442 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



probably become aware that liberty of divorce must be reciprocal, 

 that marriage is preeminently a restraint placed on the passions of the 

 man in the interest of the woman, that a woman loses her charms more 

 easily than she loses her need of a protector, and that to the children 

 divorce is moral and social ruin. Mr. Mill demands for the " slave " 

 the privilege of changing her master ; he forgets that he would, at the 

 same time, give the master the privilege of changing his slave. 



The question, of which more is heard here, as to the right of wom- 

 en to the control of their own property, was one the importance of 

 which was not likely to be fully perceived while comparatively few 

 women earned their own bread. However, now that it is perceived, 

 the British Legislature has at least gone so far in removing anomalies 

 that it need not despair of seeing itself do complete justice. In the 

 United States, male Legislatures, so far from being unwilling, display 

 almost an exaggerated propensity to sever the interest of the wife 

 from that of the husband. An eminent American jurist told the 

 writer that he knew a case in which a woman was compelling her hus- 

 band to work for her as a hired laborer, and another in which a wom- 

 an had accomplished a divorce by simply shutting the door of the 

 house, which was her own property, in her husband's face. After all, 

 it must be remembered that the man remains responsible for the main- 

 tenance of the woman and her children, and that the analogy of a 

 commercial partnership, which is in vogue with the champions of wom- 

 an's right in the United States, is very far from holding good : " 

 commercial justice between themselves and their husbands is not what 

 the women really want. It must be remembered, too, that the male 

 has, by nature, certain advantages over the female which no legislature 

 on earth can annul ; and that it is necessary in the interest of both 

 sexes, but especially in the interest of woman, to render the restraint 

 of marriage acceptable, not only to persons of cultivated sensibility, 

 but to ordinary men. If the ideal of marriage which floats in the 

 pages of Mr. Mill were actually embodied in legislation, and the hus- 

 band were stripped of all conjugal rights, and left with nothing but 

 the responsibility of maintaining the family, it is at least possible that 

 the result among the coarser masses of mankind might be the increase 

 of license and the consequent degradation of women. 



It is commonly said in the United States, by the Woman's Right 

 party, that women are underpaid for their labor, and a vague hope is 

 held out that this might be set right by female legislation. In most 

 fields of industry women are new-comers, and on all new-comers old 

 custom is apt at first to bear hard. Female singers, piano-forte play- 

 ers, novelists, painters, milliners, are not underpaid. If female clerks 

 and school-mistresses are paid less than male clerks and school-mas- 

 ters, this may be partly because continuance in the calling is an ele- 

 ment of value, and women are taken off by marriage. That a New- 

 Yorker will persist, out of regard for the aristocracy of sex, in paying 



