that such war-work suited the women? I remember
+a woman porter who took charge of a suit case for me that few men would
+have found heavy, but which I myself could not carry. The pale-faced
+porteress soon became too exhausted for such a load. So I gave her a
+large tip and kind words in exchange for her insults; and under the
+influence of this unexpected kindness, she burst into tears. Were not
+most of our workers in a similar state of nervous prostration? Then
+there seemed no option; but looking at the havoc that was thus wrought
+upon women’s health, one wonders whether it would not have been better
+to have imported coolies or blacks.
+
+And where is the contractor who will pay for woman’s work at the same
+figure as man’s? In the labour market women must always be a poor
+speculation from the physical point of view, and so, when equal work
+means equal pay, the man, for whom there is less physical risk, secures
+the job. Woman must undercut man, which is economic suicide.
+
+In office life too the routine work proves a great strain. Women start
+off so full of zeal. They overwork, as they love and hate and take
+exercise, _always to excess_. And the flame of youth quickly burns
+itself out. German doctors have always advocated that to assure safety
+in middle age every woman, whether she thinks she requires it or not,
+ought to have two complete days’ rest a month. But how many can afford
+this? and what would their employers have to say?
+
+And who does not know how easily a woman’s health is wrecked by poor
+or insufficient food? Argue and warn as one may, no woman who has
+to choose between clothes and food would choose food. She cannot,
+clothes being a business asset. In short, since we are summing up the
+disadvantages of women’s work, it must be admitted that the question of
+health is her chief handicap—a handicap which often puts her altogether
+out of the race.
+
+In the days of primitive men and women, they divided their work, as
+it were, by instinct. He hunted the wild beasts; she cooked them and
+looked after the little savages in the tent. Neither attempted the
+other’s task, and yet to-day, with all her physical disqualifications,
+woman is often forced to do the work of both.
+
+Indeed, the whole situation seems to have been reversed. Very few
+women are really qualified to succeed in men’s professions, yet often
+they persist in trying until they break down, whereas it is doubtful
+if there is one part of a woman’s work that men cannot do as well, if
+not better than women—though they seldom care to try! That is to say,
+though men may not be good, all-round house-keepers, they are better at
+special jobs. As a tailor, a servant, a chef, a masseur, a hairdresser,
+a dressmaker and sometimes even in the care of babies, they are better
+specialists than a woman. In the United States, Chinamen are found to
+make excellent nurse-maids.
+
+When I was crossing the Atlantic during one of the worst storms of the
+year, a British officer took charge of his baby in a fashion that won
+universal admiration. Every woman on board, including his wife, was
+ill; so the father powdered and bathed, combed and fed the little
+thing; yet, when questioned, he owned he had never done anything of the
+kind before, or even watched the operation.
+
+How many outstanding women painters, musical composers or doctors, can
+we name? In the theatre, where she can keep her sex and give full sway
+to her emotions, woman reigns supreme; though even here sometimes, at
+the expense of health.
+
+Entirely without disloyalty, one must emphatically declare (for
+the statistics of the war are on record to prove it) that, for
+physical reasons alone, we cannot rely on women to replace men in
+professions, in the business world, nor as land-workers. They can, very
+successfully, supplement men and, temporarily, replace them, but their
+physical strength quickly gives way and their reign must of necessity
+be short.
+
+Then why not give our first consideration to health? Why attempt work
+for which we are not physically fit?
+
+In the administration of prisons, hospitals, and work-houses, as
+poor-law guardians and, above all, in the home, women can render
+invaluable service. It seems a thousand pities for them to neglect
+these spheres for others where they are too often foredoomed to failure.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+BARRED FROM THE PROFESSIONS
+
+
+Taking professional careers as a speculation, i.e., carefully counting
+the outlay and what it is likely to bring in, can we deny what a
+University woman once said: “With training at one British and at two
+foreign universities, and all our degrees, as well as dancing, singing,
+music, painting, riding and other accomplishments, should we not have
+been, so far as actual monetary gain is concerned, better off had we
+learnt to stick labels on jam-pots?”
+
+Look what a barrister’s education costs, and yet “briefless barristers”
+amongst men are the rule, not the exception. Hear what young barristers
+have to do and put up with until they can get their chance. Remember
+that some have to leave the thorny road without securing even a chance.
+For men, the Bar is a great career fraught with passionate interest,
+but bristling with disappointments. The prizes are few and far between.
+What then has taken woman along that most difficult of difficult ways?
+Is it a real love of the profession? Or is it a vain desire to be
+amongst the first interesting few? Has she any real chance of success
+at the Bar?
+
+Some people are inclined to think women ought to be able to plead
+for their own sex better than men—but can they? Have they the sound
+logic of the man barrister? Is not his fox-craftiness, cynicism, and
+self-possession more necessary than the fund of emotion which is her
+trump card? Perhaps the very qualities she is relying on to win her
+case will lose it. It must be a long while before women can make a name
+for themselves at the Bar, for only _super_ women will ever get briefs.
+“We trust women doctors with our lives,” it is said. “Yes, but you
+trust the woman lawyer with your purse!”
+
+From the first, Mlle. Miropolsky, the brilliant Polish-French
+barrister, herself a woman of unusual intelligence, very wisely placed
+a rich barrister husband between herself and the financial side of
+life. In any case, both have exceptional personalities, and are leaders
+in their profession.
+
+But would anyone in their senses consider the Bar as a suitable
+_provision_ for the average woman?
+
+In Medicine, though physically hard on women, and despite the cost
+of the long years of training, there is more chance of success. To
+begin with, the East can utilize a great many women doctors, and in
+the medical mission field they have proved their unique worth. Yet in
+spite of the war, sex-prejudice has not vanished, and only women of
+exceptional personality can keep a practice together. And despite all
+that has been said or written to the contrary, it will be long before
+this prejudice disappears. Her sex is against women here as in so many
+other fields of endeavour. When one recognises how much personality and
+capacity public opinion demands from a woman doctor, and how all her
+little slips are multiplied a thousandfold, one sees that medicine can
+only be a stop-gap, and that the experiment is indeed costly.
+
+In the early days, suffragettes quoted the father who said: “Had my
+girl been a boy, I would have risked the money and put him in practice;
+but, with my limited income, that would be too much to ask me for a
+girl.”
+
+As an investment, medicine for women is very risky. When the career is
+completed, a practice has to be bought. How is her health to stand the
+strain? Has she enough courage and personality to keep up her practice?
+Surely most fathers would do better if they used the money to purchase
+an annuity instead of spending it on training.
+
+Another great drawback to the woman doctor is the refusal of other
+women to trust her judgment. As a confessor, where above all one would
+have prophesied her success,—and every doctor is to a certain extent a
+confessor—she often fails. Is it lack of heart and of understanding,
+or simply of _savoir-faire_? The fact remains, however, that a large
+number of women, seeking the mental help that a doctor so often gives,
+would unburden themselves more readily to a man.
+
+When a man and a woman, both doctors, work together, the partnership is
+generally a success, and not only among married couples. The friendship
+of mutual interests, _where no love comes in_, often raises both to
+great heights of purpose, and achieves much that is conspicuously
+worth while. If one, or both, are married, so much the better.
+
+The solitary, spinster-practitioner can have no secretary in her work.
+In partnership the strain is diminished for both, and the patients feel
+much greater confidence with a man in the background.
+
+The two professions for which, at any rate in the past, no special
+training was required, are journalism and the stage. In these
+professions competition is fiercest. It is not always the best written
+work which pays; it is not the most talented actress who wins public
+applause. There are hundreds, however, who love the excitement of
+trying to find even a tiny corner of their own in these streets of
+adventure, and they are ready to go through fire to secure it.
+
+The University of Columbia, U.S.A., has now a Chair for “Journalism,”
+which shows the value of training in this profession. Paris has a
+Conservatoire where all their artists are trained, free of charge,
+after admission by open competition. The preliminary work thus
+entailed, however, does not in the least diminish the keen competition
+that we must expect in professions which hold the chance of such big
+possibilities. Yet once more, for both, good health is absolutely
+indispensable. The harassing strain of uncertainty plays havoc with the
+finest constitution, and the public, out for amusement and interest,
+has no time for waning or fallen stars.
+
+The fact is that women are only fitted constitutionally for certain
+kinds of journalism. The office night-work is too exhausting, and the
+path of the War Correspondent is one no woman should seek to tread.
