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WOMEN AND
THE LABOUR
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Ž FOREWORD.
BY
THE Rt. HoN. ARTHUR HENDERSON, M.P.
now established a definite place for them-
selves. They have won political freedom,
and in industry they have shown them-
selves to be adaptable, efficient, and enthusiastic
workers: their right to full equality of opportunity
with men in industry and in politics, with equal pay
for equal work, cannot be disputed. What practical
use women will make of the political and industrial
freedom they have gained this book is in part an
attempt to show. The writers approach the several
problems with which they deal from the point of
view of democracy rather than of feminism. The
º, book offers an interpretation of Labour policy by
" women for women, and is published with the hearty
approval of the Labour Party, in the hope that the
great mass of women, particularly those belonging to
the wage-earning class, will find in its pages evidence
that the party is working for the creation of a demo-
cratic order of society, in which men and women can
live and work together on a footing of complete
equality and co-operate politically for the common
end of good government. The Labour Party has
always advocated the claims of women on the ground
of sex-equality ; and the women of our movement
have consistently opposed every development of the
feminist agitation which tended to emphasise the
unhappy sex-antagonisms produced by the long and
Bº: as citizens and as workers women have
, t ! ...”

6 FOREW ORD
bitter struggle for the franchise. In the coming era
of social reconstruction, likewise, the organised
working class movement which includes both men
and women, has evolved a policy intended to promote
the common interests of both sexes, and we believe
that when this policy is properly understood by the
bulk of the enfranchised women they will recognise
that separate sex organisations are fundamentally
undemocratic and wholly reactionary.
There are one or two proposals and suggestions
in this book upon which Labour opinion is still in a
state of solution, and they must be taken as the
expression of a personal rather than of the party's
view ; but the prime purpose of the volume is to
stimulate discussion among women, to shape opinion
as well as to define policy, and to indicate the nature
of the problems which await solution as well as to
formulate remedies for them. As such I commend
the volume to the serious attention of the women of
this country and invite them to study its pages in
the light of the programme of organised Labour.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGF,
FOREWORD RT. Hon. ARTHUR HENDERSON,
M.P. 5
INTRODUCTION MARIon PHILLIPs, D.Sc. (Econ.) 9
THE WOMEN TRADE UNIONISTS' POINT .
\ OF VIEW MARY - R. MACARTHUR I 8
, THE CLAIMS OF MOTHERS AND CHILDREN
f MARGARET LLEwelyn DAVIES 29
THE NURSERY OF To MoRRow
_2^* MARGARET McMILLAN 4o
THE END OF THE POOR LAw
2. BEATRice WEBB, D.Litt. 5o
WOMEN AS BRAINWORKERS
2 REBEccA WES r 57
• J.WOMEN AS DOMESTIC WORKERS -
MARGARET G. Bond FIELD 66
"THE WORKING WOMAN’S HOUSE
Averil. D. SANDERSON FURNISS 74.
THE LABOUR WOMAN’S BATTLE WITH DIRT
KATHARINE BRUCE GLASIER, B.A. 86
THE WOMAN WAGE EARNER
A. SUSAN LAWRENCF, L.C.C. 94.
WOMEN AND INTERNATIONALISM
MARY LONGMAN I O2
INTRODUCTION.
BY
MARION PHILLIPs, D.Sc. (Econ.)
HE War has profoundly altered the attitude
| of women towards public affairs. They
have been compelled to realise how deeply
the daily life of each family and each
individual has been modified as a result of the
political ideas and actions of those who wield power
in the State. Apart altogether from the politically
and industrially organised women, wherever a few
come together, whether at their own door-steps, in
social intercourse within their homes, or in the long
waiting queues outside the shops, the talk necessarily
centres more or less consciously upon the political
events of the times. The claims of military Service
have bereft many homes of their menfolk and
burdened the women with an undivided responsi-
bility for the care of their families, which has increased
their independence of opinion and decision of
action, and this in turn is reflected in their growing
readiness to form political judgments. The higher
value placed upon their work in industry has aided
their emancipation, and the Representation of the
People Act, in granting the rights of citizenship to
women, has led them well upon the way towards
complete political emancipation.
It is to these newly enfranchised women that
this book makes a special appeal. Its object is to
bring before them the contribution which the Labour
Party has to make upon questions that are peculiarly
the concern of women. These hitherto unconsidered
IO WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
citizens have begun to think on political issues;
they naturally ask how they shall act. In the short
papers of which this book is composed, women of the
Labour movement have described the work which lies
before the people when the world is once more at
peace. It is for those who read to decide whether
the Labour Party meets their needs, understands
their problems, and merits their support. In
order to bring the size and therefore the cost of the
book within reasonable limits, it has been necessary
to exercise a ruthless power of selection, and the treat-
ment of the subjects given does not pretend to be
exhaustive ; many important matters, such as the
whole question of food supplies, have been omitted
altogether though they may be held to have a special
interest for women ; others have been omitted
because they affect men and women in equal degree,
and can therefore be studied in many other publi-
cations of the Labour Party. Thus nothing is said
in these pages of Labour policy for a Peace Settle-
ment and the establishment of a League of Nations,
though at this moment there is no question of such
pressing and universal interest to the whole
population.
While a distinction may well be drawn between
men's and women's questions, it may easily be pressed
too far. Essentially the interests of men and women
are one and indivisible. But there are certain
matters in which the experience of women is far
wider and closer than that of men can ever be ;
those matters, for example, which most intimately
concern home life, the nurture of the young, the care
INTRODUCTION II
of the sick and weakly, the planning of the dwelling
itself, are especially women's questions, not because
their right solution does not closely affect the well-
being of men as well as women, but because it is only
by women turning their own experience into the
common knowledge of all that the right solutions can
be found.
While in its broadest significance, the aim of the
Labour Party is the creation of goodwill, it must be
realised that this aim cannot be reached until the
mass of the people gain a higher level of general well-
being, and their progress is dependent upon the alle-
viation of those degrading and oppressive material
conditions which are an outcome of our present social
system. Men and women together must find the
methods by which our Society can be reconstructed
in the years following peace ; but there are many
problems which men cannot solve alone, because their
experience has lain outside them, and the Labour
Party has always realised the need of women's
help and sought to gain it. At the same time, the
united efforts of all the workers in the community
are necessary if the future is to see anything but a
repetition of the old social confusion and misery.
Thus from two points of view the Labour Party has
recognised the importance of women’s participation
in its work; women must give thei'; best thinking
power to the solution of the problems which lie
nearest to them, which grow out of the very centre of
their existence in the family group, and they must also
play their part as human beings in the great task of
democracy, that of making the life of the worker
*
I2 WOMEN AND THE LABOl] R PARTY
fruitful and happy, of developing a finer citizenship,
and raising the level of national existence.
The reconstruction of the Party which has just
been accomplished is a result of the War, in
awakening the conscience of democracy, but it is no
new idea in the Labour Movement to believe in the
enfranchisement of women as a necessary step to
achieving democratic government. Labour has
always demanded political freedom for women as
well as men, and will not be satisfied until the fran-
chise has been completely democratised, and the vote
become the right of every man and woman of adult
age, The refusal to enfranchise women under
thirty is regarded by the Party as a serious blot
upon the recent Act. One of the first measures of a
Parliament dominated by Labour would be the
amendment of this Act in order to secure voting
rights for all on an absolutely equal footing as human
beings. In the Labour Party Constitution this
principle is carried out very completely, and the only
exceptions made to it are in favour of women. Thus
women must have at least four of the seats on the
National Executive, and they may have more ;
in the constitution of the Local Labour Parties a
certain number must also be placed upon the Execu-
tive Committees. By throwing open to all men
and women the right of individual membership the
position of women in the Party has been greatly
improved, and though the men's and women's sections
of individual members in each of the Local Labour
Parties are placed upon an exactly equal footing,
special attention is being given to the organisation
INTRODUCTION I3
of women and special care taken to develop
the work of the Women's Sections. The reason
for this bias towards the women (if it may
be called a bias), and for the decision to give special
representation on the Executive Committees, is a
simple one : it is felt that women are so newly come
into political life that their development will be
hindered and forced along the ordinary lines of
political thought amongst men, thus losing the value
of women's rich experience, if the whole of their work
is conducted in organisations including both sexes.
The present scheme of separation is partial, for in
general men and women work together in the Party's
organisation, but it is sufficient to give full oppor-
tunity for the special qualities of women to make
themselves felt in every constituency. The develop-
ment of District Conferences for Women's Sections
in the constituencies will do much to assist in the
growth of political independence amongst them,
and the fact that the only journal at present pub-
lished by the Labour Party is the monthly paper, The
Labour Woman, shows how important the views of
women are becoming within the Movement.
In the past the political Labour Movement has
only appealed to a small number of women of
exceptional qualities, for those interested in public
questions have been rare,and the great majority have
taken little heed of the political struggles of our day.
Their influence on public affairs has been out of
proportion to the smallness of their numbers, and
many of the women who have so kindly yielded to our
request and contributed these articles have not
I4 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
only national but even international reputations.
The Labour Party may well be proud of the record
of its womenfolk, their high achievements and dis-
tinction of brain and character. But behind those
whose names are known so well to the whole com-
munity, there are the millions of working women
who have made the revolt of Labour a possibility.
The industrial movement has only been possible
loecause the women in the homes were steadfast ; in
many of those strikes which were the ultimate battles
by which the industrial freedom of the last century
was achieved, and which heralded the new movement
towards industrial control in the years preceding the
war, success has depended upon the Staunch loyalty
of the women at home. It is a commonplace of the
Trade Unionist that no men can stand out, no
matter how good the cause of their quarrel, unless
their women-folk will give them encouragement
in the struggle. But such action has been less the
conscious result of the need for industrial unity than
a form of blind and brave loyalty to the individual.
More than this is asked of women to-day. It is
for them to take their part, not only in creating
an invulnerable solidarity of the workers politically
and industrially, but also in shaping the policy upon
which they shall act. The Labour Party asks women
to vote for its candidates ; but it asks for more than
that ; it asks them to take a full share in solving the
problems of democratic government and of the recon
struction of the whole of our social fabric.
