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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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THE . LAWS RELATING TO THE PROPERTY OF MARRIED WOMEN . ( To the Editor of the Leader . } Sik The 5 th and 6 th clauses of the Petition which formed the subject of niy previous letters run thus : — " That if these laws often bear heavily upon women protected by the forethought of their relatives , the 4 ocial training of their husbands , and the refined customs of the rank to which they belong , how much mo re unequivocal is the injury susta ined by women in the lower classes , for whom no such provision can be made by their parents , who possess no means of appe al to expensive legal protection , and in regard to whom the education of the husband and the habits of his associates offer no moral guarantee for tender consideration of a wife . "
" That , whereas it is customary in manufacturing districts to employ women largely in the processes of trade , and as women are also engaged as sempstresses , laundresses , charwomen , and in other multifarious occupations which cannot here be enumerated , the question must be recognised by all as of practical importance . " I have put these clauses together because of their inherent connexion , and prefer taking the latter first , as it forms the basis of my argument . In my last letter I remarked on the large and increasing number of educated women who had entered into such branches of art and literature as were within their reach , and upon the fact that the majority of these the ost
were married , whereas , fifty years ago , m prominent and sterling examples of female intellect were unmarried . I would now draw attention to the enormous development of the female element in the processes of trade—a development which may well escape the attention of Londoners , but which , in the northern and midland counties , is one of the most patent facts in the condition of the population . I have not , under present circumstances , any power of putting before your readers the exact statistics of the cotton and iron trades , of the Birmingham manufacture of papier mache , or the great silk and crape works chiefly carried on by women ; but the number of female mill hands are known to all residents in Lancashire , where girls and married women alike
are rung in and out o f the long hours of factory work . Nay , the famous " Ten Hours Bill , " right or wrong in its political economy , brought the immense amount , of labour carried on by " women and children" before the public . Mrs . Gaskell ' s novels deal largely in the social condition of this particular element of modern manufacturing industry . Any one walking in the black lanes and roads of the Staffordshire " nailing districts" sees the rough , begrimed women finishing one nail after another with admirable dexterity ; wretched enough are these specimens of the softer sex , but infinitely happier and nobler in their coarse and dirty existence than women , whoin Europe , barter themselves for means of support , or those who , in Asia and Africa , are kept like domestic animals , in stalls .
In Birmingham what numbers of women are employed in making trays , screens , boxes , tables , every article made of papier muche " , and also in the pin trade . At Halated , in Essex , a thousand women are engaged in one silk factory alone , the establishment requiring , I believe , about fifty men to attend to the steam engine and other rougher work . Thus , on all hands , we see whole branches of trade carried on by the female aex , while there rGmain all the vurious domestic avocations undertaken for hire , such as that of sempstresses , charwomen , washerwomen , and house servants .
Now I do not mean to say that this constantly increasing habit of working for money in large factories away from the homo is without its grave disadvantages , While no form of association secures a thorough and wholesale attendance to domestic necessities , while the cooking , the sewing , and the care of the young children , fall exclusively on the indivlduul mother of each household , her absence during ten hours of each week-day must be attended with such disorder und discomfort as are calculated
to nil thinking men , clergymon , dootorB , and philan . thropiflts with dismay . They may well be inclined to wish all oxtra-domesttu employment for women swept irom the face of the earth , and each wife and mother restored to her own hearth to see that the pot bolla and that the children do not for over fall into the flre . To which it must flret bo answered that such a return is simply impossible , and that the remedy must be looked for elsewhere—in domestic arrangements fitted to the existing change and which
shall restore comfort to the home by permitting the expenditure of the wife ' s earnings upon some efficient plan of general surveillance . The laws under which our expanding population develops require female labour , and we cannot go against them unless we give up all our English theories of free trade and begin to regulate every minutiae of factory life by arbitrary regulation , in which case we should find we had only entailed upon ourselves worse evils than we sought to avoid , and that the last state of that house would be worse than the first .
Moreover , the honourable members of the Lower House , whose fortunes are derived from the cotton trade , would by no means wish to see female labour abolished , and would be the first to put forth every argument by which political economy fortifies its employ ; at best , any legislation on the subject could only deal with married women , unmarried women above twenty-one must be left to sell their labour in whatever market pleases them best , so must widows and women afflicted with idle husbands who will not work ; and if they prefer ten shillings a week in a factory to less than half that sum in shirtraaking , he would be a bold , self-constituting protector of female interests who should say them nay .