+There are insurmountable difficulties all the way, and, speaking from
+personal experience, I am convinced that she can only pull through at
+all by throwing herself on the chivalry of men. In the French army,
+officers were seriously punished for uselessly exposing men’s lives;
+yet in order to furnish the sensational head-line of “A Woman in the
+Trenches,” fathers of families had to risk their lives to protect
+her, to my certain knowledge, over and over again. It ought not to be
+allowed.
+
+In the early Victorian era, teaching and nursing used to be the two
+professions for women. They were both badly paid, and if the school
+teacher had little or no prestige, the governess had none at all.
+Nursing was and is still done in hospitals for a pittance; private
+work is better paid, but the women who do it tell me they dislike the
+profession.
+
+Both teaching and nursing are, however, vocations, and girls who only
+take them for want of something better, do not, of course, give their
+best. Yet no work requires women of more solid character. They have at
+their mercy, to make or to mar, the young and the sick, yet candidates
+for these professions cannot be chosen. Neither nursing nor teaching,
+taken seriously, is a sinecure, and again robust health is required for
+both.
+
+In the arts, _i.e._, music, painting and literature, training is
+not enough, and since men have not only to be put on their feet but
+“seen through,” women must also be “seen through.” Genius, generally
+speaking, will find its public, but the arts too frequently mean that
+lessons are given for bread and butter. From both the artistic and
+financial aspect, however, one wonders whether such poor results are
+really worth while. Things have naturally been much worse since the War.
+
+The hand-to-mouth, Quartier Latin or Chelsea Studio existence is all
+very well as a stop-gap, for a change or even a picnic; but what of the
+future? When is the woman paid enough at this work to save for her old
+age. It simply cannot be done. There is Florence Barclay, it is true,
+who made more than enough for a life-time with one book—and there are
+other exceptions. But these are rare enough to be called miraculous.
+
+In the Middle Ages, teaching and nursing were done by nuns. They gave
+their lives to the community; and the community cared for them—in
+sickness, unto death. Nowadays, if women still give their lives to the
+community, a lay community, the community (or the State) must see that
+they never want.
+
+Considering the strain of teaching, the terrible risks of nursing, and
+the uncertainty of women being strong enough to pursue their work after
+middle age, they ought not to be left dependent upon any profession
+that does not carry with it the security of a pension; unless, indeed,
+they are well insured, and, for greater safety, insured by the State.
+
+A profession cannot be abandoned and then picked up again for rainy
+days. A woman will come back, as men have, to find herself out of
+date, out of the running. She is not wanted; her place is taken by
+younger women.
+
+In every profession—the Bar, Medicine, Teaching, Nursing, or
+Journalism, woman is hindered by her physique. It is idle to contend
+with the statistics which prove how many women between forty and fifty
+break down seriously, and never get fit again. Even in partnership with
+men, where all the risks are obviously diminished, they must be sure of
+provision in case of sickness. Most professions are good ladders but
+bad crutches. Under the present conditions of destructive competition,
+they too often prove no more than an expensive hobby.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE FRENCH BUSINESS WOMAN
+
+
+From long residence on the Continent I have been able to study at first
+hand that admirable person the Frenchwoman in business. What a power is
+hers! What would France be without her!
+
+There is certainly no need nor any intention to undervalue Frenchmen;
+but in France one sees woman in her right place, holding the balance
+of power that follows most closely Nature’s obvious design. There, on
+the one side, is man performing the hard physical labour which he alone
+is wise to attempt; on the other, his partner, woman, with her clear
+business judgment, advising, supervising, suggesting, persuading: never
+allowing herself to be carried away by sentiment, but always looking
+facts in the face. A very tiger over her own offspring, she would sell
+her own soul—or anyone else’s—to save her children; and for that
+reason must be met with extreme caution by the foreigner. Her personal
+judgments nevertheless are always based on clear-headed common-sense.
+
+Wherefore, despite her large army of mateless women, France will never
+be faced with the “women’s question,” as we know it. Women in France
+are, to a large extent, independent of public opinion: they do not fear
+facts.
+
+Any ideal of “single-blessedness” would not appeal to them. “It
+is neither practical nor natural; why therefore should we pretend
+otherwise?” We question indeed if English women are quite sincere in
+this matter. “It is better,” they say, “to be alone than with the wrong
+man.” “A strange ideal,” answers Madame, “how do you know that he _is_
+wrong until you have tried?”
+
+As the French believe, whatever work a woman may undertake, she must
+be man’s associate and partner; neither his subordinate nor his
+rival. Wherefore she gives her daughter a professional, or business
+training; _and_ above all, money. A shopkeeper’s daughter generally
+marries her father’s most promising assistant. The business becomes
+a sort of double partnership, and most of these marriages prove quite
+satisfactory. So if a girl’s father is in the army she generally
+marries an officer; if a banker she will choose a man in a bank. It
+is a practical family arrangement seldom leading women out of their
+own class. The disastrous sort of “The Earl and the Girl” affair, so
+familiar to us, could scarcely ever take place in France.
+
+It is true that France has now a large army of mateless women, but the
+greater number are widows. As widows they are either carrying on the
+family business, working in government posts, or living with their
+parents. Few, of their own choice, would set up alone for themselves.
+
+In their eyes the English woman seems always struggling with “so much
+work for such small results:” driven to occupations for which she
+is not properly equipped. They would never expect or permit their
+own daughters to face the material insecurity which few of our women
+workers can avoid. Here they may swim, more often they sink. The
+Frenchwoman says, “swim by all means if you can, but first make sure
+that you never sink.” A profession or a business is not enough. The
+girl must have a home _or_ money. Mothers who cannot provide all three
+will at least insist on one.
+
+Even a short residence on the Continent will suffice to show us what
+sacrifices all Frenchwomen are prepared to make in order that the
+“daughter” may never find herself in the humiliating position of having
+no money behind her, whether she marries or not. I knew, for instance,
+a doctor who was killed in the war before his daughter’s dowry had
+been saved up. The widow at once let her furnished house, and took the
+position as housekeeper in a school. She is living on her husband’s
+pension; the rest is put by for the girl. This of course is only one
+example out of a thousand. The woman thinks no work beneath her, or too
+heavy to undertake for her daughter’s future. Public opinion accepts
+her sacrifice as a mere matter of course. It is her duty.
+
+As a matter of fact, however, our snobbish attitude towards
+shop-keepers is unknown in France. The woman who sees that she can do
+better at business than in a profession, goes into business. As a rule
+she succeeds in both, because she will sink her personality and take up
+the position in which she is needed most, whatever her qualifications
+for better work. An expert at embroidery, bodice-making, or
+hair-dressing will devote her life to keeping the books of the family
+business for the good of the firm. The woman doctor may be sighing to
+make her name as a surgeon or oculist; but for the good of the practice
+she will readily give her mind to research work, or, if her husband is
+also a doctor, to writing his lectures. Her whole career may have its
+course changed, but she remains content.
+
+Moreover, the Frenchwoman never forgets, or ignores, her real
+object—_permanent security_. They are a race of cautious investors,
+who will invest almost everything they possess to put a child on his
+feet. They will not make him a clerk, always subject to dismissal; a
+secretary, always looking for better posts. They put capital, however
+small, into his business to _establish_ him there.
+
+It is for this reason that, at the boot-makers, dress-makers,
+milliners, and elsewhere, you so continually meet the familiar faces.
+The assistants, whether married or not, keep their jobs until they can
+face the world with a fixed income. A few English, and more Americans,
+make larger fortunes, it is true; but how many of us would have the
+patience to “heap up” franc by franc, the security which is the great
+aim of every Frenchwoman.
+
+Comparisons are odious, but we certainly have much to learn from the
+French business woman.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE LAWS FOR WOMEN—ILLOGICAL AND INCONSISTENT
+
+
+How strange it is that Englishwomen, who enjoy a liberty of action
+their sisters on the continent regard with envy, should yet be governed
+by a code of laws as inconsistent as they are unjust. From this code
+were taken the chief planks of the Suffrage platforms.
+
+Though the feministic appeal was made first to unhappy, or dissatisfied
+women, it was easy to rouse righteous wrath in all by dwelling upon the
+cruel laws to which women in this land are subjected.
+
+Tell a woman that “by the law you are not the legal parent of your
+child,” and who could not secure a majority by such an appeal?
+
+When the “master” is good and kind, the position of wife, mother, or
+daughter may be quite satisfactory. When, however, a woman is thrown
+into the grip of these cruel laws, then Heaven have mercy on her!