At first it seems absurd to the millions of women
hitherto without political interests but now voters
INTRODUCTION I5
rºup.
and potential voters (for they all expect to be thirty
some time !) to place any value upon themselves as
thinkers. Their inclination is to let others do that
part of the work and to follow a lead rather than give
it. The Labour Party will fail to be a People's
Party if it leaves its thinking to a few. It must not
become a caucus of superior persons but must in
truth be broad-based upon the people's will. Essen-
tially, it deals with the simple primary needs of life,
—desire for home and shelter, security and suffi-
ciency of material needs, control over the frame-
work of life, in order that nobility of action and
thought, joy, beauty, and the gift of service may be
the rule for all. Love of the cheery humanity of
Common things makes the background of its political
work.
Politics are but one aspect of our daily lives, and
those who live the common life must always be the
real power in a democracy. The men and women of
finest fibre and finest intellect inspire the work,
interpret the common facts, the common knowledge
of us all ; but they are dependent upon the common
men and women who bring the direct knowledge
gained by experience for them to interpret and trans-
form. We are too apt to think of politics as though
its whole subject matter was abstract ideas. In
reality it is only another side of our everyday human
activities, and the provision of bathrooms may be-
come a political issue of real importance in creating a
finer race, just as the League of Nations has a direct
human bearing on the individual home where a mother
to-day mourns for her conscript son. It is for this
I6 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
reason that every woman should take her place in the
ranks, ready to give her thoughts as well as her vote
for the representatives in whose policy she believes.
Politically women have a clean slate. They cannot
bear any direct responsibility for the catastrophe
which has overwhelmed Europe, and drawn the
whole world towards disaster. But in this country
individual women, some of whom have contributed
to this book, have borne a prominent part in seeking
to humanise our civilisation. Their work will be
immeasurably strengthened when their numbers
are reinforced and thousands of women stand beside
them. So far as the Labour Movement is concerned,
it will strive to remove every artificial barrier which
now restricts the public service of women to the state;
it will support their right, not only to be electors on
the same terms as men, but it will also support their
right to be elected as representatives. Women
are included in the Party's approved list of
Parliamentary candidates, and one has already
been duly selected by the Labour organisations of a
constituency. Others will follow, while the number
of women on Local Governing bodies steadily
increases. ^
With the new responsibilities there must be
increased support from the great mass of women, who
have up till now been unorganised and politically
untouched. If this book helps to bring home to the
new woman electors any idea of the splendid future
which lies before the people if they seize what oppor-
tunity now places in their hands, its contributors
will feel that their work has been worth the doing.
INTRODUCTION I7
The time spent upon it has been rather time stolen
from other tasks than leisure hours, for all are women
leading busy lives in the service of the community;
but they realise keenly, as these pages will show,
that the working woman keeping her home endures a
continuous round of drudgery against which Labour
must be unremitting in its protests. The Ination has
not yet attempted to repay the debt it owes for the
patient toil of tired women, a toil that could with
thought and determination be replaced by lives in
which happy hours of work alternated with the joys
of fruitful leisure.
THE WOMEN TRADE—UNIONISTS’
POINT OF VIEW.
BY
MARY R. MACARTHUR.
F all the changes worked by the war none
O has been greater than the change in the
status and position of women ; and yet
it is not so much that woman herself has
changed, as that man's conception of her has changed.
We are all familiar with the old ideal that woman's
place is the home, and I am sufficiently old-fashioned
to agree that there is something to be said for it. In
the ideal world as I conceive it a woman would not be
driven from home and children by economic necessity,
and her home would be a home in every sense of the
word, and not a mere shelter from which she might
quite justifiably desire to escape on every possible
occasion.
Nevertheless it is impossible to deny that even in
pre-war days women got rather tired of hearing the
parrot cry that their place was in the home. They
had begun to realise that those who talked of the
home really meant the kitchen, and they naturally
objected to any such arbitrary limitation of their
sphere. But since these far-off, dimly remembered
days, a revolution has taken place; and the very people
who cried most shrilly and incessantly that woman's
place was the home, now declare with equal shrillness
and persistence that her place is the field, factory or
workshop. No longer are we told that “the hand
that rocks the cradle rules the world.” To-day it
WOMEN TRADE UNIONIST POINT OF VIEW I9
is the hand that drills the shell that determines the
destiny of the world ; and those who did not hesitate
to refuse the rights of citizenship to the mothers of
men, are ready and anxious to concede these rights to
the makers of machine-guns.
Meantime the ranks of women engaged in industrial
and commercial occupations have been increased by
over 40 per cent. Since the outbreak of the war, and
well over a million and a quarter women are now
doing work formerly done by men. This influx has
not been altogether an unmixed blessing, although
for the moment its advantages are the more apparent.
From the point of view of output the work of women,
speaking generally, has proved satisfactory. The
status of women has been raised, and the standard
of women's remuneration has been improved.
On the other hand, a proportion of the work
allotted to women has been unsuitable and has been
performed under unsuitable conditions. They have
worked altogether excessive hours, at too high and
constant a pressure. The atmosphere has frequently
been unhealthy : much of the work has been ex-
ceedingly dangerous, and some of the processes
poisonous.
It is impossible yet to gauge the price that may
eventually have to be paid for this from the point
of view of the welfare of the race. In the enthusiasm
for new and frequently ill-judged welfare experi-
ments, the scrapping of much of our factory code
was almost unnoticed. During the first year of
munitions activity, night work and Sunday work
were practically universal, and the former is still
2O WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
customary. Many cases were revealed in which
women were working for seven days a week with One
Sunday off a month. We had twenty-eight conse-
cutive twelve-hour days and thirty consecutive
twelve-hour nights. We had shifts of sixteen hours
at a stretch. We had instances of the eight-hour day
being accompanied by the eight-hour break: Women
left one shift at Io.30 at night and resumed at
6.30 the next morning. When allowance is made
for the time spent in getting to and from the factory,
on supper and breakfast, on washing and dressing,
frequently less than four hours were left for sleeping.
The physical effects of much of this overwork began
to be manifest even as early as the end of IQI5. .ºr
Another disadvantage which is entailed by this
sudden and wholesale substitution is the after-war
menace to the man's standard of wages, which in
many trades has been painfully built up by years
of effort and sacrifice, and always on the basis of the
family rather than the individual.
Consideration of the problems so created brings us
to the question : what is to be the place of women in
the reconstructed industrial and commercial world 2
I am quite clear as to what our aim should be :
to secure as wide a sphere as is possible, consistent
with the maintainence of health and the welfare of the
race, and without in any way lowering the existing
standards.
To realise our aim, women should be employed
(a) at wages sufficient to ensure their maintenance
in health and comfort, (b) at wages equal to those paid
to men for equal work, (c) at approximate wages
WOMEN TRADE UNIONIST POINT OF VIEW 2I
for approximate work, (d) under conditions which
will promote and not retard their physical and mental
development.
There are two methods by which this can be
accomplished : (a) by effective trade union organ-
isation, (b) by State action. In my opinion both
these methods must be used, but the test of any
proposed State action should be whether it will
encourage or retard Trade Union organisation.
Trade Unionism amongst women has undoubtedly
made great strides during the War. Since August,
I9.I.4, the number of women Trade Unionists has at
least doubled. It is estimated that at the present
time (May, IQI8), there are something like three-
quarters of a million women organised.
It is generally agreed that where women are em-
ployed in the same trade as the men they should be
organised in the same Trade Union. Care should be
taken, however, that they are not merely paper
members. They should be encouraged to take part
in the administrative work of the Trade Union, and
in the framing of its policy. &
The Standing Joint Commitee of Industrial
Women's Organisations, in its report on the position
of Women after the War, suggests that in mixed
Unions special provision should be made in the rules
for the representation of women on the governing
bodies of the Unions, and that there should be inside
the Union special machinery for dealing with the
organisation of the women in the trade, and with
their special needs and grievances. It suggests that
this might be done either by the forming of a Women's
22 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
f
Council, whose decisions and work might be subject
to the General Executive Council : or that it might
be done by a special Committee of the Executive
Council. *
The Amalgamated Society of Engineers has been
severely criticised for its refusal to admit women to
membership. The A.S.E. has doubtless its own good
reasons for its attitude, and in any case there was the
technical one that the rules of the Society could be
only so altered at the quinquennial delegate meeting.
But however disposed the friends of women workers
might be to criticise the policy of the Engineers in
this matter, they are bound to admit that the result
of this policy may not be such a bad thing for women
in the long run as it at first appeared.
Although it did not admit women to membership,
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, through its
Executive Council, have had since the early days of
the war an informal alliance with the National
Federation of Women Workers, in whose ranks it
helped to organise the women who poured into the
various branches of the engineering trades. If they
had been immediately admitted to the men's union
they would not have been qualified by experience
or knowledge to take a proper share in the management
and policy of the organisation. Nor is there the
slightest probablity that they would have attempted
to do so. They could only have been paper members.
In the Federation, however, they have had to take
official positions. They have had to conduct the
business of their branches and districts, either as
officials, collectors or shop Stewards. They have had
WOMEN TRADE UNIONIST POINT OF VIEW 23
to play their part in framing the policy of their or-
ganisation. And the Federation, has therefore, been
a school in which they have graduated : and should
the Engineers at a later date decide to open their
ranks to women, the women will come in as fully-
fledged trade unionists prepared to take their full
share in the work of the organisation.
On the whole the attitude of the Engineers is to be
preferred to the attitude adopted by some other men
Trade Unionists, who, while admitting women to
membership of their Union and accepting contri-
butions from them, have at the same time used
the organisation to which the women belonged—
without consultation with the women who were
members—to declare that under no circumstances
whatsoever should women continue to be employed
in their trade after the war. It is not to be wondered
at that such an introduction to trade unionism
should leave the women puzzled and bewildered, and
even ignorant of the elementary principles of trade
union organisation. There is no permanent value in
such a form of Unionism ; and the educational loss
to the women is not compensated for by any material
improvement in their wages or conditions.
Lancashire has often been said to be an object
lesson in Trade Unionism. There the majority of
workers in the textile trade are women. They form
the majority of the trade union membership, and they
receive the same rates of pay for the same work as men.
But until quite recently the women have been content
to leave the management of their organisation almost
entirely to men. And, although I should be the
24 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
last to minimise in any way the value of the splendid
work done by the men of Lancashire on behalf of
their women members, I am bound to deplore the
loss of the knowledge and experience which could
have been secured if the women had taken a larger
share in the running of their own organisation. When
all is said and done the greatest function of the trade
union movement is its function of education, a func-
tion more than ever important now when women are
at last to be given the rights and duties of citizenship.
