THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 99 



to enter upon the normal sphere of wifehood and mother- 

 hood. Thus we see a wrong ideal of the true vocation 

 of women set before the rising generation, and a vicious 

 circle of misdirected training enthroned in our midst. 



But, at present, it seems likely that a good deal of 

 the unemployment of women is due precisely to this 

 error in training. The problem is probably somewhat 

 analogous to the general problems of unemployment. 

 At one end of the scale there is a certain and increasing 

 percentage of real unemployables, whose growth is due 

 largely to unsound philanthropic enterprise and ineffec- 

 tive natural selection. We do not, be it remembered, 

 absorb the feeble-minded and incompetent into industrial 

 and educational occupations where celibacy is a sine 

 qua non. We leave them to propagate their species at 

 will, providing maternity wards and skilled attendance 

 for the purpose. At the other end of our social scale 

 we have a want of mobility and a wrongly directed 

 training, or absence of training, which has rendered 

 many competent women unfit and consequently un- 

 willing to take up life and work on the ordinary 

 domestic lines ; there is apparently no limit to the 

 number of suitable women who could be profitably 

 absorbed in several of our colonies. Unfortunately, 

 the employment of women in the various offices which 

 are created to ensure an improvement of environment 

 amongst us is often directly beneficial to the community 

 at the moment. Since a woman has usually only herself 

 to maintain, an individual of higher education and char- 

 acter can be secured at a lower rate of pay than a man 

 of corresponding ability and training. If we raise the 

 wages, the unmarried or childless woman will always 



