But it was not merely the decreased chance of marriage which made the lives of middle-class women difficult in the last century. There was also a change in the position of the fathers, which decreased their opportunity for providing for their unmarried daughters. The middle-class man is now less and less frequently at the head of a business of his own, and is more and more frequently a salaried clerk, manager, or engineer. Formerly the shop or farm when it passed to the eldest son was burdened with the charge of the spinster sisters, who often would help in the dairy or behind the counter. Now, when a middle-class man dies, his hold on the industrial world, so to speak, passes away with him, unless he has been at once able and willing to lay by savings out of his salary, a duty too often neglected. Briefly, therefore, the unmarried woman of the middle-classes is less likely to marry, has less to occupy her at home, and cannot so easily be provided for by her father if she remains a spinster. Is it then to be wondered at if women insist, in increasing numbers, upon a thorough education as well as the right to enter a profession in which they can be self-supporting?[72] But the first women who decided that a way must be opened by which they could earn for themselves honourable maintenance not unnaturally fell into what we cannot but regard now as regrettable mistakes, however unavoidable these errors may have been at the time. Their great difficulties were to win admission to the universities and permission to practise what had hitherto been regarded as men's professions. Therefore they dreaded all restrictions liable to be laid upon the entrance of women to occupations, and were led in consequence to oppose the Factory Acts, designed for the protection of women of the working-classes. It is only to-day and only partially that the woman teacher, doctor, or journalist has come to understand that the position and problems of the factory-hand are very different from her own, and that confusion is created if she insists on judging them from her own standpoint. In the next place, they were almost forced to become masculine and aggressive in their manners and outlook upon life. In particular, the need of conformity to a system of education framed for men and not for women led to an undervaluation of domestic pursuits. It was not realised that in managing a household and in bringing up children there was scope for the most developed character and the finest education.