To those who say that married women cannot and ought not to follow a trade , it is therefore enough to answer that hundreds of thousands of them do and must , and that so far from this tendency of modern society , showing the slightest symptom of decrease , it is extending on every side , that printing , watchmaking , and other kindred works requiring delicate manipulation are year by year absorbing more women , and that the process is not even rapid enough for the needs of the time , witness the Bishops of London and LlandafF , Lord Shaftesbury , and Dr . Lankester , all holding forth at Exeter Hall at " a meeting to express sympathy with the frightful overwork of milliners and dressmakers , and to call the attention of Englishwomen to their oppressed
condition . " The Times , in a leading article a propos of this Exeter Hall meeting , very truly says that no amount of sympathy from English men , or amended forethought and attention from English women , Avill relieve an evil springing from the pressure of our female population as the means of subsistence , and that our needlewomen must " go to Canada" — if they can get there . Mr . John Bennett is lecturing all over the kingdom upon women and watchmaking ; the wives and mothers who are working in factories " north and south" do so , each woman of them , because otherwise the children would starve , arid John Stuart Mill distinctly says ^ that the greatest hope , in the long run , of an improvement in the condition of our loiver classes , lies in the opening of
new careers to women . Here , then , we have assertions which may be verified by any one who in England cares to examine the cogent statistical arguments in their favour . We see that a very large proportion of Englishwomen earn weekly wages in all manner of trades and occupations , and that we might as well attempt to stop the earth from moving as to hinder this tendency of the Anglo-Saxon race ; while on the other hand , the law remains what it was in the time of Chaucer . All the earnings of all these women remain absolutely in the power of the husband ; he can take them from his wife , or demand them from hor employer ; they are not hers , but his . Now , to say this
over and over again , in every newspaper , in every pamphlet , in every conversation held on the subject , eeems a weurisome and somewhat foolish task . Tho facts of the case arc so simple , that once said it might seem sufficient , were it not that every reform which tho world has seen carried has been carried simply by certain people becoming convinced of its necessity and then having the patience to set it forth , heaping stone upon stone , line upon line , till they conquered by dint of obstinate perseverance . To give the earnings of one person to another person , is against justice , against tho whole spirit of our English law , and to justify it , it must bo proved that something in the relation of husband and wife takes
euqh a proceeding out of the usual category of justice between individuals , and that it works well . Now tho only reason why husband and wife are supposed to be fused into one party holding property before the law , consists in their joint parentage , and Lord Campbell asks , in the short debate of tho 13 th of February , was the wife , for instance , to bo committed to prison in cuse sho refused to contribute her proper share to thy expenses of tho vrfnage f " Undoubtedly . If a woman having the money , refuses to provide for tho well-being of hor children , her presence in
tho homo cannot bo of so valuable a nature as to render her being sent to prison an intolerable outrage on tho sanotlty of the domestic hearth . There can be no doubts in tho mind of nny thinking woman , that , as tho sex arc liable to be transported for theft , to bo hung for murder , it is a somewhat maudlin sentimentality which would shrink from flceinjf them legally compelled to provide for a curtain share of the domestic expenses of their own children } but it may bo safely assorted , for the comfort of legislators who shrink from laying tho
gentler sex under such a sword of Damocles « T # . this is about the last offence for which women woiiM be actually sent to prison . At present the state 1 the case is somewhat reversed : we see the moth slaving away for her children , and under constant chance of robbery from men in a station of life which the general " education of the husband an * the habits of his associates , offer no moral guarantp « foV tender consideration of a wife . " Our legislators are on the horns of a dilemma It women are to possess full control over their ow earnings , they nmst , in the name of all justice hp associated with men in the legal responsibility '
the nurture of the children they bring into th world . Now , is it a worse offence against manlv and legislative chivalry to place a woman under this legal responsibility , the very last she c an reasonably or morally be inclined to shirk , than to leave her and her children both absolutely at the mercy of an individual whose sense of gentlemanly honour and tenderness may not , especially if j ] e be unable to read and write , be quite ' up to the st anda rd enjoined by the domestic customs of" the members of the Upper House ? I remain , sir , yours obediently , Bessie Rayner Parkes .
