ABSTRACT
IN spite of the marvellous changes which the last thirty, the last ten years, indeed, have produced in the economic status of women, with the marvellously increased facilities for entering and practising remunerative industries, we cannot feel that the problem of women's work and maintenance has been altogether solved. Compared with the state of things in which sewing, teaching, or domestic service formed almost the only occupations accessible to women thrown on their own resources, the present vastly increased number of paying avocations open to those who are sufficiently endowed with brain, health, and energy - in the majority of incidents we mlist add with youth~to enter upon the training necessary, must appear as if effectually solving the problem. Anyone, however, who has had the smallest experience upon Employment or Aid Societies must know only too well how far this is from being the case, and how the various solutions only appear as yet· to have partially met the true necessities of the case. That sharp competition for a limited number of posts should result in
raIsmg the average standard of paying work to the highest level appears scarcely an unmixed evil .. so long as we do not allow ourselves to consider the Immense numbers of destitute women of the educated classes thrown unexpectedly on their own resources; but whose age and the loss of the early vigour and energy of youth alone would prevent them from entering upon training, if they even had the resources necessary to pay fees of instruction, or to subsist during training. That a. hundred applications should be received for the position of lady-help with heavy duties and £15 of salary; that for every successful candidate for a situation in the gift of an employment society six or seven disappointed ones should exist -are facts so painful and striking, that we feel as if some remedy should exist by reason of' the cruel necessity. Too much praise cannot be given to the noble and philanthropic efforts that have already .been made in this direction-the homes for poor ladies, supported wholly or partly by olltside assistance, working ladies' guilds, and the multiplication of chambers and flats at low rental, to enable those of small incomes to live on their scanty resources. But it is evident that though this latter plan may be of the greatest assistance to those who have a " living" income, however small, so that it can just suffice for the necessities of life, it is useless to those who have not even this, and cannot earn it. For these it seems as if some system of homes or communities should be formed, where these helpless ones, unfitted to cope with the world, might find shelter from its struggles, and perhaps utilise their limited powers for the good of all.
