APPENDIX VII.

IMMORALITY AS CAUSED BY DESTITUTION AMONG WOMEN.

The causes of immorality among women are deep-seated in modern life. They are due to—(1) widespread changes in sex relationship, combined with (2) changes in modes of life due to the industrial revolution, and complicated by (3) psychic developments in humanity itself.

(1) Suppose we take the largest and most universal change first. In modern civilisation the psychic relationships of man and woman are changing. Intensity has come into sex relationships. It is reckoned right, or at least pardonable, for men and women to do "for love" what may be against the dictates of common sense. To a large extent this is ephemeral, and belongs to the erotic age alone. But necessarily the effect on the young of both sexes of the "novel" with its coloured picture of life, must be great, and greatest on the most emotional sex. Fictitious views of life influence minds just endeavouring to grasp life as a whole. A woman may be placed in circumstances of destitution in pursuit of the ideal life. It matters little to evolution that thousands of lives perish. The evolution of woman involves, like all other evolutions, sacrifice.

(2) Let us now look at the second large factor—what is called the Industrial Revolution. It has been pointed out by Mrs. Stetson, that hitherto man has been the economic environment of woman. We are still in a transition period, but largely in the middle and working classes, women before marriage, and even after, are escaping to economic independence. This change is so vast and far-reaching (involving an adjustment of all our social institutions) that we can hardly yet appreciate it. Once begun, it must go forward. But at present, as half begun, it means in all directions the danger and sacrifice of individual lives. Over against the problem of unemployed men, we now have unemployed women also—women not dependent, but on their own economic footing.

(3) Changes in sex relationship rapidly follow on changes in economic status. The attainment of economic status as distinct from economic value is imperceptibly modifying marriage and the family. Woman and man are partners. While the child becomes more and more the centre on which public interest focusses, at the same time the ties both of wifehood and of parentage and of brotherhood and sisterhood are relaxed. Community interest and life replaces by degrees parental restraint and responsibility. Freedom has its blessings and also its penalties.

Let us trace a woman through her normal life and see what dangers of destitution beset her.

As at first born, the home is her support and natural habitat. But economic independence being possible at an early age, parental restraint is lighter. I have known cases of girls even of fourteen and sixteen leaving home, and with a companion or two, clubbing together and setting up house. They were then free to invite young men, with what consequences may be imagined. A girl in "lodgings" or "with friends" may easily become destitute through changes in employment.

In addition to these wandering children, parents often cast off girls on very slight grounds. To turn a child into the street, if the girl is out of work or supposed to be idle or disorderly, is by no means uncommon. It is so common that some provision for it should be made in every town.

Short of actually leaving home, our girls are now exposed to the temptations of the free life of the street, of largely unrestricted intercourse, often under wrong conditions, with the other sex. This intercourse, however, cannot under modern circumstances, be prevented except by exceptional parents. It should be under healthy conditions and wise control. But at present it is a large factor in destitution, for the lad and lass spend their earnings largely on sex attraction and are penniless in emergencies sure to occur. Hasty and ill-considered marriage may follow. A national education for motherhood is much to be desired; it is perilous and unwise to keep up the old conventional ideas as to "innocence" and "purity" being fostered by ignorance. Let us face the question boldly, and encourage the teaching of right and pure and true views of marriage. Forewarned is often forearmed. At any rate, at this period in life, orphanhood, or some change in family relations, stepfatherhood or motherhood being frequent, may throw the girl much on her lover. There is no reserve of maidenly provision as in many countries. The legislation of betrothal might even be a good thing, and the State might require at least a little forethought. More and more the State becomes the universal child-parent. It is time it studied its responsibilities.

Before our typical woman lie two paths. Into the usual one of marriage the vast majority of industrial women are carried. The marriage state still involves support, but also involves a change in economic relationship which more and more galls. Curious partnerships result where both are self-supporting, one or the other being predominant partner. In middle-class life still, conventions largely rule; but in industrial centres the marriage bond itself is much less binding than of old. Separations become more and more common. The amount of support that can be claimed by a wife is so insufficient that often they come together again perhaps only to part. Both are often young. Before the man lies a long celibate life, he is under no vow—self-restraint is normally not attained. The large numbers of imperfectly-mated men leading a life divorced from home ties constitute a grave social peril. In every town a great number of middle-class and many working men live free from social responsibility to support women, yet do partially support some at any rate, either as lovers, as betrothed sweethearts, or in less sacred relationships. Destitute and deserted wives are common, cast-off sweethearts not a few; women derelicts abound; they are the "unemployed," alas not unemployed in sin, but a source of moral contagion in their easy life.

For the other career of womanhood is hard, and as yet a path not for the many, and therefore all the harder. A woman may attain economic independence; but she is sadly handicapped. Her wage is low, often lowered by dress expense; and her woman nature, especially under modern pressure of sentimental literature, demands satisfaction in husband and child. What wonder if she gives up the hard struggle and strays from this path. Society owes much to the women who toil on, cutting by degrees the stairs of progress. If they succeed in self-support, how often age overtakes them as toilers; women's physical disabilities (created or complicated by a false civilisation) leave them stranded. The middle-aged unemployed female is a most serious national problem at present. It calls loudly for universal sisterhood. Drink too often claims the unloved and unlovable spinster. She can no longer spin; she must work under conditions in which she ages fast. Independence is hardly to be won. Our workhouses are full of derelict womanhood. Nor is the married woman always more fortunate. Industries often kill husbands when still young. Widows abound. It is extremely difficult to make a woman self-supporting with more than one, or at most with two children, in such a way as to secure sufficient food and clothes for these children. Into married destitution, if the husband lives, I need not enter; it is part of the unemployed problem, and a serious one.

How can we face these problems? They are on every hand. We have no effective State provision. The Tramp Ward is a mockery, a robbery and insult to womanhood. The common lodging-house is a snare and a trap. Surely it belongs to womanhood to befriend womanhood. It is little use to multiply Rescue Homes while we leave untouched the causes that are stranding more and more of our sisters.

What is needed is—in every town an industry for destitute women; in every town a Shelter to pick up strays and guide them to self-support; in every town Women's Hostels under kind, wise, but not restrictive supervision; in every town provision for glad, free girl life, and joined to this distinct, clear, national purity teaching. What is needed is a pure, free, enlightened womanhood, ready to stand side by side with man to mother the world.

Mary Higgs.

[Read at Conference of Reformatory and Refuge Union and National Association of Certified Reformatory and Industrial Schools, Birmingham, June 21st, 1905.]