CANADA AND WOMAN
Few books are complete nowadays without a chapter on the woman
question. Man can be treated of in between; one would not as yet
care to write a book without mentioning man in it. As a subsidiary
agent for keeping the world going man is still not without his
importance. But woman, as I have said, must have a chapter to
herself. And since I unwittingly arrived on the last page at the
subject of woman's work in Canada, I will pause--even on the
threshold of the mountains--and go further into the matter.
The most noticeable thing about woman in Western Canada is that she
has not yet arrived there. If any one wished to get an idea of how
the world would arrange itself supposing there were no women in it at
all, they would have to go a little further north and west, into some
of the British Columbian valleys or into the Yukon country, and look
around.
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What a simple world it seems. No clothes question, no washing, the
simplest cookery, one man one plate (and that plate never washed),
one knife for eating with or for skinning a grizzly bear, no carpets
or curtains in the houses, no dustings or spring-cleanings, no
knick-knacks to knock over or break, no flowers without or within
except such as grow wild, no luxuries, in short, either to enjoy or
to pay for, and a terrible amount of dirt. That is the physical
aspect of the world without women.
The spiritual side of it is less easy to arrive at. These bachelors
you see in the backwoods are a silent people, lacking in
self-consciousness, and, I daresay, in manners, but law-abiding and
amiable and peculiarly handy. All men are handy who have not women
to steal that talent from them; and most womenless men are silent
too. One knows, of course, that bores may be found among men at
times, but never chatterboxes. There is something to be said for the
view that speech arose by women putting questions so often that men
were driven, in sheer weariness, to make answers.
Does it seem an unattractive life that these hardy bachelors have
perforce to live? Perhaps. But you will not find them bemoaning
{190} their lot. That is not the way of bachelors. We know they are
to be pitied, but they do not pity themselves. Seriously, the
trouble with these men is that they have none of those inducements to
consider the future which make a man better than a machine. They
take the world as it comes, which is well enough for themselves but
not well enough for the world. I doubt if it is well for themselves
really. True, they have nothing to worry them so long as they are in
health. They can make big money when they choose and take holidays
when they choose, conscious that when their money is spent they have
only to set to again. Their wages are indeed to them little more
than trinkgeld--and this means that those splendid workers have no
real reward for their work, leave no successors to carry on the
traditions of their toil, enrich only the bar-keepers and the rogues
who live on the folly of honest men.
Clearly the most honourable opening for women in Canada is marriage.
Only wives are capable of putting down the drink curse, preventing
the growth of a particularly odious plutocracy, establishing a
permanent instead of a nomad population in the West. Nor might it be
a bad thing (but for Anglo-Saxon {191} prejudices) if provincial
governments there could start marriage offices, due attention being
paid to eugenics. Even in so small a matter as the following, the
presence of wives should make all the difference. All down the
Columbia valley I found the cattle ranchers, who were bachelors,
drinking tinned milk, while scores of cows ran wild and went dry.
When I asked if it wasn't worth while to keep one cow milking, I was
always told, 'No, we haven't time to bother about it,' till I came to
the shack of a married Swede, whose wife had time to bother about it.
In his shack tinned milk was anathema, as it should be everywhere.
As prejudice would undoubtedly prevent the formation of governmental
marriage offices, marriage can only be considered as an indirect
opening for women. What are the directer openings? A great deal
depends on what part of Canada immigrant women make for. In the East
there is no such lack of women as in the West. The sexes are fairly
balanced. In the big towns there is the usual demand for domestic
servants, but not many more openings for educated Englishwomen than
there are in big towns at home. There are a few more, because those
cities are going at a faster pace than our English cities, and
because all work there is {192} more valuable than in England. Women
skilled in the arts that have to do with personal decoration, such as
millinery, dressmaking, etc., could make their way there.
Factory work in Canada is hardly worth going into here, the chief
point about it being that wages are of course higher; nor did I
notice any unusual professions engaging the attention of women,
unless it were the checking of parcels and the playing in hotel
orchestras, neither of which requires a man's strength.
[Illustration: THE HALT. LAGGAN.]
French Canada offers employment to but very few. Western Canadians
sniff at the Habitants because they let their women work in the
fields; haymaking and hoeing. But the idea of using women as outdoor
workers is not so uncivilised as it looks to those unaccustomed to
seeing it. Ethnologists are agreed nowadays that the tribes in which
women do the fieldwork are not the least but the most civilised, and
maintain that the position of women among such tribes is higher than
among any others. Women began to work out-of-doors because the
primitive peoples believed in a connection between their fertility
and that of the earth; and where they do such work, women are always
the keepers of the grain store--hold in their hands, that is to say,
the {193} food upon which the life of the tribe depends. The most
honourable primitive customs are not always the best in modern times,
but there can be no doubt of the fertility of the French Canadians.
