THE ENGLISHWOMAN AT WORK
So much has been written lately about women’s work in England
that most of the obvious generalisations on the subject have been
exhausted. Much has yet to be done before all the vexed questions
raised by the increase of woman workers during the war are settled,
but that is a matter for the trades themselves. The only principle of
primary validity is that women have as much right as men to enter the
labour market, but they must win their places legitimately by their
performances and not at the price of being sweated. Women, of course,
have always worked in England. A book recently published by a woman on
woman workers in the seventeenth century has reminded us of this, if
we have forgotten Hood’s Song of the Shirt. So that the entry of women
into the more technical and highly organised employments, hitherto
mainly reserved for men, is nothing more than an inevitable process
of development. The one thing, in this connection, which strikes an
ordinary observer is that women are still a long way from having
acquired men’s capacity for self-organisation, and this is the road on
which the Englishwoman who works must progress in the future. Women can
learn _esprit de corps_, but they do not seem to imbibe it naturally.
This, I think, is partly due to their more sequestered education, with
fewer games in which combined effort is all important, and partly to
their intensely personal outlook on the whole of life. To them life is
a clash of individual atoms rather than of corporate bodies to whose
progress the fate of individual members is of comparatively little
interest. History for them, whether past or contemporary, is a drama in
which living persons, not ideas and processes, are the protagonists.
For the large majority of them the notion of solidarity begins and ends
with the home, within which it is absolute, only to be nebulous outside
it. Yet the talent is not absent, only dormant. When it awakes the
results are striking and often put men to shame. Florence Nightingale
teaches us this lesson, and we have learnt it again more recently from
the women’s ambulances and the women’s organisations which have helped
us to win the war.
The opportunities for corporate action on the part of women are
unlimited, and it is a fact which women of all classes are coming
to realise in a greater measure. It was made plain, even to the more
gently born among them who worked in factories and offices during the
war, that without corporate action it was almost impossible to get
justice. The rightness of ideas, unfortunately, does not conquer by its
own momentum, especially in England where both men and women are apt
to await its embodiment in concrete facts. They saw that ameliorations
and advantages, the justice of which was admitted as soon as it was
urged by common action, did not come to those who did not press for
them, and that such action on the part of isolated individuals was
triumphantly met by the retort that nobody else had asked for any
change, a sufficient proof that it was not necessary. With their gain
of political franchise and the removal by law of sex-disqualifications
women in this country have every incentive to put into practice
lessons of this kind. There is no reason, moreover, why they should
restrict their corporate action to their own sex. They work with men
domestically, forming combinations of immense strength: there is no
reason why they should not do so generally. In the middle classes this
truth is at last recognised, but in the working classes it is still
regarded with suspicion. The Trades Unions, whether they like it or
no, will have to admit women of like trades to full membership.
Another thing, as I have already remarked, which women have learnt
more fully during the war, is the healthiness of regular work for its
own sake, apart from its merely material rewards. Few that have had
this salutary experience will reconcile themselves to a return to an
existence of semi-idleness, nor will they bring up their daughters to
regard such an existence, even where it is economically possible, as a
natural one. The doctrine that no citizen has a right to live unless
he or she makes his contribution to the work of the community is no
longer a musty relic of simpler ages, but is forcing itself more and
more upon universal recognition as an undeniable principle. Some of its
most fervent devotees, it is true, would restrict the meaning of “work”
to manual labour, but this is a pure delusion which cannot last in any
fully organised and orderly community. It is almost impossible to set
the limits of utility, and men have often condemned as useless the very
activities which were to be the means of abundant progress to future
generations. Utility and selfishness, moreover, can easily go together,
so that the eradication of the latter can only be accomplished at
the price of restricting the former. The one certain negation of
utility is self-indulgence, which can only be allowed in small doses
when utility has earned its keep. Women have learnt the wider limits
of utility: they will no longer, in the more leisured classes, limit
their idea of it to domestic utility, and women of the future will be
no worse prepared for this important sphere of it if they are trained
to enter the world at the age of discretion able to render definite
service to the community in a form which it considers valuable.
To the weary worker in shop or factory, to the overworked servant
and the harassed mother of a family it may seem ridiculous, even
impertinent, to say these things. But they will recognise that, so far
as the words contained any reproach, it was not directed at them, and
that the diversion of any superfluous feminine energy into regular
channels of work is not a matter of trifling import. They themselves
will benefit by any such development, for better organisation of women
will improve the lot of women who already work at trades, and will win
more general recognition for the fact that the domestic labours of the
household, whether performed for wages or not, are really work and
not merely an occupation. Every woman with a dwelling and a family,
irrespective of any other possible employment, is one of the country’s
workers, and one of the best kind of workers, since her work is not
done for a material reward but to fulfil a duty and attain an ideal.
