ABSTRACT
Since the women of the labouring classes must retain their position in non-domestic industry, it cannot take them out of their sphere to endeavour to improve that position; and as these classes compose three-fourths of the whole community, the problem before men is very much narrowed. Women of the working classes seem to have understood the change; and, seeing the need of adapting themselves to it, have taken their place in that non-domestic sphere, where alone they can now execute the labours they formerly gave to the corresponding descriptions of manufacture, under the household system. It is objected to woman leaving the domestic circle, that her natural relation to the other sex would thereby be broken, and the feminine attributes of her character lost. “Since women are the purest and most spontaneous fountain of moral power” it is proper that, like the priesthood or spiritual power, they renounce all participation in practical affairs.
