Hence, work of young girls is considered only as an interlude This training in all-round usefulness hard upon genius, but fine Not philanthropy to piece out too low wages or ameliorate bad PAGE 119 120 120 121 121 122 122, 123 Fatally handicapped in endeavors to check social evil until girls are better trained, better safeguarded and more intelligently effective in their wage-earning career, however brief that may be. 124, 125 Excessive poverty, due to physical weakness and disease, intimately connected with bad conditions surrounding wageearning women and girls. 125, 126 Linking together all women workers with minors in protective labor legislation a moot point in labor reform, but extreme youth of majority of women wage-earners makes clear the necessity for utmost possible legal safeguarding of working girls. Twenty-one years should be legal majority for both boys and girls and all minors in industry be more carefully pro tected. 126, 127 128 Trades and occupations especially inimical to woman's health and power of maternity should be forbidden young girls. 128, 129 Excessive poverty due to moral or economic weakness largely result of incompetence of house-mother. 129, 130 PAGE Shallow and non-educational connection with outside trade or occupation a cause of this incompetence of house-mother. 131 Real discipline by one task can be transferred as power of using means to ends to another task; but merely to hold down a job without ambition or faithfulness is a hurt to Excessive poverty dependent in part for its diminution upon pro- The excessive poverty of older women, married or widowed, a The widow struggling to care for her children must not be left untrained and unprotected to suffer worst evils of industrial Nor must women be left to learn in middle age that self-support requires training for some one employment the world is All labor difficulties reach most acute problems in adjustment of work of men and women to each other's task and of both Hence, reasonable settlement of problems of relationship of average woman to modern industrial order would greatly aid solution of difficulties existing in “living wage” and “better Period for girls as well as boys between 14 and 16 years must offer right opportunities for effective trade teaching to all Trade teaching for girls as for boys must be varied yet adapted to the locality and related to the public school system. Trade teaching for girls must, in addition, be based on general Manhattan Trade School for Girls the pioneer. Ancient feminine activities work out toward many specialized and remunerative modern employments. Tax-supported schools should supply to all girls needed trade Nothing short of a training that can make all easier masters of their economic fate can satisfy modern demand. The placing of just market value upon labor of the housemother waits for better conditions for the average wageearning woman. Expense of needed industrial training of girls must not be considered since women as a sex have paid in advance by uncompensated labor of untold ages for any tax-supported educational opportunities they may need now or in the future. The problem of woman's personal freedom and adequate training one with the problem of her effective social service. Educational demand the crux of problems inhering in the woman movement. PAGE 136 136 137 138 139 VI THE VOCATIONAL DIVIDE Illustration of house-mother who works all the time but "no money into it." 140, 141 Illustration of conventional standard by which wives are for- 141-143 146-149 working incessantly at uncongenial tasks, while prevented from pursuing beloved and remunerative employment. 143-145 Illustration of husband and wife desiring complete vocational equality but finding successful motherhood incompatible with the wife's full devotion to art. Loss on side of personal achievement by reason of general demands of family life on conscientious house-mother. Man's approach to vocational choice and accomplishment usually single; woman's usually double. The spinster of to-day useful in her demonstration of woman's capacity to compete successfully with men in specialized tasks; wife and mother to-day doing something far more vital for race development in blazing the way for new lifeadjustment for women between individual and family claims. Average woman has vocational divide; the choice between uninterrupted advance in chosen career and family service. 149 150 150 150 Chief difficulty in this vocational divide not chiefly the demands Nor the unwillingness of husbands to have their wives know Husband of large fortune can provide gifted wife with "sub PAGB 151 151 152 stitute” mothers and thus give her leisure for her own work. 152 Or wife and mother may receive such large compensation for unusual work as to procure efficient “assistant mothers." 152 Some conditions of family life so exacting that wives and mothers of young children must earn to meet their obligations. Increasing instances in which the wife can easily earn more than the husband. Adjustment of family life to new conditions so little advanced that husbands and wives alike now misjudged in cases where house-mother earns after marriage. New and finer quality of married love of moral and intellectual élite solving these difficulties. 153 154 154 155 Full solution, however, not along line of supreme specialization of woman's work. 155 Changes in industrial order from domestic to factory system have not and probably cannot remove obstacles to continuous pursuit of vocational work by married women with young children. 156 Present complex social relationships make parenthood not less arduous but more difficult. 156 The direction by government of conditions of home life demand The "business of being a woman" the development of highest 157 158 possible personality; the business of being a house-mother comprises duties connected with family well-being. New and more varied choices of life make it more difficult than of old to prepare children for right place in life. Higher functional service of home-making and motherhood not, therefore, lessened much in cost to woman's time and strength. Hence, notion that because industries have largely gone out of the house, the house-mother has but slight interruptions to personal work, a mistaken one. Idea not proved that if all women were cleverly placed in different specialties of work there would be no vital difference in vocational experience between men and women. Economic value of house-mother now not appreciated because woman's work still despised. PAGE 158 159 159 160 160 161 Women's work usually called that which men do not wish to do. 162 162 163 This problem inheres in determination of all women not to do what is considered menial work if they can earn a living in any other manner. Love alone will buy the permanent service of free women in Family benefit of having family concerns in hands of one most eager to have it done well. 163 163 164 165 Pathological conditions of wage-earning of mothers of young children in families low down in social and economic scale. 165 Danger of lessening man's sense of responsibility for family well-being. Difficulties in adjusting domestic service to democracy. 166 167 The coöperative kitchen and home service and half-time employment of mothers will not wholly solve these difficulties. 167 Deeper social interests involved in house-mother's relation to specialized industry. 168 |