+
+Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, because they might otherwise
+have been more quickly reformed, Englishwomen have, to protect them,
+the Englishman’s own self-made code, really of more effect than any
+law:—simply, “_It isn’t done._” Every British gentleman bows to the
+great judge, Public Opinion. Alas, however, every Britisher is not a
+gentleman, and again one asks: “What chance has a woman when left to
+the mercy of the laws of the realm?” Even the Moslems, who are not
+supposed to credit women with the possession of a soul at all, have
+more consistent and just laws than ours, and, what is of the greatest
+importance, children are always given a legal status.
+
+It is astonishing that the British gentleman, the world-renowned
+sportsman in the very highest sense, can stand not only for the wrongs
+that are done to unmarried mothers, but worse still, for the wrongs
+done to the poor defenceless beings who come into the world unasked,
+and yet suffer all their lives for what has not been in any way their
+own fault. Considering the real nature of that very fine being, the
+British gentleman, and a finer than he does not exist on this earth,
+in comparison with the men of every other land, one wonders whether,
+after all, his attention has ever been properly drawn to this injustice.
+
+The laws are so out of harmony with all the “fairplay” for which he
+stands. First, taking woman as a wife. There are far too few obstacles
+to prevent her marrying in haste, and far too many, since these hasty
+marriages are allowed, to prevent her unmarrying. One cannot, perhaps,
+altogether approve of the Continental arranged marriage, but there is
+certainly something to be said for the wisdom of a system that demands
+the parent’s or guardian’s consent up to the age of twenty-five. At
+least it puts off the “evil day”; and gives the families on both sides
+time to act. Both family histories, and both family banking accounts
+are carefully examined; and, in most cases, the State ceremony and
+service in church combined are calculated to impress upon young people
+the solemnity of the partnership into which they are about to enter,
+and the interests of the future generation it will be theirs to
+safeguard.
+
+Compare these carefully arranged marriages with some of our slipshod,
+ill-considered unions, based on pure physical attraction which
+naturally cannot last!
+
+If neither the State, nor the parent, will—or can—do anything to
+prevent hasty marriage, why should the laws for Divorce be so
+consistently illogical. They are not only illogical, but disgracefully
+unfair. In Italy there is no divorce—neither the Church nor the State
+grants it—so the situation is quite clear; both sexes are treated alike.
+
+In France, the State, not the Church, grants divorce for men and women
+on equal terms; that, too, is fair.
+
+In England, however, _the divorce laws do not help the right class of
+men and women_, and release is not granted to women on equal terms with
+men.
+
+A frivolous-minded couple, who have rushed into matrimony without a
+thought, and have very quickly had quite enough of one another, can go
+through the usual “restitution of conjugal rights” comedy—disgraceful
+legislation, unworthy of our traditions.
+
+It is the wife of a criminal lunatic or a confirmed drunkard who has
+our pity. For her, or the woman tied to a thoroughly immoral man
+who tries to lead the sons astray, there should be permanent relief.
+Judicial separation is not a sufficient protection for the children.
+
+No thinking woman wants easier divorce or anything to loosen family
+ties and lead to legitimatised “free love.” But even devout Roman
+Catholics are now prepared to “use scissors” for the protection of
+children. Handicapped by nature, often the victim of circumstances,
+the unmarried mother is always to be pitied. Although she has the
+advantage over the married woman in being the legal parent of her
+child, yet for her public opinion is merciless. From the father of the
+child, when she can prove who he is, she gets a mere pittance; and if,
+driven to distraction and temporary insanity, she puts an end to the
+little life that began with so much sorrow, she must stand alone in
+the dock. Without defending the woman—God forbid, a little life is too
+sacred!—one cannot help asking: “Where is the man?”
+
+In summing up the disadvantages of being a woman, here is one of
+the greatest. Public opinion and the law defy nature, and by their
+cowardly unchristian attitude frequently drive poor erring humanity to
+the crime of infanticide.
+
+Perhaps the German treatment of this problem is the most Christlike.
+Human nature being what it is, such things will happen; no legislation
+can stop them. Therefore, these children must be brought up as honest
+citizens, _not as children of sin_. The German “Mothers’ Home,” where
+no difference is made between the married and unmarried, is well worth
+a visit and might be imitated with advantage.
+
+“For every sin there is pardon,” we repeat mechanically; and yet
+the British Code puts the awful scarlet letter of illegitimacy on
+defenceless children, and not even the marriage of the parents can wipe
+it out.
+
+One of the most unjust of laws in this realm is that which allows
+parents to disinherit their children. On the Continent this cannot be
+done. Children are entitled to one-third of the parents’ possessions.
+However worthless, they are the parents’ “creations,” for whom the
+responsibility cannot be evaded.
+
+It is true that some parents give away all they possess in their
+life-time in order to deprive the children of their inheritance. This
+is illegal, however, and punishable by the law.
+
+There is something very mean in the attitude of parents who cut off
+their children with the proverbial shilling. They are often influenced
+by mere caprice, a marriage they dislike, or a change of religion. Yet
+whatever a child has done, is this justifiable? And surely a daughter
+who acts in defiance of the wishes of her parents, needs them all the
+more when the predicted day of sorrow arrives. To disinherit a son is
+bad enough, but to disinherit an unmarried daughter is criminal.
+
+The case of the daughter who does not marry in order to look after
+her widowed father and suddenly finds herself penniless because the
+new wife will not let him provide for her, could not happen on the
+Continent. Over and over again one has met these poor victims. Well
+over thirty-five, and yet just starting to work. How can parents be so
+heartless?
+
+On the Continent there is, at least an unwritten law which forces a
+brother to look after his sister. No one likes to accept charity from
+a brother, yet Continental public opinion deals harshly with the man
+who deserts his mother and sisters in their time of need. It is more
+lenient to those who neglect their wives; children and one’s own flesh
+and blood, however, seem somehow to have a closer claim.
+
+A good brother is the dearest possible pal. And what a difference his
+mere existence makes sometimes in the attitude of his sister’s male
+employer. Yet, as many Englishwomen must admit, their brothers are
+scarcely aware of their existence. There has been no quarrel, but they
+do not even correspond; he has married and has new interests. The
+companion of his childhood is a memory that cannot even be kept alive
+by a postcard.
+
+Brothers know perfectly well, or if they do not know they ought to be
+told, that woman’s value as she grows older decreases in the labour
+market. They have become so used to sisters helping themselves when
+they are not married, or badly married, that they lose interest:
+influenced, in some cases, maybe, by a jealous wife. How bitter the
+heart-ache of many a “Maggie Tulliver” at the indifference of “brother
+Tom.”
+
+None can deny the injustice of these English laws. It was said that
+they would never be changed until women obtained the vote. As no
+thinking worker could uphold such crushing, humiliating, and dangerous
+laws, they worked whole-heartedly for the Vote, and obtained it. Yet
+the laws have not yet been changed. It was then maintained that the
+Vote was not enough, women must sit in the House of Commons.
+
+What have they done in the House of Commons?
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+CAN WOMEN SUCCEED IN POLITICS?
+
+
+Can women succeed in politics? It is, perhaps, too early to say.
+Suddenly some giant personality may give the lie to all that could be
+said against woman as a politician.
+
+Meantime, who but Lady Astor could have been the first woman M.P.?
+Who but a woman of her social position, wealth, and personality could
+have secured the reception accorded her by the House of Commons? And
+who but a woman—trained in America and as a Christian Scientist—would
+have had the courage to take up a work for which she was not educated;
+braving the criticism of the whole civilised world. But she has done
+it, and in spite of serious blunders at the beginning, she has done it
+remarkably well. When one remembers her demoralising wealth, that she
+had no business training at all, that she has to rely on her quick wit
+for speeches, one wonders what she might not have accomplished had she
+been through the professional mill.
+
+But will she really help women at Westminster? Has she really their
+cause at heart? Can she understand them? Certainly she belongs to that
+fine school of American idealists who want to make great reforms.
+Only, to do these great things, you must understand them, and can she
+understand women’s needs, who has not herself been in need? She has a
+chance to help women, such as no one else has ever had, or may have
+again. Will she take it?
+
+The cause of the working woman will always be well championed.
+Besides, the poor can beg; professional women cannot. On their way to
+independence some women have found sorrow and humiliation and suffering
+at every corner, but to whom will they ever confess?