Women Trade Unionists will play a very important
and, indeed, essential part in the solution of the pro-
blems which will immediately present themselves upon
the declaration of peace. Rightly or wrongly, certain
definite pledges, including the restoration of trade
union customs and conditions, were given by the
Government, in consideration of the agreement by
the unions to their temporary suspension, and there
can be no doubt that these pledges can only be
modified by consent ; and although the women were
never consulted when the pledges were given, I cannot
imagine that any organisation of women would think
of asking that the pledges should not be redeemed,
I am also certain that no individual woman would
desire to retain the job of any soldier or sailor
who may return to claim it. It is true that women will
continue to demand a place in the Sun, but that does
not necessarily mean, for instance, a place inside a
ship's boiler before it is cold—one of the many un-
desirable positions in which women workers have
found themselves to-day. It cannot' be too clearly
understood that in the opinion of the women trade
WOMEN TRADE UNIONIST POINT OF VIEW 25
unionists, suitability and not cheapness should be
the determining factor in deciding whether certain
work should be done by women or by men.
The Standing Joint Committee of Industrial
Women's Organisations in their Report have Sug-
gested the appointment of an Inter-Departmental
Committee, consisting of representatives of trade
unionists, including women, and doctors, including
women doctors, and other persons experienced in
the inspection of factories and the employment of
women, to consider these vexed questions, and to
make recommendations thereon to the Government.
To prohibit the employment of women in any
trade, even by the decision of such a Committee,
has been criticised : and so representative and re-
spected a publicist as Mrs. Creighton has criticised
the proposal as “slavery.” But in the opinion of
the Joint Committee, the alternative of leaving the
women a prey to economic necessity and unscrupu-
lous employers would simply be an endorsement of
slavery. Under the old Munitions Act, fortunately
now amended, we have had women forced to work
against their will in dangerous and poisonous pro-
cesses. We have had them heavily fined for refusing
to do so, and in addition, penalised by six weeks
unemployment before being allowed to take work
elsewhere. This is a state of things to which the
term “slavery '' could much more justly be applied :
and, indeed, if Mrs. Creighton's contention is followed
to its logical conclusion, much of Our admittedly
beneficent factory legislation would merit condem-
nation on the same ground.
26 woMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
The organised women are clear that trade unionism
must continue to be supplemented by State regu-
lation of industrial conditions: and they are not
content to urge, so far as factory laws are concerned,
merely the restoration of the status quo ante bellum,
although on that they are naturally determined.
They want in addition a new and improved consoli-
dating Factory Act—legislation long overdue, for
the last consolidating Act was passed in 190I. They .
require, to begin with, the reduction of the hours of
labour to a maximum of forty-eight per week, a
demand which is modest when compared with Lord
Leverhulme's proposal of six hours a day. Their
other demands include the abolition of all fines and
deductions from wages: the abolition of all systems
of truck : the improvement of sanitary standards :
and the compulsory provision of fully-equipped
cloak, rest and dining rooms,. They ask the very
fullest precautions against all poisonous processes
and dangerous trades: the replacement of the
Certifying Factory Surgeon by the School Medical
Officer—a very necessary reform—and a large
increase in the woman factory inspectorate.
But Factory Act reform must be accompanied by
an improved Trade Boards Act, and a legal minimum
wage Sufficient to maintain the worker in health and
efficiency must be fixed in all trades and industries.
Adequate provision must be made for motherhood.
For at least three months before child birth and
three months afterwards an adequate state allowance
should be made. No pregnant woman or nursing
mother should be driven by need to risk her own
WOMEN TRADE UNIONIST POINT OF VIEW 27
health and the health of her child by following a
gainful occupation. Working women are united
in demanding a Ministry of Health, and are not
prepared to allow the vested interests of the great
Industrial Approved Societies to bar the way to this
urgent reform. The present system of Unemploy-
ment Insurance should be replaced by a new and
comprehensive non-contributory scheme. Women
should not be allowed to deteriorate during forced
periods of idleness. It is as much in the interests
of the nation as a whole as of the individual woman
that these periods should be used for recuperation
and training.
Educational reform must include the raising of
the school age to sixteen and part-time education
up to eighteen. The part-time education should be
directed towards the development of the bodies,
minds and characters of the pupils and not devoted
to mere trade and technical instruction. Trade and
technical schools should be limited to full time and
older evening students, and should not in any way
be accepted in place of general education for students
under eighteen.*
No survey of the industrial future of women
woud be complete without reference to the effect of
their political enfranchisement. I have never be-
* [The concession made by the Minister of Education to the
clamour of those interested in securing an abundant supply of cheap
juvenile labour has, in this respect, practically destroyed the value
of the Education Bill now before Parliament. Local education
authorities have been given power to reduce the number of hours
for children in continuation schools from 32O to 28o ; and the
operation of the clause requiring compulsory attendance at these
schools of young people between the ages of I6 and 18 has been
suspended for seven years from the date of the Act.—EDITOR.]
28 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
*-* -º-º-º-º-º-, *.*.*.*.*.*.*-* *-** = *-****
lieved that the extension of the vote to women
would mean either a new heaven or a new earth.
Women in the main will vote pretty much as men
have voted. Nevertheless, their enfranchisement
is bound to bring about a great change. Politicians
are certain to take more interestin the questions that
specially interest women, but any attempt to exploit
feminism from whatever source it comes, and it may
come from several, is foredoomed to failure. Women
are at heart conservative, but conservative in the
best sense of the word. They desire above all else
to conserve the race. Big questions of domestic
policy will appeal most to women in so far as they
affect the welfare of children : and I venture to
prophesy that this point of view will be reflected in
new schemes of public health and housing, and in
legislation which aims at the protection of the
mothers of the future.
THE CLAIMS OF MOTHERS AND
CHILDREN.
BY
MARGARET LLEWELYN DAVIES.
T is only of late years that the married working-
I woman has spoken directly for herself and made
herself felt as a national force. Hidden behind
the thick curtain that falls on her married life,
her work as wife, mother, and home-maker has
been carried on in isolation and obscurity, often
under conditions of a terribly disadvantageous kind.
Poverty is the root cause of the majority of her
difficulties, but the woman has also been at the mercy
of ideas derived from laws which assumed she was
the property of her husband, taught her to regard Sub-
jection to him as a duty, and surrounded her with
customs which imposed a disastrous silence and
ignorance on all questions connected with sex.
It says much for human nature that men and
women have on the whole been able to rise above the
difficulties placed in the way of harmonious and
satisfactory married lives. But often where there is an
appearance of harmony, it is gained by a loss of
physical and spiritual energy on the part of the
woman, which lessens the value of the union to both
husband and wife and re-acts on the children's lives.
The need for fundamental changes is revealing
itself more and more. This is partly due to the fact
that women are themselves raising the curtain and
are coming forward and asking for the power of
“self-determination ” which can alone create the
3O WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
finest individual and family life. Further, the high
infantile death-rate, the prevalence of venereal
disease, the large number of separated persons who
are neither married nor un-married, and the disre-
gard of the marriage tie which has grown up since
the war are affecting public opinion. A state
of things, in fact, is seen to exist only too frequently
in connection with marital relations and motherhood
which is intolerable to those sensitive to human
suffering, entirely out of keeping with democratic
ideals of freedom, justice and equality, and fatal
to the well-being of the nation. The Labour Party
stands for these ideals, and women look to it to
right these wrongs.
The enfranchisement of women has come none too
soon. To the wives and mothers of the land the
various problems in the solution of which they will
now have a voice, do not present themselves in terms
of a necessary population for waging war, or earning
profits for capitalists, nor do women seek a
solution along the lines of mediaeval ecclesiastical
teaching, nor accept a masculine view of human
needs. And they do not lose sight of the individual
--in thinking of the race. Their methods of approach
are practical and human. Their primary concern is
with the welfare of their children. At the same time
is heard a daily-growing cry on their own behalf,
for relief from unnecessary suffering, overwork and
monetary dependence—a cry that freedom must be
added to responsibility and that an equal comrade-
ship in the home, the factory, the store and the
state may be granted to them. It is by the regard
º-
ww-
THE CLAIMS OF MOTHERS AND CHILDREN 3I
shown for individual lives, that the welfare of
society will be achieved. Reformers will defeat their
own ends by any sacrifice of the individual
woman's own life. The progress of the race can best
be served by raising motherhood to a position of
power and equality, so that the rights of parenthood
may be shared by both men and women. For this
we shall find that comprehensive reforms are needed,
which will entail national provision for the practical
needs of motherhood and infancy, the wiping out of
old laws, and the passing of others consistent with
modern ideas.
Some persons might be disposed to urge that the
way to meet the problem of the needs of maternity
is to raise men's wages. But no increase, even to a
height which would certainly be thought fantastic
and impractical, would really meet the case satis-
factorily. Such a change would still take no account
of the number in a family, of the differences between
skilled and unskilled rates, and the women would
still be left financially dependent, and without the
special help needed at the particular moment.
SERVICES AND ENDOWMENT FOR MOTHERHOOD .
*-- ~~ -- ~
There are broadly two effective ways, both of
which are necessary, of overcoming the poverty
which is the complex cause of the evils that destroy
the health and well-being of mothers and infants.
One is by provision of Common Services and insti-
tutional treatment, and the other is by placing more
money in the hands of the mothers.
We are steadily progressing away from the old
32 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
charitable and poor law methods, such as maternity
bags, infirmaries, rescue homes and philanthrop-
ically-supported lying-in hospitals. The develop-
ment of maternity and infancy work under the
Public Health authorities, with its foundation prin-
ciple of prevention, is one of the most hopeful and
Satisfactory lines of advance as regards, Common
Services, while the Maternity and Pregnancy Sickness
Benefits of the Insurance Acts are important
steps in the direction of the mothers' economic
independence. With the advent of a Ministry
of Health, in connection with which we hope to
See a strong Maternity and Infancy Department,
largely staffed by women, an opportunity arises for
deciding the relation which Public Health and
Insurance should have in provision for maternity.
Another proposal now being put forward makes an
immediate consideration of the whole question
necessary, and opens up the way for a great imagina-
tive scheme. This proposal is the National Endow-
ment of mothers and children, and so impressive are
the arguments in its favour, that a concentrated
effort should be made to secure it without delay.
_All sides of the national care of maternity ought to
be looked at in the light of this reform, and no new
steps taken which would not fit in with it.
