98 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



urgent request. We might almost paraphrase the 

 sentences of Farr, written on the subject of population 

 in the Census Report of 1851, and say of the great 

 majority of unmarried women that, though they are 

 often out of place where they are not wanted or 

 cannot be productive, they are not therefore, as many 

 people assume, redundant. A wise scheme of redistri- 

 bution is their most urgent need. 



But this particular and most pressing scheme of 

 redistribution is not yet with us, and meanwhile we 

 find ourselves with a considerable number of women 

 who are genuinely unoccupied, and forced to find 

 occupations in which they can earn a living. The 

 majority of these women belong to what we may term 

 the upper and professional classes, precisely those 

 sections of the nation whose sons are employed most 

 freely for the administrative work of the Empire in the 

 dominions beyond the seas, and have formed a large 

 proportion of the most successful colonists. Except 

 for women employed in domestic service, it is rare to 

 find an unmarried woman of the industrial and labour- 

 ing classes. Unfortunately, in the professional classes, 

 it is the ablest women who are the most efficient wage- 

 earners, either in conjunction or in actual competition 

 with men, and are the first to be withdrawn from their 

 normal sphere of action as wives and mothers. Then, 

 as the process continues, there arises a strong pressure 

 to make the training of all women subservient to the 

 ultimate necessity of the few : to consider the possible 

 interests of any single one, as an individual, who may 

 have to become a wage-earner, rather than the certain 

 advantage of the majority, who should be encouraged 