+
+Lady Astor was certainly not very successful in her attitude towards
+divorce. Had she studied the question sufficiently? Possibly not, and
+that was the reason. She supposed the thinking women of England were
+trying for _easier divorce_, not _reformed divorce_, and who could
+blame her for wishing to keep out of England the “easy divorce” laws
+of the U.S.A.
+
+As a professional working woman, Mrs. Wintringham ought to be able
+to give the professional woman’s point of view with much more
+understanding than Lady Astor. Her speeches are commendably brief and
+to the point, but the public usually prefers personality and social
+standing to the highest, technical qualifications. It is, indeed,
+another very great point in Lady Astor’s favour that she has no axe
+to grind. The constituents who elected her because she is Lady Astor,
+will elect her again; whereas, with other woman candidates we have yet
+to find out whether they will put their own personal interests before
+their cause.
+
+There was a time when one supposed women would clear up politics as
+they cleared up a dirty house. But are they more to be trusted in
+politics than men? A woman comes out of Labour ranks; as she gets on,
+she becomes socially ambitious, then she throws her party aside. Men
+have done it over and over again; they call it “evolution,” and women
+no doubt will say the same.
+
+The few women who are likely to sit in the House of Commons can make
+_very little difference to the constitution_, and it might be wiser for
+women to use their vote for forcing men on to their side, and so making
+sure that their wishes are carried out with regard to Bills with which
+they are particularly concerned. Women and children’s laws need reform
+so badly; is it safe to rely on future women M.P.’s? It is true that
+we have not yet had any bills framed by women for women; they may be
+master-pieces of statesmanship. Let it be said meanwhile that at least
+they could not be worse than the existing man-made laws.
+
+The danger of trusting women in politics, comes from their lack of
+_esprit de corps_, yet the very _raison d’être_ of their being in
+Parliament is to protect and help other women; to uphold other women’s
+interests. But see how they run their clubs! No men’s clubs are
+conducted on such lines. The best of them cannot choke that Mothers’
+Meeting spirit, which shows itself at the most unfortunate moments. And
+the meetings are often conducted in the most unsportsmanlike manner.
+Over and over again a woman in the Chair will close the meeting if
+the feeling is going against her party, or her speaker cannot answer
+questions.
+
+Individual women are magnificent; but to trust them collectively is
+futile as yet. Either from ignorance or from something in woman’s
+nature, somehow or other she so often seems to let other women down.
+We have said that Lady Astor, if she really cares to understand the
+professional woman’s point of view, could be of the greatest service to
+the women’s cause.
+
+Outside the House of Commons, however, the women’s cause has suffered
+a great deal from the rich and titled women who annex it as an
+interesting hobby, draw up impossible charters for women, hold
+drawing-room meetings, agitate and drive their hearers on much faster
+than they ever ought to attempt to go. As one of the victims said: “I
+wish she would talk less, and offer us instead a good meal.”
+
+There is not this terrible gulf of misunderstanding between rich men
+and professional men. Not even a workman would have his interests
+meddled with by people who have neither the right nor the capacity to
+interfere. They would very soon send Lord X. about his business, if he
+addressed them as his wife once addressed a women’s meeting. Stretching
+her pretty Paradise-plumed head out of her magnificent sable furs,
+she said: “Twopence is quite enough to spend on a meal; one penny for
+a packet of pea soup powder, and one penny for margarine. It makes
+a most delicious soup. I give it to my guests.” The pearls she was
+wearing would have fed a whole community for a long time on a much more
+substantial menu than two penny-worth of pea soup.
+
+Another lady of great wealth advised a typist, earning only one pound a
+week, and forced to live on bread and cheese with a cup of tea, to “cut
+out the tea; it is indigestible. One good meal of bread and cheese a
+day is _excellent_; that is my régime.”
+
+What is the use of answering such cruel folly by talk of sisterhood
+and democracy? Are they not mere idle words? Have we advanced one step
+since Marie Antoinette asked her historic question, “Why are the poor
+crying because they have no bread; can they not eat cake?”
+
+There is no more fascinating, or useful, study than Foreign Politics.
+See what a conscientious student can learn in its train—history,
+geography, foreign languages, the literature and the psychology of
+different races. Then comes the longing to visit foreign lands, to see
+and judge their civilisation, and to understand them through their art
+and music. What better League of Nations Study-circle can there be than
+this?
+
+And now, when in spite of conferences and meetings and reunions, the
+great cry is “less Europe and more England,” is there any chance for
+a serious study of foreign policy? The papers give us less and less
+foreign news; and how then are we to stimulate the great cosmopolitan
+spirit which ought to awaken a new breath of life?
+
+If only such women as Lady Astor would revive the political “Salon,”
+where the great statesmen of the world could meet and discuss the
+affairs of nations, they might surely accomplish more for humanity than
+as members of Parliament?
+
+Those wise old French _salonières_ who have passed into the realm of
+history, could no doubt have secured direct representation. They had
+no such desire—and therein showed their wisdom!
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SEX IN WORK
+
+
+Some women workers are curiously inconsistent. They have declared that
+sex shall not on any account enter into the business world. They cut
+off their hair and dress themselves as nearly as they dare in men’s
+attire; yet they deliberately put a _feminine label_ on their work.
+
+Why the label? Is it lack of sex confidence, or is the work so weak
+that it must trust to that label and beg for mercy?
+
+Take the title of “Women Journalists.” What does this suggest? Either
+an agency for supplying articles on dress or cookery, or a group of
+women banded together to demand their professional rights. As neither
+is meant, the term is misleading. And why should a journalist, whether
+man or woman, want to belong to any but a Society of Journalists?
+
+It is the same with the Women Artists. Why the label? At the Leipzig
+Palace of Women’s Work in 1914, the work of one artist drew everyone’s
+attention, and presumably she was a woman, since the Society had taken
+her to its bosom. Her pictures of Berlin’s underworld were so powerful,
+that they gave birth to all kinds of important prison reforms. But what
+was she doing in that anæmic assembly? Kathie Kollwitz was her name.
+
+Her idea in allowing her work to be labelled “woman” was to help other
+women. Alas, how often the Christian spirit achieves the precise
+opposite of its intention! Kathie Kollwitz’s work, rather than helping
+women, killed by its superiority any chance of appreciation others
+might have secured. The terms artist, writer, author, musician, actor,
+professor and doctor should be used for both sexes. Work must be judged
+regardless of sex, or it is not worth judging at all.
+
+Yet however much we protest against the label, sex is there all the
+same. Lifeless work is sexless work. Sex is like fire, water, and the
+other vital things of life, a great power when properly dominated. At
+the same time its legitimate use in art, as in life, is too subtle
+a weapon to be flourished recklessly as we stumble over the rocks of
+progress.
+
+In the world of workers, sex often makes difficulties in business
+relations. It is for men to judge exactly how a woman handles the
+men under her control. Towards other women she is often the hardest
+task-mistress, when not actually unkind and unjust. In her search after
+the tiny flaws in a piece of work, she loses the great spirit of the
+whole. Her values are wrong; for this reason it is dangerous to give
+average women the final word.
+
+It has been said that men put up more readily with incompetence than
+women. But this is not quite the case. They are more patient and more
+indulgent, and they take the trouble to judge from all round. The most
+aggravating little imperfections may well be balanced by some sound
+practical efficiency which, in the business eye of an employer, cancels
+all other faults. He knows he cannot expect perfection, and is content.
+
+Women are not so much exacting as unreasonable. With the exacting
+one can deal; but not with the unreasonable. In business the terms
+_unreasonable_ and _incompetent_ are synonymous. In time, no doubt,
+women will learn to take broader views of life and will acquire sense
+of proportion. The question of kindness to their own sex will thus
+adjust itself, but in the meantime only a very limited number of
+them are _big_ enough to employ others: which obviously means much
+unnecessary suffering for the workers.
+
+On the other hand, relations between men and women in business are
+not always easy. A woman may be allowed to take positions of such
+importance in the office that she will shake the whole foundations of
+business; which is obviously unwise.
+
+On the other hand, a man will often take advantage of a woman in
+business and find her an easy prey, just as he makes a good bargain
+for himself with a less wide-awake rival, without any offence to his
+business conscience; or if, under the influence of a smile and pearly
+teeth, he make a bargain that he regrets when thinking it over, he will
+soon find a means for catching up the pretty incompetent. Sometimes,
+again, a feeling of pity for a woman fighting life’s battles leads him
+to do things for her he would never dream of doing for a man. Alas! how
+many business careers have been wrecked on the rocks of sympathy.