This has been said often enough, but it cannot be said too often.
In certain classes the standard of motherhood is low and so is the
standard of housewifery. Education alone will not raise these standards
to a worthy level: we want a higher conception of domestic work and of
its importance in the productiveness of our country, the aim of all
labour being production. It always appears strange to me that a man
who, if given the amount of individual responsibility in a business
which is entailed in the administration of a household, would consider
himself a fully-occupied worker, will often look upon his wife’s
activities—which keep him comfortable, his children healthy and his
servants contented—as mere incidents in an otherwise ornamental life.
Mr. J. Swinburne, a very gifted engineer, in a sensational paper
read not long ago before the Musical Association, poked a great deal
of good-humoured fun at the claims of women to equal consideration
with men. Though “Women in Music” was the title of his paper, he
surveyed generally the performances of women in every kind of activity
and came to an unfavourable conclusion. One of his criticisms was
that women’s minds are almost wholly receptive and hardly at all
productive. They were not, he urged, originators of ideas or systems,
neither leaders of thought, inventors or captains of industry. In
his view, the great impulses which really drive round the wheels of
civilisation have always been and always will be virile. So far as
the past is concerned, this is certainly true, but it is questionable
whether it is necessarily true of the future. The truth is that women
are some centuries behindhand in experience of public activity, and
this deficiency cannot quickly be made up. But the good Englishwoman
will hardly go forward into the future with any damaging assumptions
on her back: she will rather dump them by the roadside and press on,
acknowledging a somewhat light equipment for her journey, but trusting
to capacities in her knapsack to the possibilities of which she will
confess no limits.
Englishwomen are excellent employees: they are more docile than men
and less lazy by nature. Men are far more critical of their employers
and every man, no matter how well suited to him his employment may be,
faces his daily task with a certain spirit of rebellion. Having greater
activity of mind and body than a woman, he is always distracted by the
idea that he might be spending his time more profitably, or at least
more agreeably. On the other hand, men are more methodical, and less
at the mercy of their emotions when at work. Mary the housemaid runs
upstairs at such a pace that she is speechless by the time she reaches
the top, and Eliza the cook, if she has had a “few words” or her young
man has been faithless, will produce pastry that is uneatable. Men
do not run upstairs, and they leave their hearts outside the office
with their overcoats, transforming themselves with ease into part of
an impersonal machine from which they completely detach themselves at
night with the same nonchalance. Mr Swinburne asserts that women take
their work too seriously, as if that were a fault: the real fault is
that they are apt to brood over it in their leisure hours, thus robbing
the mind of its relaxation. Englishwomen might learn of Englishmen a
habit of greater attention to themselves as machines.
The Englishman sets great store on physical well-being, a trait which,
in exaggeration, is not particularly pleasing. But physical well-being
means efficiency, so that on the whole a certain selfishness in
insisting on sufficient food and rest for body and mind is valuable to
a worker. We men are wisely gross, but we might not like to see the
women as gross as we are, nor are we likely to do so, but we have
something to teach them in our respect for the body as an engine rather
than as an object of admiration, and in the readiness with which we
cast away preoccupation when our work is done. I have seen a general in
the field sitting in his dugout writing letters home while his force
was delivering an important attack. All his arrangements had been made,
all his orders framed with care: there was nothing to do at the moment
but to allow his subordinates to act and to await their reports. So,
like a wise man, he diverted his mind. Few women could have shown as
much self-control. Men, of course, are not proof against anxiety, but
they do manage to harden themselves against small worries. Women, on
the other hand, so often show no discrimination, and give them as much
mental and emotional wear and tear over a molehill as over a mountain.
To speak mechanically, women would do well to improve their oil-feeds.
As it is, their engines knock too readily and frequently seize on small
provocation.
And, speaking of oil, there is a precious oil called geniality which
I should like to see more freely poured out by Englishwomen whose
employment brings them into contact with the body of their fellow
creatures. They are much behind their Latin sisters in this respect.