The Maternity Benefit is at present totally inade-
quate to give a woman the right conditions for
bearing children. She needs more chance of rest
before and after confinement, she needs power to
provide help in her home, to be able to take
advantage of institutional treatment, and she needs
THE CLAIMS OF MOTHERS AND CHILDREN 33
money to obtain additional food and clothing for
herself and child. But Maternity Benefit has been
an epoch-making reform, not only because it is the
recognition by the State of the claims of motherhood,
but because it has been made the mother's Own
property. A further experiment in providing
married women with money of their own has been
made in Separation Allowances. These allowances
have shown the valuable results of a regular, reliable
sum of money being at the mother's disposal, and
go far to prove the case for general Endowment.
An argument which should be of great weight with
all those who are concerned to raise the position of
labour, is that Endowment would mean a drastic
change in the distribution of the national wealth.
One of the effects of the war, if things are left
unchecked, will be to increase the amount of wealth
in a few hands. At the same time, high prices will
cause a low general demand. With the endowment
of motherhood, the transference of wealth to the
workers would create effective and steady demand
for necessaries among the people. While steadying
trade, the situation as regards employment would be
eased. For we should expect to see the withdrawal
of most married women from the wage market. This
would tend to keep up the standard rate, which will
be perilously inclined to drop ; while in any industrial
struggle, the position of the men would be greatly
strengthened by the fear of the starvation of the
family being partially removed.
If the advantages of Endowment are seen to be so
great as to merit immediate action, what should be
34 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
º
its relation to Insurance and to Public Health
services 2
The fact that certain classes are excluded from
Maternity Benefit makes Insurance an obviously
unjust method of endowment. Again, the Com-
mittees of Approved Societies are unsuitable bodies
to administer the benefit, and it has long been felt
that the administration of Maternity and Pregnancy
Sickness benefits should be linked up with Public
Health work. But with the endowment of mother-
hood, there would be no purpose in retaining these
benefits under the Insurance Act, either for men's
or women's insurance, the weekly contribution being
reduced accordingly.
Some provision in the scheme of Insurance would
however have to be made for married women, both
for the few who might remain in industry throughout
married life, and for those who returned to it after
the period of endowment was over. It is probable
that these would belong chiefly to the homeworker
and casual class, since few women would return to
continuous employment after a long period of absence
from industry. All married women should therefore
be transferred to a special State Society, which should
have powers of dealing with this most difficult
class of insured persons according to their peculiar
needs and circumstances.
As regards Public Health Services, the need for
these will remain, and the only questions are what
further developments are needed, and whether the
services should be on a free or paid basis. The
institution of a fine Midwifery Service throughout the
THE CLAIMS OF MOTHERS AND CHILDREN 35
Country is one of primary importance. Any improve-
ment in the status of midwives, implying better
training and a living wage, necessitates a State
Service of some kind. This could be carried out either
by a salaried staff or by midwives paid a fee per
case, or by a combination of both methods; and
a grant of 75 per cent. for this special service should
be made to local authorities.
In the opinion of working women another greatly
needed service—more wanted than maternity nurses
—is that of trained women available to look after
the house and children while the mother is laid up at
home or in any institution. Without such “Home
Helps' much of the value of doctors and midwives
and of maternity hospitals and homes is wasted.
The provision of Maternity Homes is urgent owing
to our bad housing, and is made still more so at the
present moment by the employment of married
women away from home in munition factories; and
the opportunity should be taken for such homes to be
started on a municipal basis.
Again, a feature of every maternity centre should
be the provision of Dinners and Milk, given as treat-
ment on the recommendation of a doctor or Public
Health Official, for expectant and nursing mothers.
It is for Labour to see that the new Ministry of Health
starts with a clean record as regards distinctions,
enquiries, and recovery of payment. There are
strong reasons - for establishing an entirely free
midwifery service open to all who wish to take
advantage of it ; and dinners and milk should be
free, like other minor treatment, at maternity
36 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
centres. But with Endowment, a charge might be
made for Home Helps, and possibly for Maternity
Homes—services which could undoubtedly easily
become self-supporting.
A tribute must be paid to the Local Government
Board for its pioneer and democratic recommenda-
tion that working women should be placed on Public
Health Maternity Committees and so associated in
the administration of work which specially concerns
them. The new Maternity and Child Welfare Act,
making Maternity Committees compulsory, will give
an opportunity of which they must hurry to take
advantage” . Another principle which has fortunately
always had the support of the L.G.B. is that no
distinction should be made in the treatment of
married and unmarried mothers. The grounds for
help are greater in the case of the latter, and the
death-rate of illegitimate children is peculiarly high.
ILLEGITIMACY.
But in dealing with the question of unmarried
mothers and illegitimate children, it is not only a
case of rendcring practical help in the times of need.
The injustice of our laws has to be undone and new
—-laws giving equal parental responsibility and
removing the stigma from the child must be intro-
duced. Norway has given a lead to other European
countries in the remarkable laws passed in 1916 and
I917. These aim, in the words of Mr. Castberg, the
statesman to whom they are due,” at crushing the
* This Act was passed in August, 1918, and a Circular was issued
by the Local Government Board on 9th August 1918, which gives
full details of the powers of the Local Authorities. It is published
at a cost of Id.
THE CLAIMS OF MOTHERS AND CHILDR JEN 37
system of concealment and lies, in which paternity .
is now allowed to be shrouded and which is in itself
an offence against wifehood and marriage.”
Sex equality is the new principle dimly discerned
behind the chief provisions of the Norwegian laws.
This principle roused hot feelings in the parliamentary
debate preceding their passage. On the one side
was the “old domination of man, with his contempt
for “natural ’ motherhood ; on the other, the feeling
of respect and desire to protect motherhood for its
own sake.” Outside parliament, there was a battle
between better-class women desiring protection for
their family from the shame and sorrow they pictured
would occur, and working women who fought for
truth and justice, the latter winning a triumphant
victory.
MARRIAGE LAW REFORM.
Nor is it only the position of the unmarried wife
that calls for reform. The legal position of the
married woman is responsible for great suffering and
injustice, ill-health and death.
When a marriage has become an unhappy one
from whatever cause, and mutual love is dead, there
is nothing gained by refusing the possibility of
retrieving a tragic mistake. The enforced con-
tinuance of a formal and exterior bond when
the inner reality has gone, lowers the whole
ideal of marriage. By upholding as moral and
respectable a “grievous continuance ’’ we are doing
far more to break and degrade marriage, than by
opening a door (which none need go through unless
*---.
38 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
they like) for release from a misfortune. Nor does
such a bond unless voluntarily accepted, conduce to
the moral growth of husband, wife or children.
“Without happiness a husband and wife are better
apart,” writes a working woman, “if for nothing else
than the sake of the children . . . I feel
strongly that when a husband and wife are living
together as comrades it is a marriage in the sight of
God, and when they are living together as husband
and wife and there is no respect or affection, then
in the sight of the Father it is immoral.” The
conviction is fast gaining ground that it is the child's
right to be born and brought up in love—and the
plea that we must keep husband and wife tied
together “for the sake of the children’’ is seen to be
a hollow one.
Labour M.P.s are helping in the reform of the
marriage law which is now being advocated by
members of both Houses of Parliament. The large
number of separation orders and the state of things
produced by the war are being especially put forward
in its support. There is little doubt that the only
reasonable, decent and human solution will before
long be accepted that legal or voluntary separation,
with adequate safeguards, after a certain number
of years, should be a ground for divorce. It will be
seen at once how beneficently the Endowment of
Motherhood would act in giving working women a
possibility of escape from degrading conditions of
life, for they have been far more at the mercy of bad
marriage relations than rich women, through having
no money of their own.
THE CLAIMS OF MOTHERS AND CHILDREN 39
It is obvious that an inspiring programme of
reforms is opening out for married women. These
reforms are required in the interests of men and
women alike, and are an application of the democratic
principles which it is the object of the Labour Party
to secure.
=- sº-sº"
THE NURSERY OF TO-MORROW.
BY
MARGARET MCMILLAN,
“Educate every child as if he were your own ''
Rachel, McMillan.
y HY do you want nurseries 2 " asks the
womanin the street P Why? “Why,” wo
make answer, “is there a nursery in every
rich man's house P Why are there, it
may be, three or four rooms even set apart to the
children, and their attendants, nurses, maids, and
governesses 2 Is it not because they are needed ?
Rooms and nurses are needed by the children P’’
“But shouldn't a mother doseverything for her little
ones 2 '' we are asked. “ No, '' we make answer
again, “She cannot do everything.” She may feed,
wash, mend, cook, earn wages, and be a slave to
her family, but even then she cannot do everything.
The big things, the great human tasks she must then
leave undone, or leave to others. Can she teach,
train, inspire, and develop the soul of her child after a
_day at the wash-tub or in the factory P
Dear women of England, you have now the vote.
It is time to go into this whole question of nurture
with the object of finding out what the child of the
poorest home needs : and also what is possible, or
impossible, for any woman. The rich man has a
motor-car and we ride in trams and buses. The
rich have great libraries, baths to every bedroom,
tutors and governesses. The poor have public
*

THE NURSERY OF TO-MORROW 4I
libraries, public baths, and Council Schools. But
all have these things privately or publicly, because
they need them. Well now, looking at our small and
Crowded homes, our ailing children, our dangerous
and it maybe dirty courts where little ones play, we
say, “We want nurseries for all children because they
are badly needed.”
Having granted so much let us then ask, What
kind of nursery should we have 2 How can we
build them and link them to home life 2 How should
we staff them 2 How train the nurse-teachers who
shall work in them 2 And what will they cost 2
These questions are urgent, because we cannot take
the answering of any of them as a piece-meal task.
It is not possible for us to do any real good to the
coming generation if we put one oasis-nursery here
and there and then sit down to see what will happen.
The bill now before the House of Commons asks, in
its first line, for a system of Nurseries or Nursery
Schools, preferably open-air. And just as, in 1870,
it became law that every area should have a school,
so it will be law soon that every Mother can have a
nursery. We shall have to put up not one or
twenty, but four or five thousand. And we need
not spend years in building. Within four weeks,
we could, if labour were released as it must be at last
from the calls of the army and the war, put up many
thousands of beautiful nurseries. “How long,” we
said to our builder last June, “ would it have taken
to put up not only our larger nurseries for I2O children
but also the bungalow, where our staff is housed,
in the year 1914.” “How long ' " he answered,
42 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
2- -------~~~~ *
“Why If we put our full strength of men on, as
we would have done then, we could have finished the
whole job in three to four weeks.”