+
+The much criticised _impresario_ is not the only sinner. Wolves in
+sheep’s clothing are to be found in every walk of life, and the very
+harmless act of accepting a lunch from an employer may swing the
+business relations on to entirely the wrong footing. After that, it is
+too late.
+
+A woman who has business dealings with men must train herself to be
+two personalities—official and private. The more she is accustomed
+outside the office to being her own sweet self, the more must she
+school herself to leave the charming female on the doormat, and convert
+herself into a shrewd business woman who wants all her wits about her
+to conclude a bargain.
+
+The woman in business who allows a man to take any but a business
+footing with her, must lose, _the odds being against her always_. By
+not putting her foot down at once, she finds herself quickly out of
+things altogether, with no chance of return.
+
+There are, of course, many trying feminine types in business. For
+example, there is the woman who wants to be treated with 18th century
+courtesy. When asked why he objected to women lecturers, a secretary of
+a big society replied: “We hate being discourteous, but we really have
+not time to meet women at the station, dine them, and look after them.
+A man looks after himself. You will say a woman ought to do the same.
+Well, she does not. You can’t let her. A woman’s a woman....”
+
+A very distressing type of worker is the one who, having signed a
+contract, wants to get out of it directly a better offer is in sight.
+This happens too frequently. She knows very well a man would have to
+pay heavy damages for doing such a thing. So she plays the feminine
+note, and the employer is cornered. All he can do without scandal is to
+cut his loss and get rid of her as quickly as possible. But his whole
+attitude towards women becomes filled with distrust, and the innocent
+have to suffer in consequence.
+
+Once women learn to work more as the associates of men, these
+uncomfortable questions of “sex” will necessarily to a large extent
+disappear. But at the present moment they must unfortunately fill a
+large space in any attempt to sum up the disadvantages under which
+women work.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IS FEMININITY AT A DISCOUNT?
+
+
+Femininity is a disadvantage to the professional woman, first of all,
+because it is expensive, and secondly because it takes up too much time.
+
+If the hours spent trying on dresses, hats and other items of the
+wardrobe were presented in the form of a bill, one may wonder how many
+feminine existences would have a life balance at all.
+
+Some women make dress their life work, the planning of their clothes
+and going out to show themselves in them, dominating all else in their
+minds. While others, the workers, are sighing for just a little more
+time, mostly to keep themselves neat and tidy. Life does sometimes seem
+out of proportion.
+
+The subject of dress in a professional woman’s life is a vexed problem.
+How is she to find time to attend to her wardrobe? A short while ago,
+I saw a woman at the club sipping hot water. She owned she was banting.
+“I’m getting fat,” she said, “too fat to be stock-size, and that
+would be a calamity. Where can I find time to wear any but ready-made
+dresses?”
+
+Yet unreasonable as it is to wear lace cuffs, collars and blouses which
+require constant washing and ironing, what true woman would give them
+up? Laundry bills are too heavy, so these things have to be done at
+home, and the already long day must begin an hour earlier, probably
+at six instead of seven. And how much time is squandered sewing on
+buttons, mending, and other things. For a woman suffers when she feels
+all her garments are not in order; those unseen, as well as those
+seen. Whilst the man worker goes off to tennis, cricket or football
+on Saturday afternoons without a thought of the clothes to be mended
+for him by some female hand, the woman worker stays at home to do her
+tidying up herself.
+
+Although the final result is often quite as satisfactory as when the
+work is done by a woman, there is something pathetic in the sight of
+a male using a needle. He holds his garments in such awkward, though
+mathematically correct, positions, and the table is his thimble.
+Nothing more quickly arouses the maternal side of a woman than the
+sight of a man with a needle. “Has he no woman to look after him?”
+is the question which comes instinctively. And, in the same way a
+chivalrous man will ask, “Has she no man to take care of her?” when he
+sees a woman wearing herself out in an office.
+
+People may argue as they like; the old primitive division—man the
+hunter, woman the tent-keeper—is the natural order of things. Will the
+world’s mind really grasp any other? It is true that women workers are
+to be seen everywhere in England, but, as one witty woman said, “their
+real work has to be done out of hours.”
+
+“However severe the orders given my servants to leave me to work
+undisturbed,” said Flora Annie Steele, “just when I am wondering how
+I can best kill off my hero, the cook comes in to tell me she has no
+lemon.” Such a thing would never happen to her husband were he the
+writer of books.
+
+Another woman, the editress of a big woman’s paper, tells me she leaves
+home to this tune—“the pipe has burst,” “the gas is out of order,”
+“the ceiling is leaking,” and then more of these important items are
+sometimes communicated by telephone to the office during her busiest
+days. All this side of life, of course, is kept from a busy man. He has
+to think only of his work.
+
+Knowing, as she does, the time that clothes take to keep in order,
+knowing that long hair means at least an afternoon to wash, and always
+constant attention, a feminine woman defies all reason and somehow
+makes time for these things. And so it is with the care of her house or
+flat. She could live in lodgings or have a corner in a hostel, but she
+cannot bear the atmosphere that is not of her own creation. She must
+therefore have a place of her own. The whole of her income probably
+goes on the upkeep of her home; she cannot afford a servant, she cannot
+even really afford a flat if she looked into the future as a man looks.
+But she will have it. From an outsider’s point of view, one wonders
+where the pleasure comes in. She begins the day by getting her own
+breakfast, and having worked in an office all day, she returns to shop
+and sweep and dust and sew, or to cook and wash up for friends when
+they come to spend the evening. “It’s silly, I know,” said a bachelor
+woman, “I’m always having to draw on my sleep capital, but I couldn’t
+stand “apartments,” and I’m not going to try.” Were women really
+intended to live in this way?
+
+Seeing then the time that femininity absorbs in a woman’s career, can
+we not understand those who cast it aside for ever? They cut off their
+useless hair, buy substantial masculine boots with low, flat heels,
+and dress themselves as nearly as they dare in the comfortable, ugly
+fashions of men.
+
+From the artistic point of view the result is often deplorable. It
+needs a brave woman to be seen in such clothing, except at a carnival;
+but for the work they have to do perhaps male attire is more consistent.
+
+Such clothing, however, convenient as it may be, tends to unsex the
+wearer. No longer feminine, unable to be quite masculine, she becomes
+a _neutral_, and her real friends, male or female, are few and far
+between.
+
+I shared a cabin, crossing the Atlantic, with one of these “neutrals.”
+Except for a very short skirt, her garments were all masculine until
+the evening when, remembering her original sex, she extracted some
+rings from a grandmother’s pocket somewhere in her nether garments, and
+at the same time allowed her femininity to go the length of wearing
+lace stockings, without ceasing, however, to don her major’s coat. Such
+a woman would probably never do any great good nor any great harm, and,
+supposing she had sex, it could easily be transmuted to her work.
+
+This type, nevertheless, gets a perfectly square deal from a man
+employer. “With such a woman as a business associate or a secretary, I
+can treat her like a man,” said a member of Parliament.
+
+Probably this type of woman would be excellent on a jury, even a jury
+to try a murderer. But to ask some women to sit on juries is next to a
+crime. It is not at all in their line of thinking. They would be much
+happier buying silk stockings and leaving this grim and complicated
+subject to men or to other women of tried experience.
+
+In the question of juries we have another example of the part being
+made greater than the whole. For one woman who can be of any real use
+in a police court, a hundred are no good at such work, at least until
+they have learnt to be more just to their own sex, and more balanced in
+judgment. No woman should sit on a jury against her will.
+
+Face to face with two million superfluous women, perhaps the “neutral”
+may offer a solution, who can tell? They work mechanically, like the
+bees, and judging the work, one forgets the worker.
+
+But it was neither as a hybrid nor through any male mentality that Mme.
+Curie succeeded in helping her husband to discover radium. It was the
+feminine quality of her mind that was of such great value. And when he
+was killed in the most stupid of street accidents, that female mind
+became sterile until the day when she found a substitute for the great
+masculine mind at rest.
+
+George Eliot, before she met George Lewis, was no more than a competent
+journalist. With the assistance of his mind she wrote _Adam Bede_.
+Without him, would her novels have ever been produced?