A Frenchwoman serves a customer with an _empressement_ which is not
merely a professional affectation. She takes a personal interest in
the transaction, and would prefer to carry it through with smiles
and gaiety on both sides. She is warm in her opening and parting
salutations, ready to seize a suggestion with a pleased alacrity
and always on the look out for anything that she can do or say to
increase the satisfaction of her client or customer. This spontaneous
cheerfulness of address is only natural to the Irish among us, but
I am bound to say that many Englishwomen who wait or serve push its
opposite to an absurd extreme. We all know the awful chilly superiority
of the being who takes our orders at a counter or at a tea-shop. She
advances either with the air of Juno invoked by a presumptuous mortal
or approaches with an irritable scuttle as if she were far too busy
with other important affairs to pay much attention to our insignificant
wants. At times she will condescend to a kind of Olympian affability,
with mincing speech and an affected smirk, but never betray herself an
ordinary English girl, cheerful, unaffected, anxious to please, eager
to find a personal link of sympathy with all her customers: that would
be unladylike and wanting in commercial deportment. Men are much more
friendly. For kindly solicitude no Frenchman, Swiss, German or Italian
ever beat the old-fashioned English waiter, even if his gastronomical
imagination was more limited. Bartenders are comrades, but barmaids
are usually Gorgons. I crack a joke with my tailor, even when I owe
him money, but I have never seen anything so common pass between the
silk-gowned divinity of the dressmaking department and one of her
respectful but determined clients: a simper on one side and a sniff
on the other are the more usual small change which passes between the
feminine server and the feminine served. There seems to be no good
reason for this stiffness of Englishwomen. In ordinary social life
these same women are as good-humoured as the rest of their kind, and
we are not a crabbed race, however reserved we may be. It is, I think,
partly a convention which might well be allowed to die, and partly due
to the woman’s intense desire to live up to any position in which she
may be placed. Her self-consciousness overwhelms her natural humanity,
which is a pity, since geniality added to other feminine graces is
irresistible.
Women as employers or managers of others are not susceptible of
generalisation: they can be very good and very bad. In this respect
they have a less even level than men, whose administration, in
general, is more exposed to pressure of public opinion and who, in all
business relations, are less personal than women. A woman superior can
inspire greater personal affection and more bitter personal antipathy
in her subordinates, because she carries about with her wherever she
goes all her good and bad qualities, while a man, if he is often too
lazy to get the best out of his good ones, is equally slow to show the
worst of his bad ones: where he at best will create a strong link of
common endeavour among the whole of a personnel, a woman will forge
chains of most intimate affection, but where he inspires fear and that
dislike which is called “unpopularity,” she from sheer perversity
can surround herself with an atmosphere of rebellious hatred. There
is no doubt that the infinite capacity of Englishwomen at their best
for tact and sympathy gives them an immense advantage over men in any
kind of personal relation if they care to use it: a motherly employer
can do infinitely more for the welfare and happiness of employees
than the most fatherly, for men have a delicacy about intruding too
far into individual circumstances, whereas there is nothing into
which a sympathetic woman cannot inquire without embarrassment. Here,
certainly, there is much progress before the Englishwoman. Outside
the domestic sphere, she is still in her infancy as an employer, as
an administrator or as an industrial organiser. She has so far failed
to extend the happy touch with which she can conduct a household or
a small personal business to the large concern or to the company,
as though her grasp failed the moment she was out of immediate
contact with concrete personalities in the more hazy realm of units,
aggregations and impersonal figures. Where she calculates in days the
man calculates in years, and, though she may know with surprising
accuracy the idiosyncrasies and capabilities of a staff within the
immediate survey of her own eyes, she leaves it to the man to devise
the large schemes which will find useful employment for thousands.
Possibly this wider and more impersonal grasp will never come to
women: if so, we shall have to learn more accurately the reason why,
for the impossibility is now not obvious. With organisation and
combination becoming more and more the rule in every department of
human activity, it will be a great loss to the community if, through
women’s failure to extend their administrative capacity over wider
areas, the fostering care and sympathetic penetration peculiar to women
are confined to narrow circles. In that sense they have great need
to develop the productive mind and also the gift of leadership, which
is the art of attaching energies rather than affections. The proof
of clear aims and a keen vision, single-hearted devotion to a worthy
end, judicious selection of means to attain it, quick recognition
of capacity in others and confidence in it when recognised, care in
preparation, incisiveness in action, these are the qualities which draw
men after them in spite of personal incompatibilities, and harness a
multitude of scattered energies, at their highest efficiency, into a
single co-ordinated effort. Women, so far, have been wanting in these
qualities, and yet what could they not do if they had them? Joan of
Arc and Napoleon both led armies: one touched the hearts of men, the
other their pride. A woman who to the moral force of Joan could add
the executive genius of Napoleon might lead the world straight to the
millennium.
So extreme a combination of unusual qualities is improbable: but it is
by no means inconceivable that some Sylvia commended by all the swains
should develop the practical powers of a Whiteley or a Burbidge, a
phenomenon which might occur sooner than the emergence from among women
of a really commanding master-intellect. It may happen in time that a
woman starting from small beginnings may earn millions and leave them
to her sons as any Carnegie or Pierpont Morgan of to-day. The fact that
it now seems impossible is a proof of what women have yet to achieve
rather than of their natural limitations. I should not like to lay
odds against the success of women as great originators of commercial
enterprise, but I would modestly back my opinion that such pioneers
will as quickly arise within these islands as from any part of the
world outside them.