10 Spinsters and Trade Unions

In 1894 the English philosopher and socialist Karl Pearson wrote that there were two, 'and we might say only two', great problems of contem porary social life: women and labour. The women's cause was led by 'cultured women of the middle class, who were restless at the old restric tions, eager for self-development, and a more intellectually active life'. They confined themselves mainly to winning acceptance for the idea that ladies might work. They were not at first interested in the welfare of women of the 'lower' classes, who had always worked: 'they fought against what they felt cramped their own individuality, and they did not realise the solidarity of their sex'.1 This was not entirely true. Some of the middle-class feminists of nineteenth-century Britain, and most of the women they helped, had a more pragmatic reason for wishing to work than mere self-development: they needed the money. In this they resembled their working-class sisters, although (as Pearson pointed out) they were slow to realise it. The Victorian ethic still held that ladies did not work; there had always been the unfortunate governess, but the need for large numbers of middle class women to earn their own living was new, brought about mainly by a steady decrease in the marriage rate throughout the nineteenth century. In 1861 13 per cent of all women over thirty-five were still unmarried; in 1901 the figure had grown to 14*7 per cent, representing 804,017 women without the customary duties of womanhood and means of support.2 Not all these women were middle class, of course; but the number was sufficiently large that teaching, the mainstay of destitute ladies, soon proved unable to absorb them. Fortunately the tremendous expansion of trade and commerce at the end of the nineteenth century provided jobs for thousands of middle-class girls and women, while others joined Miss Nightingale's reformed profession of nursing, and a select two hundred broke down the barrier of prejudice against lady doctors. These developments were accomplished only after a good deal of hard ship for many women.3 The leaders of the movement to extend female employment, like the leaders of the suffrage campaign, fought for equal opportunities for the two sexes to replace the principle of the protection of the one by the other. They soon realised that simply giving women the right to work was no guarantee of their right to do so on fair terms. Permitting the competition of men and women in the labour market probably helped