Women have the vote now, and they will soon
have power to influence the building of homes, and
there could not be a better introduction to this than
is the present and urgent matter of getting nurseries
built. To begin with, the nursery should be, so far as
possible, an extension of the home itself. The
Deptford Crèche is overlooked by many windows—
it has homes on every side, but the street or entrance,
and even here we are going to put open palings. It
would be easy to put up covered “ways '' leading
out of every house door so that babies and toddlers
could be taken right in to their bath room without
any exposure. And that is done so far as we could
do it now. That is to say, the covered nursery is
part of the home so far as the building of the old
houses will allow. Of course if we had planned the
building of the home itself the covered nursery would
be just a suite of covered rooms representing the
common nursery of all the homes.
The nursery buildings are of poélite, a non-
inflammable material, of a soft, pretty grey colour.
It was very cheap before the war as compared with
bricks and mortar, and with wood framing of strong
blue it makes a very pretty building. The big sheds
are of corrugated iron, whitewashed, and all the
rafters and open timbers above are white. In front
is a very long awning up which the roses are beginning
to climb. The sun flood falls on every part except
on very dingy days, for we face due south. The
THE NURSERY OF TO-MORROW 43
things we want for young children are not so very
costly, Sunshine and fair colours, free flowing air
and yet shelter from biting wind and rain, space
(O space the glorious thing our children never had
before), the sky, flowers, and vegetables, birds and
trees, music and gay voices, a hot-water supply, sleep,
a good diet, regular hours, play. We can get them
all, if we plan our nurseries as out-door places. I
don't see how we can get them all in any mere house,
of bricks and mortars—not even if the house were
a royal residence.
Before the war our buildings, which are ample for
I2O children, could have been put up for £450. In
war-time the extension cost £850. But our finest
shelter, built early in 1914 cost £120. That is to
say, before the war our capital expenditure on
buildings would have been something between two
to three pounds sterling per head. Even in war-time
they cost less than £8 per head, and we have to
remember that the average cost of a School-place is
£I4 to £15 per head on a pre-war estimatel We
ought at once to make a survey, not of buildings, but
of land space, so that in every area we might know
what land is held up—whether as dumping ground
or waste or as unused building sites. Many of these
held up sites lie in the most thickly settled areas.
They are walled up for twenty and thirty years.
From the railway train we can in travelling often
survey rows of back yards that are to-day all fenced
off with separate and individual rubbish heaps.
No one has ever tried to get the tenants to come to
any agreement about them. Apart from these,
44 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
however, we could point to many thousands of acres
that make no return of any kind to-day.
Take, for example, our own nursery. We are in
one of the most crowded parts of a thickly settled
district. But we have an acre of nursery ground.
In front of us is a triangle of waste-ground walled in
by ugly planks. A little to the right there is a waste
or dumping ground. Our boys’ camp was cleared of
tin cans and bread crusts and ashes, and cats and gave
no rent to its owner. But now we pay him £20 a
year.
Of course, surveys are made already. The London
County Council for example, makes the most careful
survey not only of the streets but of the houses. I
used to be electrified by the surveyors who came
down here. They knew every window of every house
and every back yard and hidden alley. But their
surveys were not made in the interest of the children
under seven in all the country ! They didn't furnish
every Education Minister and Local Authority with
a survey designed to show him where he could turn
dumping grounds into human gardens.
To come now to the question of staff. At first
Infant mistresses were afraid of the new Bill, but I
believe they now realise that it does not propose to
dismiss them. It proposes to add a new army of
nurse-teachers who will have charge of a work never
hitherto attempted.
When the war broke out the Government were of
opinion that munition workers' babies should be
looked after by hospital trained matrons and nurses.
We have seen that illusion vanish ; hospitals and
THE NURSERY OF TO-MORROW 45
their training are one thing, nurseries for Sane and
normal little children are another. Nurseries should :
be under the charge of teachers—if possible women
of University training. You cannot have too lofty
or too wide a culture for the women who are to give
its first direction to the genius and vital energy of the
race. The Principal should of course know how to
take care of babies. She should even have a crèche
trained sister under her, trained in psychological
method as it is taught for example in the clinic of
Dr. Eric Pritchard. It is permissible for me to say
here that we never had any kind of satisfactory
result in the physical care of our babies till we got a
specially trained and educated psychologist to look
after them. Their feeding as well as their training
improved only when the person in charge was a
student and a trained observer as well as a
nurse. In short, we cannot put our educational
demands too high in Choosing the heads of our
nurseries.
But the rank and file staff will not be paid nurses.
They will be probationers—that is students. I hope
we shall draw them in the future from every class
of society that can show any bright and fair girl and
womanhood. They will not receive a salary. If
well-to-do they should pay a large premium ranging
(according to their conditions) from £30 to ſ.50 per
annum. There should be one probationer to every
six children. And a prettier sight than is furnished
by these young girls of sixteen to twenty-eight, clad
in blue and white uniforms flitting about among the
groups of pinafored children in the Sunshine I do not
46 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
want to see. They give new beauty and meaning
to the simple but spacious rooms, the fresh grassy
places and the gardens. No one who has seen them
could forbear to cry out : “What a pretty scene !
Who could have believed it !”
And I am almost tempted here to tell you about
Some of our children, who in fair colours and
embroideries take to the new life like ducks to water.
There is Frank for example, a dark-eyed boy of four,
with wide brow, steady dark eyes, and a firm chin.
There used to be something tragic in his clever face.
(His mother is a drunkard). But now it has softened
into a wonderful gravity, calm and strong and hopeful.
“The two sides of this thing are the same, ’’ said a
lovely probationer to him yesterday,
“I will measure it myself,” said Frank, “Then I
will know.”
The education of the probationers is expensive.
But that is only because we are giving them the best,
and the best was yesterday only for very rich people
who could pay a fancy price to great specialists.
The course of study for our ten probationers, now
called Rachel McMillan nurses is as follows:
Monday, Chemistry; Tuesday, Designing and
Drawing (both applied to the making of garments
and the teaching of drawing and writing) ;
Wednesday, Physiology and Drill ; Thursday, a
lecture from the Clinic Dentist and later voice-pro-
duction from Miss Kate Behuke ; Friday, French,
with French History and Literature. Half the pro-
bationers' time is spent in Nursery or Nursery School,
and half in Study. Probationers also attend in the
THE NURSERY OF TO-MORROW 47
School Clinic and Bathing Centre to learn about the
methods employed for cure. Their own work,
however, is preventive.
Finally, there is the question of cost. The cost of
putting up say 4,500 nurseries, which would serve
roughly for half a million children, would be well
under three millions or the price of eight or nine
hours' war. The salaries of the Principal and Sister
in a nursery with twenty babies, forty toddlers, and
sixty children between three and seven would be say,
£150 and all found. The up-keep in food for a staff
of fourteen (including cook, and cleaner and a
student–teacher) and for 80 to Ioo children is, in
war-time, £Io a week. Of this the children's parents
pay £6 to £7 a week in the 2s. charge per child, which
in some areas however, could be raised to 4S. or even
5s. In this case the entire food-bill would be paid in
fees. *
The heavy items include gas or heating to-day and
also payment for probationers’ lectures and training
from specialists. The former is unavoidable (we
pay over £100 a year for heating and lighting).
The latter is a new departure. But we must stick to
it that the best teaching must be given now or never.
To start right—that is the great problem. No
nursery will ever be so expensive as this one. For
not only did we buy our knowledge by bitter
experience, we had to pay at first in order to make
a start possible.
* [The practice of taking payments from parents has been adopted
at Deptford, but Labour opinion, as expressed in conference resolu-
tions, is generally in favour of free provision for all children.—
EDITOR.]
48 WOMEN AND THIE IABOUR PARTY
** * ~ *-- -- ~ *-* -ºº-º-º-º. --- <--aa-ºº-º-ºw -- **** *-*-- *-***** -
We even had to pay a small salary of £12 to our
first eight probationers. Roughly speaking the cost
of the nursery, exclusive of training for teachers, is
about £Io per head or 5s. per week. The training
schools cost about £300 or nearly £40 per head
for instruction. The salaries of staff £240. The
Government backs the movement now, even though
the Bill not having yet passed, it is useless to apply for
any grant for the training or for the nursery school.
It will give through the Ministry of Munitions a
grant of 7d. per day for every child (under six) of a
munition-working mother. So that any small body
of earnest men or women can open a nursery without
much risk, provided they are not going to take
children over five or give any training to probationers.
But of course this kind of nursery is only a fore-
runner of something much more beautiful and more
radical. The nursery and nursery school should be
linked together, and be under one head. The leaving
age should be seven, otherwise it is hardly to be
called an educational centre at all.
As for the existing Infant Mistresses and Infant
Schools they will bye and bye adapt themselves to the
new order of things. The present buildings and play-
grounds can be changed at Small cost so as to meet
the needs of little children. The present race of
Infant Mistresses will also, doubtless, supply the
heads of many of the Now out-door schools. One
of our own specialists is the head of an elementary
school.
There is no need for panic : no proposal to ignore
what is best in the existing order. Only we must all
º
iºsºsºm
THE NURSERY OF TO-MORROW 49
prepare to march onward. For us no halting pace,
no foolish and weak indecision, no easy platitudes
any more. In Bradford, in 1896, we built school
baths and then England talked a little about clean-
liness for twenty years. Germany built thousands
of baths in half a score of years, and not a word
spoken. No “wait and see " policy there. They
prepared for war. Shall we be less brave and rapid
in preparing for peace 2 Stormy the dawn before us,
but to the brave a light shines through the Storm-
cloud. To the fearless comes strange and radiant
joy. “Not in Me,”, says the sphinx-like face of
Nature and Fate, “the cause of your long degra-
dation and sorrow. It is within you, the Power that
needs not fumble nor wait.” Up ! now and Save your
children. Up women of the New Day. The path
lies firm though steep before you. Tread it Swiftly.
Thought is matured already on Some questions and
there are goals which are never reached at all unless
we reach them “as if on wings.”
THE END OF THE POOR LAW.
BY
BEATRICE WEBB.

HE women of the Labour Movement, in
their enthusiasm for exercising the hard-
won parliamentary franchise, and for play-
ing their new part in the coming parlia-
mentary election, must not forget their responsibility
for the local government of their immediate
neighbourhood. The proceedings of Parliament
figure so largely in the press, and the title of M.P. adds
so much to the personal importance of Our men
friends, that we are tempted to forget that it is not
to Parliament or to our local M.P. that we look for
any great improvement in the circumstances of our
lives, or any great increase in chances for our children.