+
+And the hybrid can never be good for the community. It may be
+convenient for us to ask women to give up their femininity, but the
+sacrifice is too great. It is marking her with the same gender as a
+table.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+PIN-MONEY WOMEN
+
+
+After health, women’s great obstacle in work, comes the pin-money
+woman. There must be something fundamentally unnatural in a system that
+makes women disloyal to one another, yet it is pin-money women who are
+the hardest on those who must work.
+
+When the proprietor of a girl’s magazine can obtain a Girton Honours
+student as editor for thirty shillings to three pounds a week; or
+when another University graduate, with five years linguistic training
+in Germany, France and Italy, will work in a Government office for
+three pounds a week, how is the woman who absolutely depends on her
+own efforts to compete with her? Thirty shillings is the price of a
+none too luxurious room in London, without a meal; it is, therefore,
+very wrong of qualified women with enough to live on, to accept three
+pounds a week. A competent woman secretary may be satisfied with one
+hundred and fifty pounds a year, because she has a handsome allowance
+from her father so that she need not live with her step-mother. She
+has two incomes. Work keeps her from getting bored and gives her a
+certain _raison d’être_. But it is her low salary that helps to kill
+all possibility of women’s work being taken seriously.
+
+Apply for the post which Miss X. has given up for another hobby, and
+ask for a living wage. You will be stared at in amazement. “Miss X.
+with her exceptional qualifications did it for so much,” they say, “we
+must find another Miss X.”
+
+How do pin-money women come into existence? And why do they increase?
+“It is useless having more than one or two daughters at home,” says
+the father of four daughters. “Supposing my daughter can earn only one
+hundred pounds a year, that will keep her in clothes and pin-money and
+save me that amount in allowance.” But her work cannot be considered
+either a career or an independence. She does not even supply her own
+“bread and butter,” whereas most of the salary of the serious worker
+goes on that alone.
+
+The head of the house supposes, and continues to hope, that his
+daughters will marry, and his responsibility come to an end. With this
+in view, he thinks that a little office experience will do her no harm.
+It will teach her at least the value of money. And so, year in, year
+out, the army of pin-money women, marking time, make it more and more
+impossible for those who must work to earn their living. One sometimes
+wonders whether these pin-money women have any idea of the sorrow and
+hardship they bring to other women; only the wearer feels the shoe
+pinch. The amateur, who is not forced to work and can give it up at any
+time, so easily becomes slipshod. Hence arises the tendency to class
+even the best women’s work as amateur.
+
+Amongst those who are making the professional woman’s career more
+difficult, we can now also count the Society women.
+
+The number of Society women who, since the war, have pushed their way
+into literature, art, films and the business world, is bewildering.
+It frequently means that the poor girl, who naturally cannot compete
+with the beautiful and much advertised fine lady, has to serve as
+“ghost” and rewrite the Countess’s articles, for which she gets a
+mere pittance. The Countess is paid for her name: and the “ghost” must
+submit, as she knows that hundreds of other women are ready to take the
+work.
+
+In business there may be nothing against a combination by which the
+Countess X supplies the capital and Miss X does the work. Men lend
+their noble names to help along financial schemes, and women may do the
+same, if only a fair share of the profits be allowed to the worker.
+
+One must admit that nowadays many Society women are out to make money,
+and generally succeed, thus doing far less mischief than the pin-money
+women who are qualified to make money and yet work for a pittance.
+
+There were days when the middle-class professional worker was
+considered the backbone of the nation. Are those days past?
+
+Democracy, with its blundering fingers, has shuffled the cards so badly
+that it is difficult to see where things will right themselves. It is
+as useless to sigh for the days when a countess was a countess, and an
+actress an actress, and a worker a worker, as to weep for the fine men
+of England who are asleep amongst the Flanders poppies. No competent
+worker fears competition; lack of competition means stagnation.
+There is a great difference, however, between _competition_ and
+_under-cutting_, which is what the pin-money women are systematically
+creating. Competition builds the edifice, under-cutting makes it fall.
+And no words are sufficiently harsh for the amateur worker who, to
+avoid _ennui_, does not hesitate to ruin her poorer sisters, actually
+lowering men’s wages in the process, and—indirectly—forcing more women
+into the labour market. There is great importance in the distinction
+between the woman who works in collaboration with her husband, and
+the woman who works to help keep the household. The latter is always
+a dangerous experiment, and one which often ends in the wife having
+to keep the whole house. When a woman is able to earn money, the man
+so easily falls into the habit of letting her do it, till gradually
+his efforts become slacker and slacker and he often leaves off working
+altogether. _An energetic, wage-earning wife always demoralises a man._
+
+An able-bodied man who allows his wife to keep the family is a poor
+being; yet in these days of women’s work, it is becoming more and more
+frequent, the energetic, clever woman attracting a weak, lazy type of
+man. Women ought to let men understand from the first that husbands
+are responsible for the family expenses. In the day of misfortune, of
+course, normal rules do not apply.
+
+At the same time, the married worker may be as great an obstacle to the
+single woman as the pin-money woman. Under the shelter of her husband’s
+roof, she can do work for a comparatively low figure which must injure
+her less fortunate rival.
+
+Work has been done from mere vanity! In fact, as one man said about his
+wife’s work: “One requires a really large income to be the husband of a
+literary woman.”
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+WHAT IS WRONG WITH MARRIAGE?
+
+
+Pages have been, and always will be, written about love and marriage,
+or marriage without love, or even marriage as a profession. All the
+roads of romance lead that way, all sorrows spring from its wrong
+vibrations, or because it never came. Whatever may be written or
+thought to the contrary, marriage will always remain the woman’s
+vocation.
+
+When one sees a worn-out, middle-aged, woman taking notes at some
+tiresome political meeting and knows that she still has to write her
+report before she can struggle home in the small hours of the morning,
+one asks: “What has she gained, morally or financially? Would she not
+be far better at the fireside mending stockings?”
+
+We have set out, one by one, the disadvantages under which women labour
+in the different professions they have taken up. What, after all, is
+safer or better than matrimony?
+
+Not, however, the matrimony of our grandparents, but matrimony on the
+basis of _moral partnership_.
+
+In the past century, when the wife was a kind of head servant and
+obeyed the master without questioning his authority, matrimony ran on
+easy enough lines. Now, when modern woman has a distinct personality of
+her own, unless both husband and wife have a high sense of duty and a
+feeling of partnership in the family they have created, their home-life
+cannot be a success.
+
+And yet, with all its imperfections, on what better arrangement can
+they co-operate?
+
+We have admitted that exceptional women, with unusually good health,
+can succeed in the professions, but certainly the majority are, both
+physically and morally, best fitted for married life. All the emotional
+qualities of women, the worrying over details, the love of order, the
+forgive-and-forget process of training children, are home virtues. The
+qualifications for success in business are entirely different.
+
+And, for our generation, noting the moral upheaval and depravity
+following the war, there was never a time when clear-thinking women of
+high principles were more needed in home-life. There was never a period
+when young men had more need of the one love that will never betray
+them—the mother love.
+
+We in England have so much that could never be found in France, but we
+now need to learn a few lessons from France with regard to family life.
+
+Most unfortunately, the literature of France seldom depicts French
+home-life. Frenchmen read novels that, in frank contrast to their
+lives, scoff at marriage and extol adultery. Are we not, alas,
+following in the same tragic footsteps? It is more tragic for us, for
+we have not the same critical balance. Sentimental natures like ours do
+not reflect, and thus easily digest the tainted food which the French
+are critical enough to analyse. Those who have lived in France know
+that the Frenchman loves his home. It is his one ambition to have a
+home and family, and for this ambition he can depend on encouragement
+and support from all.
+
+The English marriage system may be idealistic, but is it practical? The
+French system, with the bride’s dowry, has often been criticised and
+condemned, but there can be no question that on the whole it is far
+better for the bride. It is said that in France a man marries a woman
+for her dowry; which is sometimes true. Here, however, he often cannot
+marry for lack of it, which is worse. Just one or two hundred pounds
+a year which the French mother begins to collect when the daughter
+is born, and scarcely misses herself, would hardly tempt mercenary
+suitors, yet it makes all the difference to the girl. The provision of
+a dowry is rightly considered a sacred duty. To allow a daughter to
+marry without something of her own is looked upon as a disgrace, and
+even the poorest _concierge_ finds the wherewithal for her girl’s dot.
