The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-10-11
THE SAME OLD QUESTION.
Conditions That Arise from Present
 Economic Status of Women.

GtOnOAA4C 0t0I0S VI WoA4cAAs
 A recent report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics. entitled Sex in In- dustry," furnishes an instructive resume of the extent to which self-support is car ried by the women of that State. Nearly one-third of the gainful workers of Mas sachusetts, or litte more than 300,000 out of 100000 are women. Their numbers have increased more than 100 per cent in the last decade. During the same period the number of female children at work has more than doubled. The rate of in- dustrial increase has been least, however. in those professions and industries which were the first to be entered by women. In domestic service the increase has been less than 30 per cent; in factories g per cent. and in teaching about 25 per cent. On the other hand there has been an in- crease of nearly 50 per cent in the num- Der of women partners and stockholders. and 40 per cent in the professional classes.
 In commenting on the above figures a woman said yesterday:
 Taken by themselves, these figures, while interesting. would indicate little more than that steadily increasing num- Der of women were supporting themselves either from necessity or choice. But, coupled with the statistics for births. deaths and divoINs for the same period, they indicate a social tendency which seems nothing less than deplorable.
 'In the last ten years the marriage rate has dropped in Massachusetts from nine- teen to seventeen per thousand. During the last five years the birth rate has fai- len off perceptibly. The figures for divorce indicate that the women who are entitled to write the obnoxious initials ID. C. af- ter their names have increased from one in twenty-eight marriages to one in eigh- teen marriages.
 While the growing tendency of women to industrial independence subjects them to many hardships and annoyances. the effect upon society as a whole, at least so far as the one State of Massachusetts may be accepted as typical of the other States of the Union, seems to be the re- verse of salutary It is sufficiently clear that if the crowding of women into trades. business and the professions re- suits in a reduction of the marriage and birth rates and the encouragement of di- vorce, or. if 1t only accompanies these. the effect upon the community as whole is evil.
 ''Of the deteriorating effects of indus trial and professional competition upon the women engaged in it much might be said. Some of it is patent to any one who will watch a crowd of girls as they issue from a department store, office or factory for their incoming. Not only have they not been improved physically by their hours at the typewriter, behind the count CT or in the work room, but morally and intellectually they show as little evidence of uplift through their life of economic independence. No one who sees them or hears them talk c6n doubt that they would have been more gentler, more re- fined, less bold, more polite, more modest and altogether more lovely arfd more low able If they had remained in their homes. The qualities of self-reliance, courage, honor, truthfulness. seff-control. which are the qualities that business life tends to develop in men, are not more prominent in the 'salesladies and hands than fin the girls who stay at home. A business life seems to affect men and women diff ferently. In men it strengthens the man. ly qualities; in women 1t not only fails to strengthen womanliness. but it does not bring out the sterling masculine dual- ities. It takes away the bloom without replacing it with anything better
 '"The anti-suffragists seem to be right in asserting that women should maintain domestic relations and social relations, but that they have no business with in- dustrial relations"