Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 273, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1919 — Future of the Women of Britain Lies Wholly in the Hands of Labor [ARTICLE]

Future of the Women of Britain Lies Wholly in the Hands of Labor

By BEATRICE FORBES-ROBERTSON HALE

There are two alternatives before the women of Britain. There are 2,000,000 women 1 who-can never marry. If labor speeds up and the people woik to throw, off the national debt, as the French did after the FrancoPrussian war, then, these superfluous women will have a chance in industry. But if the extreme labor agitators have their way everyone will be at lnggprheads : the output will diminish, and women will be the victims, ‘ for'.they will be unable to get employment. In this event there will be nothing for those- 2,000,000 women to do but sink into misery or go to the colonies. Their future lies virtually in the hands of labor. I wrote in 1914: “Feminism, if it is a live thing, cannot mean the elimination of children from women’s lives; one can afford to trust not only life but women for that. The time has already come when, women are achieving success in their work and in the upbringing children as well.. But complete freedom, both to work and to bear children, involves almost unimaginable changes in social conditions, in housing, nursing, education, cooking, cleaning and in industry and the professions. the biggest job of the feminist movement, and on its success or failure the whole thing hangs.’* . These “unimaginable changes” are already coming about in England as a result of the war, and home life, community life, education and industry are being put on a new basis. ; - The reconstruction program of the British government is so farreaching that ten years ago most of us would have called it socialistic, but people have moved forward to meet it. Fran Clara Mende, German National Assembly—The emigration question particularly concerns the women at this time. Women must im- <■ press on the government that no consuls or no foreign representatives selected who are unmarried in order that each place where we are'repreaented the families of our representatives may become centers of German colonies. , • _ _ . </• < Secretary of the Interior Lane—We must stop the concentration of •nr work in the big cities if we are to aolve for long the problem of aoarfaur food prices. '