+
+But apart from the fact that this small standby is an encouragement
+to early marriage, it raises the wife to the position of a “partner,”
+and as a partner she naturally has a right to know exactly how the
+household works. “I haven’t the least idea what my husband’s position
+is,” English wives have said. “I spend my allowance, but perhaps I
+ought not—who knows?” Imagine her feelings if her husband should
+suddenly announce that he is a bankrupt. She has contributed without
+knowing to the general useless expenditure. That could never happen in
+France where the woman takes her full share of management.
+
+The French system differs from ours because money is given at the time
+of the daughter’s marriage instead of at the parent’s death, when it is
+often only half as valuable as it would have been in early life. Either
+the couples have married and set up for themselves, struggling along
+in a crippled way for want of a little extra money, or the young man,
+not daring to risk life for two on his first earnings, has married less
+happily than he would have done in earlier manhood.
+
+Above all, a sense of humiliation prevents many women from marrying.
+Rather than be utterly dependent on a man, they prefer to work for
+themselves. “You feel so cheap taking a salary as if you were a
+housekeeper.” In a struggling or unhappy marriage, where too often the
+man resents every penny he doles out, the position is heartrending for
+a woman. Some, ashamed of not contributing to the home and unable to
+make ends meet out of their small allowance, supplement it by adopting
+a profession. This may help, but as already suggested, it often leads
+to all sorts of complications.
+
+Girls should be encouraged to marry young, though not too young. It is
+dangerous for them to have gone too far on the road of independence,
+for success may make them so “difficult” in their choice that they
+wait too long and do not bother to marry at all. The Turkish proverb:
+“Friendless still he remaineth who demands a perfect friend,” may prove
+a wise warning in the matter of choosing a husband.
+
+In an Empire like ours, where many of our young men have to emigrate,
+and cannot afford to take a wife out with them, there would be many
+obvious advantages in some system of dowries.
+
+No French mother would let her son go to the end of the earth without
+a wife to look after him. She knows, “it is not good for man to be
+alone.” Nor does she relish the idea of daughters left to “wither on
+the virgin thorn.” Perhaps, even, she considers the daughter’s case
+more seriously than the son’s. For she has made up her mind that
+matrimony is not only the most natural, but the only path for a woman,
+and she leaves no stone unturned to bring about a marriage. Friends
+help, the family confessor helps; the conspiracy is an open secret, and
+no one thinks any the worse of her for her scheming.
+
+Perhaps the best and happiest marriages are those arranged by brothers.
+When a girl marries her loved brother’s best friend, it is the safest
+way of making assurance doubly sure.
+
+Between the too cautious system of the French and our careless methods,
+there ought to be a happy mean. We have been arguing by extremes. Could
+we not compromise and secure the advantages of both methods?
+
+We have advocated early marriage. We who love children know what it
+means for them to have young parents. Early marriage, however, is a
+danger, unless the family ties are tightened. Would Englishmen and
+women ever take their mothers into their confidence, and act on advice,
+as the French do? Yet every great virtue has its own defects, and
+very often the Frenchwoman’s great love for her son will tempt her to
+cripple his best interests both in marriage and in his career. She
+may spoil his career by keeping him in France where he does not obtain
+either experience or promotion. She may force him to marry “well” when
+his heart is elsewhere, though an understanding and unselfish mother
+generally chooses a better wife than he would have found for himself.
+
+There was a time when every Englishman scorned the idea of a dowry.
+Now, though not actually applauding the system, they do fall in love
+more easily with the daughter of rich parents, and, in these hard
+times, who can blame them? A woman naturally resents being married for
+money; but we have never seen any signs of rejoicing in those who have
+been left penniless in the hands of the best husband. That is more
+humiliating, not less.
+
+The greatest advantage of the French system, which provides something
+for both husband and wife, is that a young couple _can_ marry, and
+their children will have the immense advantage of young and healthy
+parents. How, in these hard times for professional men, can one of
+these afford to marry before he is nearly forty, and this often results
+in his wife being left a young widow with a family, the children
+without the moral and material support of the father when he is most
+needed.
+
+It is only a small sacrifice that these French parents make in slowly
+and steadily saving money for their daughters, and it seems incredible
+that for want of similar unselfishness, this country should eventually
+abound, as it must, in destitute women.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE FUTURE
+
+
+What is to be the Future of the army of two million superfluous women?
+
+We maintain that, with few exceptions, the vocation of women is
+matrimony. But where are all these two million to find husbands?
+Certainly not in England.
+
+From time to time, the papers are full of the need for women in our
+colonies:—Rhodesia, Western Canada, or Australia. But does such a need
+really exist? Why cannot some thoroughly competent and trustworthy
+woman be sent out on a mission to these places—as the _Daily Mail_
+quite recently sent one of its men representatives—to investigate, and
+produce a reliable report of all the facilities for emigration? It
+is idle and dangerous to pursue such ideas blindfold: we need exact
+figures and precise facts.
+
+If there is work in the colonies for our women, why not send them
+out? If there _are_ men there wanting wives, the rest will follow as a
+matter of course.
+
+When we read what the first Puritan colonists of America endured and
+suffered, and how the women battled along beside them, we need feel no
+fear of what Englishwomen can do when put to the test. In the fight for
+home and children woman stands out supreme. Who knows what a marvellous
+tale of love, adventure, and real heroism, a new exodus might call
+forth? But we must know the truth. Are women really needed in the
+colonies, or are they not?
+
+Every woman has the right to some goal in life. She was not born to
+vegetate; and where the vocation of husband and children is lacking, a
+field of sufficient interest to absorb her whole life must be found.
+What about the Church? Or some other form of work in the service of
+Humanity?
+
+Every student of human nature knows that great insatiable longing of
+one being for the special sympathy of another, the two making one
+perfect whole. The Roman and Anglican Churches have expressed this
+instinct under the simile of Christ the bridegroom and the nun or
+sister, His bride. This Union between God and man is perhaps the only
+one that can replace the wonderful exclusive tie between a man and a
+woman. How many women who buried their “one man” in the battle-fields
+of France, have found their consolation in Heavenly Union and taken
+refuge from the world in the service of humanity with the protection of
+the veil?
+
+In Protestant England, however, the convent does not mean what it
+means in Latin countries, yet England assuredly needs women to labour
+for the certain benefit of their sex. She wants another St. Theresa,
+without her delusions. But where is she? Certainly not in the ranks
+of the women who would drive us to the Bar and the House of Commons.
+Nor amongst those who would send us back to crochet in our mother’s
+drawing-rooms.
+
+Help must come from the religion of _practical service_; and who knows
+whether if women once gain a broader and saner outlook, they would not
+do fine and noble work in the pulpit. They must be chosen, of course,
+with the greatest care, or more harm than good will be done.
+
+If only there were more of us like Miss Maud Royden, a broad-minded,
+deep-thinking, human woman, who can do only good wherever she goes.
+
+We do not want the “shrieking sister” type. We want women who will
+preach that human nature is neither foul nor base, but a noble,
+beautiful thing; that men and women are neither angels nor beasts, but
+just men and women in sore need of help.
+
+The non-conformist Church, too, should make room for more women in its
+foreign missions; and what a fine field there is for the trained nurse
+as Florence Nightingale conceived her. To-day the mere ‘paid’ nurse is
+a different being altogether, with few, if any, of the qualities of the
+pioneer. Too often she is neither working in God’s service to relieve
+suffering, nor straining her mind and strength to learn the laws of
+health. Florence Nightingale’s religion was her work. But where are her
+disciples now?
+
+Nevertheless, there is a practical side to the Service of Humanity.
+It simply cannot be done without organisation and support. The
+“Sisterhood” provides this. Sister Leonie, working day and night in
+the St. Lazare prison, Paris, could not be tortured by the material
+worries of daily life. What a waste of effort that would have been,
+disturbing the work of service as she prays with and comforts her
+penitents.
+
+Everywhere, in fact, and whatever their work or their mission,
+_provision for the Future must prove to be Women s real problem_.
+At present there is no sphere open to her in which the returns are
+substantial enough to allow of saving. Those who feel the Call may be
+freed from such anxieties; but where there is neither a home nor an
+income to depend on, in business or professions that do not carry with
+them an adequate pension, _some kind of insurance must be devised by
+the State_.
+
+This is obviously a big question needing most careful thought. To-day,
+indeed, we must feel serious doubt whether women can place any real
+dependence even on the home and the family. Times are hard, and society
+is unstable. At any moment revolution or anarchy may sweep away,
+through no fault of our own, whatever provision the most prudent of us
+have been able to make.
