VI

The war is over, and with it the special and pressing need for women's

and girls' work, but the consequences of the war period are far, indeed,

from nearing their end. Following all the industrial confusion of the

war, we are now facing the certainty of wide-spread unemployment among

women and girls. We have condemned thousands of them to unemployment

with the same thoughtlessness with which they were called into industry;

and in the less skilled ranges of employment, the always existing

competition between men and women and boys and girls is certain to be

fiercely accentuated.

It is officially stated that the number of women and girls who took

out-of-work donation policies during the period between the Armistice

and February 14th was 633,318. Of these the large majority 630,874 were

civilians, while 2444 belonged to the forces. Thousands of women and

girls who during the war proved themselves most capable at engineering

and wood-work are now ruled out of those occupations. There was a girl

of twenty, for instance, at Loughborough who showed real genius at

gauge-making, work that required accuracy to the ten thousandth part of

an inch. Although she took to the work only during the war, she became

so good that instead of being sent to a factory she was kept to instruct

others. This is the type of girl who now has to seek other employment.

There can be no question of the difficulties of the situation.

Many workers are holding out to get the same level of work and pay as

they have left. Strongest of all is the aversion shown to domestic work:

many girls who have been engaged on munitions during the war have thrown

up their unemployment pay rather than again enter domestic service.

Factory work has bitten into girl's lives; they do not want to do any

other kind of work.

Visit one of the Women's Employment Exchanges, if you would wish to get

to know these girls. The Exchange is usually a hall or large room where

busy clerks are at work at long tables. At some Exchanges as many as

2000 to 2500 women and girls will be on the books. Once a week they

receive their out-of-work pay; every alternate day they have to visit

the Exchange to see what jobs are vacant. You may watch them pass in

long queues from one table to another. A few of the women will probably

carry babies, but the great majority will be young girls, showily

dressed. You will hear the discordant murmur of their voices broken

often by sharp giggles. The moving lines seem to go on and on

unendingly. At one table the girls sign the register, at another they

learn of vacancies. Some of the girls fail to go to the second table. An

attendant, if you ask the cause, will tell you this is a frequent

occurrence. The girls are punctilious in signing the register, which

they must do to obtain the unemployment dole, but they are less

particular about finding the work which will bring it to an end. At

present they are content with the enjoyments of the streets and picture

palaces. I have, on many different occasions, spoken to these workers:

one case I may quote as typical of many. She was young, about twenty, I

should think, and incredibly self-confident. Before the war she had been

a tailor's needle hand earning 16s. a week; for the last two years she

was inspecting fuses at a wage of 45s. a week. What was she now going to

do? Neither she nor any of the other women to whom I have spoken seemed

to have any clear realization of the fact that the change-over from war

to peace industries by munition factories, with the return of many

thousands of men, was bound to result in a serious excess supply of

woman labor. I remember it was then, while I talked to this girl, that

the first great suspicion stole into my heart. We have heard so much of

the splendid conduct of the women and the wonderful way in which they

have done the work of men, but the facts stand up stark. _Women have had

a good time._ Now, they are going to struggle to keep it. These girls

are vastly more rebellious than any women were five years ago.[38:1]

Look at the girl-workers you may see everywhere in such numbers to-day;

they are of all ages and they belong to all classes of society. Watch

them as they fight for an entrance into motor omnibuses and trams, as

they crowd the station platforms. See them parading the streets in

their unemployed hours; they are the companions of every soldier; they

crowd the cinemas, music-halls, and theaters. Who has altered the

fashions about every three months? and this has been going on in war

time. Why, the munition workers and the forty-shilling-a-week girls. No

longer was finery always bought out of men's earnings, but out of their

own; put on to give some man a treat or to fire the envy of other girls.

The factory girl has taken to silk stockings and fine lingerie and the

lady to Balbriggan and calico.

The vast change that has come into the daily lives of women, possibly,

in no direction is more startling than it has been in this matter of

dress. Many shops which are near the factories where munition girls have

been employed have organized war-clubs, in which, on payment of a small

weekly sum, the girls could buy articles of attire far in advance even

of their high wages. Shops festooned with furs of every description,

where coats costing ten, twenty, and even thirty and more guineas, were

frequently bought; shops whose windows were a clutter of tissue-like

crepe-de-chine underclothes and blouses; boot-clubs and jewelry-clubs,

these last, garish establishments, secure in the glamour of

irresistible imitations--all have urged to extravagance and a madness

for ornament.

The West-end tradesmen and the shareholders of the big drapery shops

have been chuckling and rubbing their hands. Dividends have sprung up to

a figure they have never before reached. Never before has so much money

been wasted on adornment.

Our young women have little thought beyond the present use of what they

buy. But I believe that much of this extravagance--the delight in

self-gratification which finds other expression in jazzing, in

sweet-eating, in card playing, smoking and similar pleasures--is not so

much the outcome of the thoughtlessness of youth as a way of escape from

Self, a misdirected effort toward safety, unconscious no doubt, but

terribly real.

