Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1916-12-07
Women IN Mems Jobs
> Boston Transcript

There is much point in the statement that it
is going to be hard to induce the women workers
who are now doing mems labor in Europe to "go
back to dishwashing after the war;" A good
many of them will never return to the old EN-
Payments. The tendency to bring women into
competition with men in their employments is
no new thing but it has been enormously accen-
tuated by the warm Germany, for example,
where the kaiser would otherwise have kept all
women, il he could have done so, to their
Kinder, Kirche and Kuche." In this experience
the women Of Germany may be said to have tasted
blood. The earlier movement in the same direc-
ton was not the result of the war. According to
the views Of Ellen Key, expressed in her book,
the Woman Movement" the earlier intrusion of
women into mems employment was the result of
their exclusion, through the celibacy of the late
marriage OF thousands of men, from the career
Of marriage. eHusbandless, women sought the oc-
equations of men. Ellen Keys opinion is that
this process is in the social sense disorderly and
hurtful, but she believes that man, having thus
by his own act called women into competition
with him, should accept the situation in good
faith, and admit her to an equal position. Eco
nomically at least that is what has happened to
very large extent in America We have not yet
set our women at work in the boiler factories as
they have in England nor made street car con-
ductors of them, as has been done in Germany
and France. But they have prominent place in
our business establishments and in most of the
professions and we have not hesitated to accept
the logic of this situation. In this country women
are secure in the employments which they have
newly occupied. Will that also be the case in the
warning countries of Europe after the war is over?
Probably it will not be, to any such extent as
in this country. Yet what will become of the
European women who have taken to mems en-
ploymentsi The sacrifice of millions of mems
lives in the war will greatly diminish the chances
Of marriage Of the unmarried women, while those
who have been widowed, or deprived of fathers
or a brothers support will seek to retain their
present employment and will do so unless they
are forcibly excluded from it. In Germany, at
least with the revival of peaceful industries, the
work of thousands of these women will be
needed, even in addition to that of the soldiers
who will be restored to civil employments They
will stay where they are, and will constitute a
new influence in industrial and social life. Habit
uated to the presence of women in such occupa-
tons. men will admit still others The tendency
OF German women to seek marriage as the only
career in life open to them will be broken, and
this in turn will have an effect to reduce the in
crease in population. Germany will be profoundly
modified by the tendency which the war has put
in operation.
A similar effect will be observable in the
other warning countries. The drift of women to
mems empoyments may become a settled phe-
nomenon there, as it has in the United States.
Were the statesmen Of Europe aware of the social
tendencies which they were Enchanting when they
entered the great conflict