Parliament may pass laws, but it is the local
authority that executes them. Our own health, our
children's education, the beauty and healthfulness of
our surroundings, and nearly all the opportunities
for advancement in our children's lives (such as
scholarships and university education) are dependent
- -on the soundness of our local government, on the
good sense and public spirit of our local Councillors,
on the integrity and the expertness of our local
Officials, whether these be doctors, teachers,
engineers, or other municipal employees. As it
happens, the new Franchise Act has enormously
extended the responsibilities of women for good
local government. Prior to this Act only the small
fraction of the women inhabitants who were inde-
THE END OF THE POOR LAW 5I
pendent householders were entitled to vote or to be
elected ; now, in addition to these, the vast majority
of women over thirty will exercise the county and
municipal vote. Moreover, while it is doubtful
whether women may yet sit in Parliament or become
Cabinet Ministers, they are free to take their full
share in the work of local government, whether as
councillors, as mayors, as aldermen, or as Officials.
The most pressing question connected with local
government at the present time is the proposed
abolition of the Poor Law and the distribution of the
services now exercised by the Boards of Guardians
among the specialised committees of the town
council or other local authority. This reform, which
for the last ten years has been a plank in the
programme of the Labour Party, has now been
accepted by a powerful Government Committee, and
it is understood that the Cabinet has decided to intro-
duce a measure giving effect to the recommendations
of this committee if sufficient pressure is brought to
bear by the democratic movement to counteract the
intrigues of the vested interests. The issue is a
crucial one. Are we to continue the present system
of marking off all persons who are “ destitute ’’—
whether these be infants, children, sick, mentally
afflicted, or unemployed—as a class apart, so as to
degrade them in the eyes of their fellow citizens, and
give them the kind of treatment which will “ deter ’’
them from applying for relief in their necessity 2
Are we to continue to elect an ad hoc body which
is confined to dealing with destitute persons, and
with them only during the period when they are
52 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
“ destitute ’’ ” Any capable member of a Board of
Guardians knows how severely this essential Poor Law
limitation narrows its power for good.
The alternative is a simple one. Why not abolish
the Destitution Authority ? In 1834, when the
Boards of Guardians were set up, there existed no
public authority giving education to children, or
medical treatment to sick persons, or providing work
or training for the unemployed. Now we have
reverywhere a fully equipped Local Education
Authority which is providing schooling for the vast
majority of Our children, and feeding a few of them ;
why should not this authority give education,
together with subsistence, to the children of destitute
persons 2 We have now a Public Health Authority
charged with the duty of giving medical treatment to
all citizens when afflicted by certain diseases, such as
infectious fevers and tuberculosis, as well as for pro-
viding a certain amount of medical care for infants
and mothers. Why should not this Public Health
Authority be charged with giving all the medical
treatment, with accompanying subsistence, which is
required in sickness by destitute persons 2 On the
outbreak of peace we shall have the unemployed
again amongst us. Are we going to relegate these
unemployed men and women—some of them ex-
Soldiers and ex-sailors, and many of them ex-munition
workers—to the able-bodied workhouse test and the
casual ward 2 Even in Igoš the Labour Movement
hotly resented such treatment for the unemployed,
and insisted on the passage of the Unemployed
Workmen Act, appointing a Distress Committee of
THE END OF THE POOR LAW 53
the Town Council with limited powers. Why not
extend the powers of these Distress Committees, or,
better still, set up new Committees of the Town
Council themselves, for the prevention of unemploy-
ment and training, to take over the work of the
Distress Committee, and to see to it that all unem-
ployed persons are found either work or full subsist-
ence, with any training that may be required to fit
them for new occupations 2 The fact is that we
have no longer any need for a special Poor Law or
“Destitution ” Authority. All we require is an
extension of the powers of the Local Education
Authority, the Local Health Authority, the Local
Lunacy Authority, and the setting up of a fully
equipped local authority for dealing with the unem-
ployed—the whole organisation forming part of, and
being absolutely dependent on, the directly elected
Town or County or District Council.
The women of the Labour Movement, more especi-
ally those who are organising the new body of women
electors, would do well to get and study the Report
of the Local Government Committee of the Ministry
of Reconstruction, which gives in technical detail
these proposals for “breaking up the Poor Law,”
and Sweeping away the special class of “ destitute
persons.” These proposals meet, in an ingenious
way, the objection always advanced by the up-
holders of the Poor Law to any attempt to supersede
it by more preventive and humane services. During
the Minority Report campaign of IQ09-II we were
always met by the opponent who declared that we
wanted “to break up the family and destroy the
*=-s== **
__* --
54 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
home.” He cited the hypothetical case of a desti-
tute family—the father unemployed, the mother
sick, one child mentally deficient and another capable
of winning a scholarship. Under the new scheme,
it was urged, each member of the family would be
dealt with by a separate Committee of the Town
Council—they would severally be whisked away to
institutions belonging to these separate Committees—
to the farm colony, to the hospital, to the lunatic
asylum, and to a boarding school for scholarship
children. How was it possible to bring all these
people together again They might completely
lose sight of each other. The objector always
forgot that this “breaking up of the family’’
might happen, and does in fact happen to-
day—the wife, if she is suffering from infectious
disease, is carried off to the isolation hospital ; the
lunatic member, to the county asylum ; the normal
child, to the Poor Law boarding school, and the
unemployed man to the workhouse, by the Board of
Guardians refusing adequate outdoor relief. In
order to prevent not only any such fanciful “break-
ing up of the family,” but also to guard against the
more practical danger of families being denied cash
allowances in the home, or of some members of the
family being neglected because of the apathy of one
of the authorities, a new committee of the Town
Council is to be set up, called the Home Assistance
Committee. This Committee, which is to inherit
the Poor Law obligation of Seeing that no person dies
of starvation, is to be definitely charged with the
maintenance of the home. It is to be restricted to
THE END OF THE POOR LAW 55
giving allowances or pensions in the homes of the
people. It is not to be permitted to set up any
institution whatsoever, lest this should be used as a
workhouse test. I said that this committee will be
a new committee, but what it will actually be is a
committee which will combine new work with work
already performed by other committees. At the
present time there is an Old Age Pensions Committee
of the County or County Borough Council and a
Local War Pensions Committee—both giving
allowances to persons living in their own homes. It is
suggested that the Home Assistance Committee
should not only give all the necessary allowances to
maintain the homes of destitute persons, but should
also administer the Old Age Pensions Act, the War
Pensions Act and any new powers for Mothers'
Pensions. It is also proposed that this Committee
should alone undertake enquiries as to pecuniary
means wherever the law enforces a charge for service
rendered (as in the case of well-to-do lunatics taken
into the county asylums), or wherever the assistance
legally depends on a certain limit of means (as in the
case of Old Age Pensions, or in some cases, of
scholarships). This concentration in a single com-
mittee of the powers of the local authority to give
allowances in the homes, and their obligation to make
equiries into means, will diminish the number of
officials and protect the homes of the poor from the
present multiplication of enquiry agents.
It is to be hoped that the local Labour Parties,
and especially the women members of these local
organisations, will see to it that every candidate for
56 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
Parliament is asked whether or not he is in favour of
the abolition of the Poor Law ; whether he will push
forward the necessary extension of the Education
Acts to enable the Local Education Authority to give
subsistence as well as training to such children as
need it ; whether he will promote such an extension
of the Public Health Acts as will enable the local
Health Authority to give medical treatment and
any subsistence that is required to the sick, the infirm
and the infants ; whether he will insist on the
Government setting up a new committee of the
Town Council, instead of the Distress Committee,
with much extended powers, to find either situations
or maintenance under training for able-bodied men
and women unable to get work.
But the passage into law of any such measure will
only be the beginning of the work of the public-
spirited Labour woman. Energetic steps must be
taken to see that women are effectively represented .
on local authorities. Hitherto such women as have
secured election on local authorities or who have
been added by co-option, have been drawn almost
exclusively from the propertied class, and have, in
many instances, been hostile to any increased public
provision, whether of schools, of hospitals, or of
general public assistance. This one-sided repre-
sentation has to be remedied, and it can only be
remedied by the women of the Labour Movement.
It must be one of the first duties of the women's
sections of the local Labour Parties to organise for
securing full representation, by some of their own
members, on all the local authorities.
WOMEN AS BRAIN WORKERS.
BY
REBECCA WEST.

OW that the State has admitted that women
N are citizens, we are relieved of the tiresome
necessity of proving that we exist. Pre-
viously, since we were considered inferior
to men, it was our duty to imitate and surpass all
the activities by which men are esteemed among
themselves ; just as, if we had been considered
inferior to monkeys, it would have been our duty to
dance on barrel-organs and hold out caps to passers-
by for pennies. Any woman who was a doctor, a
lawyer, or a University graduate, or who took a
prominent part in any political movement or in local
government, effectively disproved the Anti-Suffrage
theories that all women are imbeciles, or at least liable
to attacks of periodical insanity, and in any case are
continuously engaged in child-bearing. The State
has now admitted that we exist and are sane, and we
need no longer continue the argument. We can now
afford to qualify our demand that women should be
active by the condition that their activities must be
directed to the right ends.
This makes a difference to our policy. Yesterday
the presence of a certain lady on the London County
Council was helpful to us because she performed her
duties as efficiently as any man of her party. To-day we
can admit, remembering her remark that the L.C.C.
ought not to pay their school nurses more than £70 a
year, because if they gave more they would not get
women with the missionary spirit, that her help-
—º
58 WOMEN AND THIE LABOUR PARTY
fulness was of a purely temporary character. Now
that she has proved our point of the equality of the
sexes she must go ; for the arguments of oppression
are not less dangerous from the lips of women than
they are from men. It is a test we must apply to
all the activities of women now. The Feminist's
heart instinctively swells with pride at the thought
that Miss Gertrude Lowthian Bell has been appointed
a British Commissioner in Palestine. But Miss
Bell was a member of the Anti-Suffrage League and
a personal friend of the late Lord Cromer ; what if
she be the first of a female tribe of Cromers ?