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THE INCOME-TAX OF A TOWJT DOUBLED . QTo the Editor of the Leader . ') Sir , —In your article upon this subject , you comfort the people o f North Shields , who have suffered a grievous wrong at the hands of the Income-tax Commissioners , by stating that ' exactly the same wrong was inflicted upon Greenwich , ' and that Greenwich , in spite of warlike demonstrations against their oppressors ultimately paid . ' Allow me to say that , except as to paying twice over
this is an error . In North Shields , the defaulters are not persons appointed by the town . Briggs , the defaulter , had 1700 / . of public moneys in the local bank . This sum , -which the bankers wished to pay over to the Commissioners , they most strangely , as it appears to me , refused to receive . In our town , Lucas , the defaulter , was appointed by public vestry , and his two sureties accepted as sufficient by the same authority representing the town ; Lucas absconded , and has not been heard of since . Neither he nor his sureties turned out worth a
shilling , and , of course , no 1700 / . was offered to the Commissioners in part payment of their claim . It appears to me that , hard as it is to pay twice over , no act of -wrong was committed in making us do so . On the contrary , it would have been manifestly unjust to throw upon the rest of the community the loss incurred by our thinking proper to trust the collection of the tax to a rogue , and to accept paupers as his sureties . We should have conducted our business wiser .
This case is very different with North Shields , if the statement quoted by you is correct . If we in Greenwich had had as good a one , we should have seen the Commissioners in Tophet before we would have paid again . As it was , we met , found out it was our own fault , and , after a proper amount of vituperation on Lucas and the tax , ultimately submitted to be sheared , in spite of previously losing nearly all our wool . Some of us felt the scissors keenly .
.... The getting rid of the tax is no doubt very desirablei ; but , while the national expenses are what they are , it can only be got rid of , I am afraid , by taxing something else . 1 should be glad to know what that something is that would be a satisfactory substitute . Tho lucky discoverer would be immortalised . I am , sir , yours , &c , A Sufferer .
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w r , » . « , « » gp » BiaESI , AS AX . I . OPINIONS , BOWKYKE EXTREME , A . RB CS » lSwL ? . ANBOTliSSWN . THE EDITOB MKCESSARII . Y HOLDS BIMSBLF SB 3 PONSini . E FOR NOH « . ]
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There is no learned man . but will confess he hath much profited by reading controversies , his senses awakened , and his judgment sharpened . If , then . it lie -profitable for him to read , why should it not , at Iea 3 t be tolerable for his adversary to write 7—Mii / ton
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columns for assistance to relieve tho great a has been answered in the House of <* mm 0 " » > ™ Chancellor of tho Exchequer , who not only < lwiu » M the duty of Government to . assist its discharged ope » tlves , hut donios that any great distress exists . I on y wish tho right hon . gentleman , and those who shawm his incredulity , would give mo an opportunity of * i ow ing him a ftw of tho oases which moot our eye « 1 «« J turn , and tempt us to ask if it ho indeed true th ' « powers that bo arc ordained of God . I would 1 ntrom him to houses whore not n jug was left to take homo tuo offered aoui > , and where children crouched * tl c « UUU 1 UU OUWf ) » i « v » ,... « .- - - i 1 u'OlUU their nakednoss .
distre here Stauvino Condition ok tub Woolwich Amsans . —The Uev . W . Ackworth , one of the com uttce for relieving tho Woolwich artisans who wore thrown out of employ by the cessation of tho ™ V " , Vour Times :- ! ' The appeal we lately made through you
proaoh ot visitor * to hide very . ^ show Him woman and children lying sick on bg bo « asking only ' a penny roll '—prostrated , ns tho ao would toll him , simply by tho want of su flic nourishment . ' Ho would hear men toll I ™ , weeg dr week , they nod walked tho surrounding oou ntryii limbs aohed and tho shoos were worn from , WJ » thinking themselves happy to And einn ^ "T * ^ portho ordinary rate of wages . No loss than six u « ^ sons havobeen at my door alnco I began this' "J ^ lnnd Arthur Murphy , ono of our ooinmlfcioo » vn »» J » hfl at tho time of tho famine , and 1 > ° «<> lom •»{ T c 01 ue never saw o « 9 oB of greater distress thoro thn have under his notloo in hla vialta to those operative * .
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g&O THE LEADE R . [ No , 376 , Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), June 6, 1857, page 540, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2196/page/12/
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