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    EMPLOYMENT Or WOMEN, 367

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    ^ ¦ <» The Fact Revealed In Tlie Census ...

    "Women thus educated will be able to find ample employment if they remain singleand if they marry will become real helpmates to

    their husbands instead , of the heavy useless burdens they now too often are , unable to keep the accounts of their husbands' shops , or

    genc even e of to their find p own leasure households in anything , and not but possessing buying and sufficient exhibiting intelli their

    handsome dresses . , If young women of the trading classes were thus enabled to

    become clerks and accountants , and to take part in commercial business , the number of candidates for places as governesses would be

    much diminished , and would consist principally of ladies who had known better daysand of the daughters of the clergy and

    professional men left without , fortunes ; and as the competition would diminish with the numbers seeking engagements , these could ask

    sufficiently high , salaries to enable them to live in tolerable comfort during their old agewithout being "beholden to charity ; and being

    principally gentlewomen , by birth and manners , the unfavorable impressions now existing against governesses would gradually fade

    ' away . The profession would rise in public estimation , and those following it would receive the respect and consideration due to them .

    We will now proceed to the next branch of our subjectthe

    over-, worked dressmaker and distressed needlewoman . Gentlemen sometimes wonder why women submit so quietly to

    the ill-usage inflicted on them by their employers , and why , when they find they are required to sit for sixteen or eighteen hours a day

    at their needles , they do not leave their service , and go and seek for work elsewhere .

    The reason is simply that if they did so they could not find it . It is the old story ; the supply of labor is greater than the demand , and

    therefore the employed are at the mercy of the employer . The millineroutfitteror slopsellerwho the most grinds down his workwomen

    can , afford to , undersell the , othersand so makes a fortune . It is a competitive school for , cruelty on a grand scale : the most

    cruel wins the prize , and grows rich first ; the most merciful is undersold and ruined . The only hope of protecting the employed

    from the effects of this system is to provide those who want work with other occupations , so as to cause -the value of female labor to

    rise in the market . The question then is , Are there any employments suitable to women of the lower classes from which they are now

    debarred by ignorance , prejudice , and other causes ? There are many . Thousands of women might be employed to wait in shops

    where light articles of female attire are sold ; and there are departments of industry , such as clerkships in post-offices , savings-banks ,

    railway-ticket offices , and others too numerous to mention , for which _, nothing is required to fit hundreds of them , but a moderate amount of

    education . Thousands more might be employed as watchmakers ,

    Employment Or Women, 367

    EMPLOYMENT Or WOMEN , 367

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 1, 1860, page 367, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01021860/page/7/