Denshawi would be no lovelier incident if it had
happened in a land under a woman's rule. There
is a very serious danger that the admission of women
to political life may give a fresh lease of life to the
party mechanisms that seemed as though they were
running down, to the dark old traditions of diplomacy
and our foreign and colonial policy. Without doubt
women will be able to represent snobbery, prejudice,
the desire to gain a simulacrum of true power by the
cheap means of persecuting weak and unhappy
classes or peoples, just as well as men have done.
But we want women to represent something quite
different : a love of life that will let no child starve,
no sick person suffer for lack of any help that human
hands can bring, no old man die except in, ease, and
that will fight for conditions which make health and
serenity the common lot, with the same obstinate
fervour with which the protection of privilege and
the rights of capitalism are fought for to-day.
The only Party that guarantees that women shall
WOMEN AS BRAIN WORKERS 59
perform this function is the Labour Party. It will
do it in two ways. Firstly, it will form a critical
and well informed electorate which will control the
machinery of government so firmly that competent
administrators will be allowed to give the State
nothing but their competence. At present the
governing classes refuse to give us their services unless
they may also give us their vices. Mr. Balfour, for
instance, has a certain charm, the result of having
blossomed into a world unchilled by care, which is
doubtless of great use in diplomatic conversations ;
but he recently made a speech in the House of
Commons which amounted to a declaration that he
and his kind would not use their gift unless they were
also allowed to shape the diplomatic policy of this
country, a responsibility for which the very careless-
ness, which is the source of their charm, absolutely
unfits them. All this must be changed. We, the
people, are the owners of England. But we have
been in the position of a shopkeeper who, owing to
ill-health, has had to employ some smart assistants
to do the work, and is so dependent on them that he
has had to allow them to manage the business as
they like and help themselves from the till. We
have been getting better for some time ; by the
development of our Parliamentary institutions we
have, as it were, replaced the till by a cash register.
But we must go on to insist that our administration
act for us as the managers of multiple shops act for
their company, according to a fixed policy and under
the obligation of rendering exact accounts. When
the electorate has proclaimed its resolve that the
60 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
J. “**-*------ ~~~~
only government it will permit is that which upholds
the principles of liberty and justice, and insists on
the government publishing all its proceedings, so
that it can be judged whether it is fulfilling this
condition, then administration will be protected
from the temptations of rashness and dishonesty.
They will have to behave well to keep their places.
Then we can cheerfully avail ourselves of the gifts
which, as the present war has remarkably demon-
strated, are possessed by the women of the upper and
middle classes whom the custom of the past would
have compelled to spend their lives as parasites.
Then we can be sure that they will give the State
their individual talents and the general wisdom of
their sex, but not their class greeds and prejudices.
But unless we form this vigilant electorate we may
yet see as the result of the enfranchisement of women
a female Sir Edward Carson, a female Lord Milner,
or, to look on the funny side of things, a female Lord
Curzon.
Secondly, the Labour Party will form an army of
brainworkers from which we will draw our leaders by
the facilities for development which it will give to
people whom the State at present diagnoses as
rubbish, because they happen to have been born into
poverty. It will do it directly by offering brain-
workers reasonable conditions of life ; by offering a
free field to initiative (by the establishment of equit-
able copyright laws and the liberal endowment of
scientific research, for instance) and by guaranteeing
suitable minimum wages to those whose work follows
a routine. But more important still will be the
*
*ſaºs
WOMEN AS BRAIN WORKERS 6I
indirect methods by which it will encourage intellect
to make a stand for itself, when it has the misfortune
to be born into the ranks of the dispossessed : the
means it will take to ensure that every human being
can claim as a right as much of the best possible
education he or she proves herself capable of receiv-
ing, and that the material conditions of the people
shall be improved until health becomes one of the
rights of citizenship.
We have had an impressive demonstration of the
earnestness of democracy on the subject of educa-
tion in the appointment of Mr. H. A. L. Fisher
as Minister of Education with licence to prepare a
generous educational programme. Had the cultured
classes still been in undisputed power over the
legislative machine the office would probably have
been given to someone like Viscount Chaplin, the
gentleman who owes his position as a British states-
man to the fact that he once owned a horse with a
Burberry finish who was able to win the Derby in a
snowstorm. But since the rude and ignorant lower
classes had formed themselves into a party, and the
Government needed the support of that party, they
were obliged to give the office to a scholar and educa-
tionist. The resultant Act promises to unseal the
fountains of learning to the people ; but the vigilance
of the Labour Party will be required to defeat the
attempts that every vested interest will make to
prevent enlightenment spreading to the masses.
There is one attempt they will have to defeat which
specially concerns women. It is a matter of
enormous significance that every year Sir George
***=="- - - - -- ~~
62 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
*~~--—
Newman includes in his annual report made as
Medical Officer to the Board of Education the
infamous assertion that infant mortality is chiefly
due to maternal ignorance, and urges that more time
be given in schools to the teaching of “mothercraft"
and domestic subjects. It is hardly necessary to
point out that no facts and figures referring to infant
mortality come before Sir George Newman, and that
the Statement is part of a campaign to deprive the
lower classes of education “ that will only unsettle
them,” and to train them to be useful servants and
ignorant wives and mothers whose ignorance is
likely to encourage their husbands and sons to sing
“God bless the squire and his relations and keep us
in our proper stations.” There must, of course be
instruction in mothercraft and domestic subjects in
the ideal girls’ school, but like all vocational training
it must be subordinate to a sound general education,
which will allow every human being to see just what
he or she is doing in the State and what the State is
doing to him or her, and to show whatever capacity
he or she possesses, whether it leads kitchenwards or
thronewards. The Labour Party, with its ideal of
the fullest development of every individual, will
insist on this ; and it will do even more. It will
increase the attractiveness of education by providing
that teaching shall no longer be a sweated industry.
Many bright children leave school as soon as they can
and waste their youthful brightness in precocious
excursions into the adventurous but cruel world of
commerce and industry because “school is so dull.”
And it very often is. The reason is that teaching is a
WOMEN AS BRAIN WORKERS 63
Sweated industry. How can one expect teachers
who are sometimes underfed and seriously harassed
by material discomforts, and who are hardly ever
paid enough to enable them to have that free contact
with books, pictures, and the products of culture
which is necessary above all else to a teacher, to
radiate enthusiasm for the difficult way of learning 2
To this also will the Labour Party attend.
While this generous educational system is detecting
every seed of talent in the brain of the people and
nursing it to fruition, the improvement of material
conditions will prevent the destruction by poverty
of the intelligence of married women. At present
we murder the brains of all married women not of the
prosperous classes. There is no inherent reason why
the adoption of the career of wife and mother should
prevent a woman taking in middle age whatever place
in public life her brains entitle her to, any more than
a middle-aged man is prevented from entering Parlia-
ment by the years he has spent in following law or
commerce. Indeed, unless there is something
horribly perverse in the order of things, fifteen years
spent in bearing and rearing children ought to be a
better preparation for the business of governing
one's fellow-creatures than an equal space of time
spent in cross-examining scoundrels. Yet in present
conditions it is not. For to-day the State says to
the mother, “So you are going to fulfil the sacred
duty of motherhood. I regret to say that while of
course it is your duty, we cannot possibly give you
the slightest financial assistance ; and we will not
intervene between you and the capitalist system,
~~~
64 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
which will perpetually make war on you and your
children. You will have to live in an unhealthy
house, in which it will be difficult to keep your
children clean, in a polluted atmosphere that will
bring out any little tendency to tuberculosis that
happens to be in the family, among social sur-
roundings where the prevalence of alcoholism and
prostitution will encourage any little moral taint to
develop. Not only will we refuse to give you any
money, but we will not guarantee that you will get
value for the money which you and your husband
manage to scrape together. For instance, we will
abuse you for your ignorance if you don't buy your
children milk, but we will not guarantee that it will
be anything but poisonously dirty when you have
paid your sevenpence-halfpenny. Well, carry on.”
The end of this mater contra mundum controversy
is frequently the survival of the children at the cost
of the mental death of the mother. But mothers
who had found their task made easy at the beginning
by the endowment of motherhood and a good medical
Service, and whom the world had encouraged by
giving good housing, clean air, and pure food, would
not be so exhausted. Their intelligence would, as
before their marriage, be at the service of their
Country ; and would, unless the human emotions
are considerably overrated, be enriched by their
experience.
The acquisition of political power by women may
mean either of two things. If the Labour Party
forms an army of brainworkers by fostering intellect
in girls by a liberal education, and preventing it from
WOMEN AS BRAIN WORKERS 65
being destroyed in women by the capitalist war on
mothers, and if it controls government so firmly
that no administrator of any class will be able to
do other than the right, then it may turn England
into Paradise. But if all it means is that the female
of the species which governs us at present is to be
allowed to get up and stand beside the male, then
it will turn England into a Primrose League picnic.
For reasonable beings there is no choice.
WOMEN AS DOMESTIC WORKERS.
BY
MARGARET G. BONDFIELD.
ABOUR Women have studied the question
| of domestic work from two points of view
—(1) That of the paid worker and (2) that
of the vast body of unpaid workers :—the
housewives and home-makers. The basis of dis-
content which affects and unconsciously irritates
both paid and unpaid workers, is the utter lack of
any attempt so to adjust the household work as to
enable the worker to attain the best results, with the
least waste of time and least expenditure of energy.
In the fact that women engaged in housework are
becoming conscious of this lack, lies the greatest hope
of revolutionary change.
(I).
At a recent interview between some unemployed
munition workers and a few members of Parliament,
the subject of alternative employment was discussed.
“My wife says she cannot get servants,” urged
------- an elderly M.P., “wouldn't you like to go back to
domestic service ’’?
“No '' ) was the prompt reply “would you ?’—
and then followed an animated description of pre-
war servitude—long hours—many spent in the dark
ill-equipped kitchens, unhealthy sleeping rooms, poor
pay, the petty tyranny of little minds, and above all
the consciousness of inferior status, which had been
endured while they knew no other life, but which had
WOMEN AS DOMESTIC WORKERS 67
*—” * —º-º-º:
become intolerable after the experience of the greater
freedom of factory life.
The ex-domestic, who, during the war, has worked
at harder, dirtier work in the factory than any cook
or housemaid has had to undertake, who has worked
alternate night and day shifts of twelve hours, who
has taken uncomfortable journeys in all winds and
weathers, who has lived dangerously in filling factories
and in air-raid areas—revolts from the thought of a
return to “the shelter of quiet domestic life,” as she
knew it before the war. For the majority, paid
domestic service is an unregulated, sweated industry,
conducted by ill-trained, unorganised employers and
work-people. It has remained unorganised largely
because the employing class could draw upon an
almost unlimited supply of cheap, and for the most
part docile young labour : because in fact there still
existed a servile class, and a class which desired servile
labour.
