The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎26v] (57/244)

542 THE NINET
April
As only one-third of these unmarried women are domestic servants,
even if we suppose that all the unmarried men belong to Classes (x
and H, there are obviously not enough men for all the women to be
able to marry. Such being the case, we can afford to dispense with
mutual recrimination. The women who find it less dishonouring
to enter the labour market than an overstocked marriage market
are taking the more womanly course in putting aside all thought of
marriage. The men who remain unmarried are perhaps in the
position of Captain Macheath, overwhelmed by an eTixbctTTCis
richesses, and should be forgiven if they fear to make a choice of
one which may seem to cast disparagement on so many others of
equal merit.
These statistics have been called startling and alarming. They
may be startling to men, but can hardly be so to women of the upper
class, and I fail to see why they should alarm anyone. If all these
spinsters had to be shut up in convents the outlook would be gloomy.
But as things are, if only we can secure good pay and decent con
ditions of life, the lot of all women may be immensely improved by
this compact band of single women. It would be difficult to overrate
the industrial effect of a number of well-instructed, healthy-minded,
vigorous permanent spinsters. A man's work is not interrupted
but rather intensified by marriage; but in the case of women, not
only is the wages question very much affected by the expectation of
marriage, but much organised effort on their part, whether for im
provement of wages or for provision against sickness and old age,
must be wasted unless there be a considerable number of single
women to give continuity to the management of their associations.
Mr. Llewellyn Smith has pointed out that, as mobility of labour in
creases, actual movement may, other things remaining the same,
diminish; and so also I should be inclined to say that it is not
marriage that is such a disturbing element in the women's wages
question so much as the expectation of or desire for marriage. In
the middle classes, where it is impossible to earn a sufficient income
without a long training and years of practical apprenticeship, nothing
is so injurious to women's industrial position as this ungrounded ex
pectation of marriage, which prevents them from making themselves
efficient when young, and makes them disappointed, weary, and old
when their mental and physical powers should be in their prime.
With this profession of faith in the absolute necessity for the
existence of single women I pass on to a brief review of the position
of working women, considered in three groups, taking first of al
those who belong to the classes whom Mr. Booth describes as ' poor.
Classes A, B, C, and D, who are 30*7 per cent, of the population of
London; then the well-to-do artisans in Classes E and F, who are 51*5
per cent., and lastly the so-called middle and upper classes, who are