The Case for the Defence The constant agitation for turning women out of employment, nominally at first to reinstate returned soldiers, but now as measure to meet the unemployment of al] sorts of men, is one of the most dangerous expedients that could be framed. The old custom of the fathers of the middle classes to support or partially support their girls in their youth and to leave them in later years with inadequate means, to sink or swim, is now absolutely impossible, and it is essential for girls still living at home, and so, nominally, partially supported and unfairly called pocket-money earners, to enter the labour market and provide for the future. To many of them marriage is denied by the slaughter of their mates and) the incapacity of the disabled to maintain wife and family. With the cost of living at its present height it is impossible for parents to make future provision for the increased number of unmarried daughters and to give them the conditions of life an educated woman is entitled to expect, either as the result. of her own or her family's exertion.
Women social workers of the past 50, years have seen too much of the misery of their unprovided sisters to stand aside now, when women have proved themselves capable of self-supporting, useful work, and see them thrown back again into the conditions of parasitic existence, sapping the means of the younger generation and an unwilling drag to economic progress, that was their lot in the last generation. Women have the right and, to-day, the urgent need to become earners, and to secure economic independence, if in the future they are not to be a danger to the State. To deprive women of the means of self-support drives a certain type into vice, and another to the ignominy of unwanted dependence and helplessness, which degrades human life. To turn women out of suitable and well-paid occupations over-crowds the female labour market in other trades and reproduces all the evils of sweated work that women have been slowly beating down.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.