The rapidly increasing employment of women to-day, then, is the usual,
and happy, accompaniment of war. But the development has its opponents,
and that is nothing new, either. Let us look them over one by one. The
most mischievous objector is the person, oftenest a woman, who says the
war will be short, and fundamental changes, therefore, should not be
made. This agreeable prophecy does not spring from a heartening belief
in victory, but only from the procrastinating attitude, "Why get ready?"
To prepare for anything less certain than death seems folly to many of
the sex, over-trained in patient waiting.
Then there is the official who constantly sees the seamy side of
industrial life and who concludes--we can scarcely blame him--that "it
would be well if women were excluded entirely from factory life." The
bad condition of industrial surroundings bulks large in his mind, and
the value of organized work to us mortals bulks small. We are all too
inclined to forget that the need for work cannot be eliminated, but the
unhealthy process in a dangerous trade can. Clean up the factory, rather
than clean out the women, is a sound slogan.
And then comes the objector who is exercised as to the effect of paid
work upon woman's charm. Solicitude on this score is often buried in a
woman's heart. It was a woman, the owner of a large estate, who when
proposing to employ women asked how many men she would have to hire in
addition, "to dig, plough and do all the hard work." On learning that
the college units do everything on a farm, she queried anxiously, "But
how about their corsets?" To the explanation, "They don't wear any,"
came the regret, "What a pity to make themselves so unattractive!"
I have heard fear expressed, too, lest sex attraction be lost through
work on army hats, the machinery being noisy and the operative, if she
talk, running the danger of acquiring a sharp, high voice. One could but
wonder if most American women work on army hats.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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