The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1901-09-13
THE BREADWINNERS AND
THE HOMEMAKERS.

DR.. Arabella Kenealy, L. R. C. P,
contributes thoughtful article to the
London "Chronicle" upon the decline
of the home in consequence of the
"emancipation of women"
'The streets" she says, "are throng-
ed with busy, hurrying girls and
women who are bank clerks, type
writer's, doctors, journalists, artists,
bookkeepers, teachers, nurses, shop
women and apothecaries."
who, then," DR.. Kenealy asks, "are
the women content to practice merely
womanly qualities Where, then, are
their homes? These women, some
body answers, do not need to be home.
In their houses cooks do the cooking,
housemaids the cleaning, footmen and
parlormaids the ministering, wet
nurses or somebody's feeding bottle
and patent foods mother the babies,
nursemaids tend the children, govern
esses teach them when they are sick, y
and so forth.
The happiness, the virtue, the pros
perity of the nation rests upon the
home. If this learned lady is right in
believing that the home is to be de-
stroyed by the emancipation Of women
and their consequent entry into gain
full occupations, then the emancipation
of women will bring upon mankind a
calamity compared with which all 9th
er calamities are trivial. And yet
the facts that this lady marshals can
not be denied. Women are frequently
lett in positions where they must make
their own livings or starve, or else be-
come objects of charity. That has al
ways been the case and there has gen.
orally been sufficient work for women
80 situated to do. But when women
enter into employments which have
heretofore been filled by men the re-
suit is that the wages which men re-
ceived are reduced, more men are out
Of employment and an increasing num-
Der find themselves unable to marry
and support families. That means
that when women enter into these en-
ployments it increases the number of
women who must make their own liv-
ing, because it decreases the number
Of men who can win bread for them.
Just the other day it was announced
that one bank in Chicago had dis
charged l3 men who we're tellers and
bookkeepers and filed their places with
women. What will become of those
l3 men? What will become of their
families? Perhaps some Of them have
wives and daughters who will be driven
from their homes to seek employment
in case the head of the family should
be unable to get work or should be
driven TO take wages insufficient for
the family support, and so the home
will be broken up. The woman who
is driven to breadwinning by necessity
is entitled to the aid and sympathy of
all. But her greatest enemy is the
woman who goes to work not from ne
cessity. There is large and con-
stantly increasing class of working
women in stores and offices who are
not driven to work by necessity, but
because they want excitement; they
want more money than their parents
can give them in order to dress in finer
or they are dissatisfied with
quiet domestic duties at home. These
women, already having home pro-
vided, can afford to take any wage
that is offered, and their competition
forces down the wages of women who
have nothing but their wages to live
upon and deprives many Of them, as
we'll as many men, of their means of
Economically it is best
for society that men should be the
breadwinners and women the home
makers. This demonstrated by az
tual experience in this and other
In those communities we're
the principal occupation is one in which
women do not engage the condition OF
the mass Of the people is uniformly
better than it is in communities where
women and children are employed.
The people in community where iron
and steel are made, or where they are
engaged in shipbuilding, are more en-
lightened and more prosperous than
those in the cotton-mill town, where it
takes the whole family-husband, wife
and children-tO earn enough for the
family to live upon.
Another and very important re-
suit of women engaging in the various
wage-earning occupations is the dan
ger Of degeneracy. A woman clerk
not only has no time to rear her child
ren properly, if she has any, but the
nature of her occupation may render
her physically unfit for the duties of
the mother. One of the underlying
causes for this condition, and many
other things which initiate against
home and happiness, is the growing
greed for money and the growing dis
content with that state Of life to which
it has pleased God to call US. This
is more marked among
women than among men. Many OF
them are never satisfied. Those who