Notice these girls. You will see them best in a walk down Oxford street

or in Leicester Square, where, snared by each displayed window, they

hover and cluster like wasps drawn to a trap of sweet food. All the

biggest shops in London are devoted to women's clothes. Do you realize

that? And it is not only that they are the biggest, but there are more

of them than any other half a dozen trades put together--the only

exception being the drink trade. During the war their number has

multiplied, indeed in some districts shops have sprung up like mushrooms

in the night.

There is a much deeper importance in this question of dress than usually

is allowed. Irresponsible spending does encourage irresponsible living.

Almost everyone has at one time or another thought of some reform they

would wish to be made in the society in which they live. Now, if I could

have my choice as to any one reform I would choose to be done, it would

be to make it illegal for a tradesman to display for sale any kind of

wearing apparel, dress goods or articles connected with a woman's

toilet, either in shop windows or inside the shops. Nothing must be

shown to any customer until it is asked for. I do really believe this

simple reform would do more to emancipate women, and, through their

emancipation, to liberate men, than any other reform. We pray in our

churches "lead us not into temptation," and everywhere we permit in our

shops the display of goods to tempt the young and the foolish.

An orgy of adornment has been claiming a veritable sacrifice of comfort

and health, possibly even of life. All-night vigils in search of

bargains are frequent at the bi-annual sale-festivals. Policemen have to

restrain the ardent votaries, as they press forward and struggle and

fight to obtain entrance to certain shops, like caged animals fighting

for food. Fashions are followed passionately and with little variety.

Dark heads and golden heads have the hair bobbed or dressed in the same

way, with the same plastered side-curls, and adorned with hats

alarmingly alike, weighted with queer and polychrome ornaments of beads,

wool, tassels, and I know not what, while the face beneath shows one

color of yellowish white, the result of the excessive and unskillful use

of cheap powder. In the snow and slush of the spring, I have seen girls

dressed in a way fit only for the hottest indoor room. The gauze

silk-stockings offering no protection to the tortured feet even when the

boots and shoes were made of more than paper stoutness; while the

fashionable woolen wrap, even the fur collar or coat could not

counterbalance the danger to health from blouses, low-necked and

fashioned of stuff scarcely thicker than cobwebs. Here and there the

many girls, beautiful in quiet uniforms, have served to throw into

sharper contrast the absurdities of the dress of their sisters.

I ask myself how this taste for spending money on dress and ornament--a

taste very little different from the instinct which causes savages to

adorn their half-naked bodies with feathers, beads and shells--is to be

satisfied when women's wages fall? There would seem to be nothing too

useless or too expensive for girls to buy. Work has failed in teaching

them the simple lesson that not only is it wrong to waste money, but it

is wrong to waste labor for the gratification of whims. We are having

the need for economy preached and shouted at us from every quarter.

Surely it is right to think about this wild spending on adornment, and

give at least a few glances to the future.

What is likely to happen now when the full years of war change to empty

years of peace? No longer able to spend in the way to which their high

wages have made them accustomed, girls will seek to get presents from

men; they will want excitement and the dress and pleasures to satisfy

that need, also to hold the envy of their friends. This must lead to

prostitution. The weaker sort of girl will prefer to sell her body

rather than go back to a humdrum life of drudgery in back-kitchens. It

is well that we should remember that, if women are to suffer through

men's passions, men will suffer no less from women's greed.

I desire to be quite fair. Almost all girls, I think, are better looking

since 1914, more confident, more brightly attractive; sometimes they are

deliriously gay, more often cheaply aggressive and noisy. Yet, at other

times, they seem deadened and slow in response. None of them are shy.

Their eyes say things that are hard to read; they exhibit no end of

energy, but there is a curious kind of contradiction--a confusion and

difficult defiance, with much nervous weakness. I can find no steadfast

happiness.

I would ask my readers, as often I have asked myself, a question: Have

these modern girls not lost much of the tender, waiting, indefiniteness

of youth? I have seen so many among them who, to me at least, appear at

odds with the world, and their passionate, unbalanced and over-excited

natures. Their faces at sixteen, fifteen, and even at fourteen years,

already are old, with hard confidence showing in the bold gaze, but no

happiness. How many bear an expression of almost tired disappointment, a

disappointment, not of the senses, but of the soul. And this expression

is so common. To my eyes, girls far more and far oftener look alike now

than formerly they did. So often they seem acting, struggling almost

against something in themselves; something they don't understand that

draws them into many bewildered actions. Can't you see, they are all so

unconsciously dissatisfied, so unable to possess themselves in peace,

that nothing they do matters? You will, I am sure, deny this statement.

You will tell me again of the splendid work done by these girls and

young women, you will speak of their recognition as citizens of the

State, of how life has opened to them, and of the new liberty they have

gained in so many directions. I do not mind. I care nothing for the

liberty in outside things that leaves the soul in chains. I tell you

they are dissatisfied because the soul of woman is crushed, unable to

come up from its dark hiding, and breathe the sun and light to see that

life is good. Why cannot the old faith come back? Why cannot it come

back?