As one goes West, woman becomes more of an indoor creature; and this
may be due to the greater chivalry of their men folk. But one has to
remember that the great charm of Canadian life, especially on the
prairies, is an outdoor charm--working in the exhilarating air--not
cooking over a hot stove indoors. One hears of a few cases in which
women have taken up farming or vegetable-gardening and made a success
of it, but no one could honestly say that the fortune awaiting women
who take up such work is usually a great one. The work is too hard,
especially in the winter time. Chicken-ranching is perhaps easier;
but the real demand in the West is for women to do that housework
which the men have not time for. At such work capable women can earn
from three to five pounds a month with board and lodging; and while
they are likely to find it rather harder--certainly not less
hard--than similar work at home, it has compensations besides the
money to be made by it. For one thing there is none of the odium
that attaches {194} to it in the older countries. The cook is as
good as her employer, who probably did the cook's work for years
before the cook was to be had. It is natural that the work which
most ladies have to do for themselves, because neither love nor money
can obtain them substitutes, should lose its menial and unpleasant
aspect, and the finest ladies in western Canada do it unashamed.
Often their guests will help them to wash up, and even prepare the
dinner. Personally, I found myself becoming quite expert at cleaning
fish for a hostess who thereafter cooked it and dished it up, and yet
appeared at table as fresh and elegant and apparently leisured as any
lady who keeps a staff of servants in the old country. And I found
as I got on that I rather liked cleaning fish.
It stands to reason that the lady help is not wanted. The precise
duties demanded of such a lady are always a little misty, but I
imagine that they include a little sewing and a little reading, the
ability to chat pleasantly, to be good-tempered (and possibly a
Protestant), to feed the canary, and, at a pinch, even to clean out
its cage. None of these talents are needed in a new country, and I
heard of forty women who were on the books of an employment {195}
office in Calgary, all wanting to be lady helps and all likely to go
on wanting it till Doomsday.
One hears a good deal of discussion (not in Canada) of the openings
in the colonies for educated women. There is an English
committee--the Committee of Colonial Intelligence for Educated
Women--which, 'recognising the crying need of our colonies for the
best type of educated women,' undertakes to furnish them with
detailed, practical and up-to-date information, before advising them
to go out. This committee hopes later on to found settlements in the
colonies, where training, suitable to the needs of each colony, can
be given, and centres can be formed to which the girls can return in
the intervals of employment. There is much sense both in the
recognition of the need for educated women in the colonies and in the
perception that the most educated woman will be lost there unless she
is prepared to be practical. The truth is that that same
adaptability which is required of men in Canada is required of women
also. They must first suit the country before they can hope to leave
their mark on it. Educated women can leave their mark there by their
inward, not by their outward, superiority.
Centres to which the girls can go in the first {196} place, and to
which they can return in the intervals of employment, are an
excellent idea, and one which central or local government authorities
in Canada would do well to support. Of course the Young Women's
Christian Association already gives much help in this direction, but
it cannot be expected to have branches everywhere. New towns and
settlements are planned and put through very quickly in Canada, and
wherever they result in creating a demand for women's work, some such
centre for girls as near the railway depot as possible should be
started. For one thing it would facilitate the engagement of girls,
for another it would attract a better class. Probably the best
openings of all for women in Canada--educated women, I mean--are in
the big cities of the furthest West. In Vancouver and Victoria
wealthy people reside who can afford to pay for such luxuries as
private school-mistresses and governesses. And the supply of women
is not so great there. Women also seem to be more employed there as
hotel manageresses and under-manageresses, and as cashiers in hotels
and offices. I never heard of women being real estate agents, but in
a profession in which the arts of persuasion play a leading part,
there seems no reason why they {197} should not shine. Of bachelor
girls, living their own lives, I have also never heard in the West.
They could hardly have the hearts to do it with so many bachelor men
wasting their lives around them.
On the whole, the position of woman in Canada is one of honourable
toil lightened by the high consideration in which they are held.
They have hardly as yet obtained that dominant super-man eminence
which American women are said to occupy. That is, perhaps, because
they have not gone in so much for that culture and social
fastidiousness by the lack of which in themselves some American
husbands are made to feel their inferiority. On the other hand they
seem to keep their men folk contented, and remain contented with
them. Divorce is, I believe, uncommon in Canada.
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