+
+There can, therefore, be no doubt that the Economic Insecurity among
+women is a grave problem. It may lead anywhere—to suicide, immorality,
+or crime. The matter is too serious for delay. All single women who
+have passed the age of thirty should now be included in some scheme
+of _National Insurance_. The other disadvantages, however great they
+be, are actually dwarfed before the monster terror of no money in our
+old age—or in times of sickness. True, there are old age pensions,
+there are charities for distressed gentlewomen, but no self-respecting
+professional worker can be beholden to these. We ought not to allow it.
+
+Finally, as one who stands whole-heartedly for progress, may we not
+once more ask what is the use of a femininism that preaches hatred
+of the other sex, or a desire to exercise the wearing—for women,
+tearing—professions of men?
+
+Man, with his better-balanced brain and uncomplicated physique, fills
+us with awe. See him at his magnificent work of building bridges,
+stemming rivers and piercing mountains, conquering Nature inch by inch!
+Woman can help his work and complete his life, but she may not enter
+into competition with him.
+
+Let her not deceive herself: in spite of women in Parliament and other
+signs of advanced femininism, she has not gone very far. What she needs
+now is more humanity, more commonsense, and some of the Latin charm. If
+she works as man’s antagonist, she will be beaten back steadily.
+
+  _Male and Female created He them.
+  And a little child shall lead them._
+
+There, in a nutshell, is the truth.
+
+
+
+
+. From A. M. PHILPOT’S LIST .
+
+
+BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. I
+
+THE
+
+FALLACIES _of_ SPIRITUALISM
+
+By A. LEONARD SUMMERS
+
+2s. 6d. net.
+
+SOME EARLY REVIEWS
+
+“This booklet is an extremely able and interesting criticism of a craze
+that has become wide-spread with the most pernicious results. The
+writer does not limit himself to an account of the sensational frauds
+that have been exposed on both sides of the Atlantic, but he analyses
+the evidence of Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir A. Conan Doyle, Mr. Vale Owen,
+and other distinguished spiritualists, with merciless severity and very
+great acumen.”—_Freemans Journal._
+
+“Lucidly written, and without bitterness, Mr. Summers makes out a good
+case for the ‘against’ in this little book.”—_Glasgow Citizen._
+
+“As a popular indictment, Mr. Summers’ pamphlet is likely to make
+considerable impression. It remains for his opponents to offer
+as succinct and well-documented an answer.”—_The Times Literary
+Supplement._
+
+
+BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. II
+
+PSYCHIC PHENOMENA IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
+
+By SARAH A. TOOLEY
+
+2s. 6d. net.
+
+Scenes and occurrences in the Old Testament, so familiar as to have
+lost their real significance, are here described in a way that will be
+of extraordinary interest to the psychic student of to-day.
+
+
+BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. III
+
+MORAL POISON IN MODERN FICTION
+
+By R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON
+
+2s. 6d. net.
+
+The truth about certain new theories of morality, taught in some modern
+novels, assumed in others, and to some extent already put in practice
+by young readers, frankly and carefully examined, with an exposure
+of their probable evil influence. Extracts from novels by well-known
+writers give point and interest to what amounts to an unhesitating
+condemnation.
+
+
+_NEW BOOK BY TROWARD._
+
+  THE HIDDEN POWER. By T. TROWARD. With frontispiece portrait of the
+  author. Uniform with author’s Complete Works. Crown 8vo, cloth and
+  linen, 8s. 6d. net.
+
+This important volume, which includes practically all Troward’s
+unpublished manuscripts and magazine articles, concludes the series
+of books on Mental Science by an author who was described by the
+late Archdeacon Wilberforce as “one of the greatest thinkers of our
+times.” It is significant to note that these books, beautiful in their
+sustained clearness of thought and style, are now included in the
+curriculum of societies, clubs and classes devoted to the study of
+Mental Science.
+
+
+_Complete List of the Series._
+
+  1. THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE. Crown 8vo, cloth and
+  linen, 6s. net.
+
+Mental Science defined as the proper understanding of Livingness, based
+on the distinction between Spirit and Matter, i.e., Thought and Form.
+
+  2. THE DORÉ LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. net.
+
+An exposition of the relation of the Individual to the Universal
+Originating Principal of the Cosmos—the Mind of God.
+
+  3. THE CREATIVE PROCESS IN THE INDIVIDUAL. Crown 8vo, cloth, 8s. 6d.
+  net.
+
+A study of spiritual evolution which, the author maintains, is but
+another aspect of physical evolution.
+
+“_No thinker should be without this book._”—The late Archdeacon
+WILBERFORCE.
+
+  4. BIBLE MYSTERY AND BIBLE MEANING. Demy 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d. net.
+
+Troward here proposes that “we shall re-read the Bible on the
+supposition that Jesus and these other speakers _really meant what
+they said_, which is a startling proposition from the standpoint of
+the traditional interpretation.” An illumination for those who seek to
+render the older theology into terms of modern science.
+
+  5. BIBLE PROPHECY, 1914-23. Crown 8vo, paper, 1s. net.
+
+An arresting pamphlet upon the Great War; providing clues to prophetic
+utterances of the Bible concerning the Time of the End. To-day _is_ the
+End of the Age.
+
+  6. THE LAW AND THE WORLD. With a Foreword by PAUL DERRICK. Crown 8vo,
+  cloth, 8s. 6d. net.
+
+In this posthumous volume, Troward formulates a final statement of his
+beliefs after long investigation and profound study in the field of
+Mental Science.
+
+
+A. M. PHILPOT, LTD., 69 Great Russell Street, W.C. 1
+
+
+  _TWO WORKS OF GENIUS_
+
+VOL. IV of Les Fleurs de France.
+
+THE CRYSTAL COFFIN
+
+By MAURICE ROSTAND
+
+6s. net.
+
+An amazing first novel by the son of the author of _Cyrano de Bergerac_.
+
+“It is written in the form of a diary in which the author narrates
+his soul-corruption by a life of luxury and incessant pleasure until,
+finally, he commits suicide on his father’s grave in a mood of
+remorse....
+
+There is veri-similitude throughout. We see the leading figures of
+French life crossing the stage; often Rostand himself stands revealed
+in the intimacy of this diary. While one is inclined to resent an
+exposure so candid, from which the father emerges still greater, it is
+true that the recorder has not spared himself....
+
+A bare outline of the tragedy gives no conception of the fascination
+of this astounding volume. Throughout one cannot separate fact from
+fiction, history from imagination, and everyone asks, ‘How much of this
+is the real Rostand?’ It is a book of astounding candour, of merciless
+introspection, with passages of sheer lyricism....
+
+As a first volume and a _roman à-clef_, _The Crystal Coffin_ is
+something new in the experience of the reviewer. It is undeniable
+evidence of a case of inherited genius, and it seems probable that
+the man who could write this book will create such works that he will
+be independent of the fact that he is his father’s son.”—_Liverpool
+Courier._
+
+
+VOL. V. of Les Fleurs de France.
+
+THE FOSTER MOTHER
+
+By ERNEST PÉROCHON
+
+6s. net.
+
+A poignant story of the conflict between Mother Love and the power of
+the showy, heartless “Vampire Girl”. It is not often that a work of
+genius is “everyone’s book,” but this simply-told story of country life
+is also an exquisite piece of writing which gained the much-coveted
+Prix Goncourt, 1920.
+
+“A tragedy so poignant and so free from sentimental dilution is a truly
+fine achievement.”—_Times Literary Supplement._
+
+“The story is worthy of comparison with big things.”—_Manchester
+Guardian._
+
+
+  _ALL ABOUT PARIS RESTAURANTS_
+
+PARIS À LA CARTE
+
+Where the Frenchman Dines and How.
+
+By SOMMERVILLE STORY
+
+Author of _The Spirit of Paris_, etc.
+
+4s. 6d. net.
+
+A book of great interest and value to all who visit Paris or are
+interested in French cuisine. In a series of sparkling sketches, the
+author describes the different restaurants, past and present, night
+and day, their specialities, habitués, etc., and there are chapters
+describing the preparation and origin of the best-known French dishes,
+the apéritif hour, the chief French wines, and everything connected
+with the subject.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+Pg 14 Changed: the instrument of the Millenium To: the instrument of
+the Millennium
+
+Pg 14 Changed: the promised Millenium is still far to seek To: the
+promised Millennium is still far to seek
+Pg 26 Changed: women doctors, and in the medical mission-field To:
+women doctors, and in the medical mission field
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78463 ***