Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1901 — Current Topics [ARTICLE]

Current Topics

\Jnsutiable Employment* J-or Women.

S A vigorous protest against the tendency of young women to leave ~ the parental roof and embark in the pursuits heretofore followed in civilized countries exclusively by men is contributed to the current number of the Independent by Henry T. Finck, the well known sociologist and author. Against the woman who is compelled '"by misfortune or poverty, to earn her living in some form of industrial activity Mr. Finck has no complaint. It Is for this class, in fact, that he pleads when he protests against what he calls a “foolish and criminal warfare on home life.” For every woman who leaves the refining atmosphere of home life to engage in a gainful occupation merely from choice and not of necessity diminishes the opportunities of the thousands of poor who must earn their dally bread. The epidemic delusion that home is no place for a girl seems in Mr Finck’s opinion to be gaining ground daily. Instead of recognizing the need of the home its influences in our civilization a considerable number of agitators are endeavoring to disseminate the idea that it is the duty of women, no matter what their circumstances, to make themselves self-supporting and independent. The writer is very severe upon the phase of the “new woman” movement which takes emjployment away from those who are compelled to earn a livelihood. He says: “The selfishness which prompts the daughters of well-to-do parents to lower the rate of wages for everybody by flooding the market with a competition as ruinous as an invasion of cheap Chinese labor is a most unwomanly quality which should make men shy of marrying them; though, to be sure, many of these girls, like those who encourage the slaughter of birds for their hats, do not know how cruel they are. - • Even in the case of girls and women who must work the writer does not believe that they should be allowed as they are at present to precipitate themselves blindly into nearly every kind of,a job that men have heretofore performed in this country. The advocates of “woman’s independence” take a great deal of pleasure' in calling attention to the remarkable “progress” of women in invading the employments of men regardless of the question whether these employments are suitable for them or not. The fact that 45 per cent of the factory work of this country is now done" by women is sometimes pointed to as a gratifying evidence of woman’s advancement in independence.