To avoid misunderstanding it may be well to
state that we are quite aware there still exists a class
of “gentleman's servants '', who look down from
the Olympian Heights upon mere labour folk, and to
whom nothing in this chapter would apply. There
is also a large class of really happily placed domestic
workers, between whom and their mistresses there
exists a feeling of mutual dependence and good-will,
loyal service lovingly rendered to those who appreci-
ate and suitably reward such service.
The former group we have no time nor inclination
to consider, and the latter group we have no desire
to disturb ; we are concerned with those whose lives
68 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
—t- —i.
are made miserable and ineffective by conditions
of service which can be vastly improved to the
advantage of the employer, employed and the
community at large.
In IQI3 an adventurous group of domestic workers
in Scotland issued a programme of reform viz. –
A twelve hour working day: half holiday once
a week: fixed meal times: wages to be paid fort-
nightly (instead of monthly or quarterly): all
public holidays : two hours out of each day for
themselves: sanitary bedrooms: a graded scale
of wages.
Readers may well ponder on the state of existence
in which such a programme would bring relief.
Because domestic service has borne the mark of
servitude, lack of education has been welcomed as
a sign of the good servant. The more uneducated,
the less likely they were to “ have ideas above their
station in life.” A woman of the suburbs once said
to the writer, “If I had my way I would not allow
any schooling for the domestic servant class ; they
would be better servants if they had never learnt to
read or write—as it is they think they are as good as
---we are ” As a matter of fact it is just the lack of
trained intelligence and an educated outlook applied to
domestic affairs which has perpetuated the shocking
waste, muddle and discontentin this occupation.
Labour women stand for a revolution in ideas on
the subject of domestic Service—to make it a well
regulated industry, in which the social status of its
workers will be equal to that of any other section of
labour, an industry in which human energy will be
WOMEN AS DOMESTIC WORKERS 69
conserved to minister to human needs, and really
to makes our homes places of rest and refreshment.
The work of cooking and cleaning, etc., is honourable,
necessary work, and if only the right relationship of
mutual Service and equality of status be established,
it should provide worthy employment for a large body
of educated women.
The most urgent reforms appear to be the regulation
of the hours of work to a maximum eight hour day,
and the abolition of living in as a condition of employ-
ment ; in cases where for mutual convenience board
and lodging is given by the employer as part payment,
the value of such accommodation should be stated
in terms of money, to enable the worker to compare
it with charges for accommodation outside the house.
This knowledge would remove the suspicion that
unfair advantage was being taken under the “Truck ’’
system of payment. -
Another necessary condition, is that in her own time
the worker's right to privacy and non-interference
must be respected. Such a programme involves a
radical change of attitude on the part of the average
mistress. The bell rig ng habit must be broken.
Human energy must rºot be wasted in running up
and downstairs in obedience to the whims and fancies
of idlers.
A great safeguard of the liberties and independence
of the paid domestic will be found in a system of
non-residential daily service. A memorandum issued
by the Women's Industrial Council in January, IQI8,
outlines a practical scheme which deserves support
and should certainly be widely discussed.
7o WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
*~. 3- =-aº
The scheme includes —
The establishment of domestic centres.
Daily workers, who will live either in hostels
or in their own homes, to be supplied to house-
holds by the hour. • *
A Committee of Management to be attached
to each centre, composed of representatives of
employers and workers who will decide rates of
pay, hours of work, holidays, etc. It is pro-
posed to start with a minimum wage of 30s. for
a forty-eight hour week.
Domestic workers to be paid a fixed weekly
wage by the Centre and all fees to be paid by the
employers to the Manager.
Complaints about the conduct or inefficiency
of the workers to be made to the Manager,
Domestic training courses to be established
in connection with the centre ; learners to be
sent out in charge of skilled workers.
One essential condition of success for such a Scheme
would be sound Trade Union Organisation. The
paid domestic workers must take their proper place
with skilled and unskilled labour in the Trade Union
- and Labour movements.
(II).
At a West Country Conference the future develop-
ment of domestic work was being discussed : a Trade
Union comrade arose and impatiently dismissed the
subject with “Why we do waste time discussing
domestic service—we workers never have domestic
service—we can’t afford it !” He was promptly
WOMEN AS DOMESTIC WORKERS 7I
told by the housewives present that he got domestic
Service all right, but he paid nothing for it ! The reply
was very effective but not quite true—workpeople
pay heavily in waste of time and energy and get the
worst possible results, by adhering to a system of
aggressive individualism long after communal effort
has become possible.
The main problem of the unpaid house mother
has its roots in defective housing conditions. As
in this little book housing has a chapter to itself
this point need not be elaborated here.
Co-operation is necessary to secure the freedom
and development of the unpaid house mother. A
Secondary reason which is forcing co-operation is the
need for national food economy. This will hasten
the extensive development of the co-operative kitchen.
Already busy women who are fortunate enough to
be in reach of a well-managed communal kitchen,
wonder how they existed without it for so long—for
it means not only release from the actual preparation
and cooking of food, but also from the growing burden
of shopping and the queue-horror.
It has been demonstrated by practical experiments
that there will be a greater variety in the food, less
waste and greater noullrishment, by the use under
co-operative methods of communal kitchens.
Co-operative wash-houses, electric power, central
heating, co-operative nurseries and trained nurses
for the wee babies, and Montessori or Kindergarten
schools for the toddlers, are all aids to the simpli-
fication of domestic work possible in any national
Housing Schemes.
72 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
The intolerably long working day of the average
house mother can be reduced to about one third of the
time taken up under the bad, old way. The house
mother will then have leisure to bring her gifts to the
common stock: her administrative capacity will
no longer be confined to the little house : it may be
available for the local administrative bodies and for
the legislative chamber. She will be able to render
social service of a high order by companioning her
children. Housework under the new conditions
will not be a drudgery but a pride and joy.
It may be said that working women do not desire
to take part in public life, and if the household duties
can be done in a third of the time women will abuse
their leisure. That argument has been used against
every body of workers who have tried to reduce the
working day. Why are so many house mothers dull
and petty minded ? Because they have had no time
to cultivate their minds and to plan their lives on large,
spacious lines; because they have become slaves to
the household and in time even their own children
think little of them except as the household drudge.
The competent housewife may not want to act on public
bodies as men act to-day, but she will be thorough
in her cleaning up and she will find that in addition
to her co-operative washing and cooking arrangements
she must needs learn how to use other accessories of
good laws impartially administered for the common.
wealth.
The fable of “one in charge of a lighthouse who
gave to the poor in the cabins the oil of the mighty
lanterns that served to illumine the sea,” is especially
WOMEN AS DOMESTIC WORKERS 73
one for housewives. “The humblest mother who
allows her whole life to be crushed, saddened, absorbed
by the less important of her motherly duties, is giving
her oil to the poor; and her children will suffer the
whole of their lives from there not having been in the
Soul of their mother the radiance it might have
acquired.”
When women have reached this large social con-
sciousness there will be such home building as the world
has never known, and it is towards this goal that the
women of the Labour Party have set their will.
THE WORKING WOMAN’S HOUSE.
BY
A. D. SANDERSON FURNISS,
T is often said that “the Woman's workshop is the
I home,” ; and at that the world in general has
been content to leave it, caring little what are the
conditions obtaining in the workshop, what are the
hours of work for the worker, what her remuneration
and her reward. Suggestions of adequate assistance,
on the part of a State which is indebted to her for
the very lives of its citizens, have been met from one
quarter or another by outbursts of indignation.
The Feeding of School Children, the establishment of a
complete State Medical Service, the Endowment of
Motherhood,-these, and other like reforms have
been fought on the ground that they will have the
effect of “destroying parental responsibility" and of
“cutting at the root of family life.” The British
home is one of the glories of our country, but, as an
instance of its splendour, we are referred to the
type of picture found in mid-Victorian books and
on the walls of mid-Victorian homes—the picture of
the “cottage home ’’ with the man and his wife
sitting on either side of the fireplace, he smoking, she
sewing, while as many children as the size of the
picture will allow are crowded round the table reading
while one nurses the inevitable baby. That the
roof is low, the room Small, the windows narrow-
framed, giving little light and air, matters not at all
to our sentimentalists, to whom the cottage home
is always seen through the roseate spectacles of
Victorian art, representing all that is best and most
THE WORKING WOMAN’S HOUSE 75
fundamental in our traditions. It is not the purpose
of these pages to minimise the value to the nation of
its home life, or to suggest that there is not something
very real and tangible in the feeling which grips the
heart of every man in foreign parts when he thinks
of home. On the contrary—there is something in
British home life so vital and so deeply imbedded in
the life of the nation, that it is surely its duty to see
that there is nothing in the setting of the home which
can mar its perfection. But the ultimate responsi-
bility for its well-being rests on the shoulders of the
woman, and it is with the home as it affects the
N woman that this chapter is concerned.
There have been many experiments in housing made
during the past hundred years, and there are pro-
bably few subjects which arouse so much interest
among reformers as the housing of the people.
Doctors, sanitary inspectors, medical officers of
health, teachers, have all borne witness to the fact
that our hospitals and asylums continue to be filled
largely as the result of bad housing conditions, and
the high infant mortality among the poorest class
can be traced almost directly to the same cause. But
though many schemes have been set on foot and
many experiments made, the nation as a whole has
never come to grips with the problem, and housing
has been left in the main to the speculative builder.
Long narrow streets have been allowed to grow up
on the outskirts of our large towns, Open Spaces have
been built over, and the presence of the slums has
been regarded as a regrettable, but necessary, evil.
In the country districts, old cottages have been
76 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
patched up and roofs made more or less water-tight,
when their structure and internal arrangements were
Such that it was impossible to render them fit places
for the upbringing of healthy children. New building
has as a rule, been unconnected with any scheme of
town or village planning, and the local authorities
themselves have made little use of the powers they
possess.
In the period of reconstruction after the war, an
opportunity arises for a complete revolution in our
housing system ; owing to the fact that building has
practically ceased since the commencement of the
war (except in a few munition areas) and that it is
estimated that I,000,000 new houses will be required,
it will obviously be necessary for the State to take
the matter in hand, and to see that a very compre-
hensive scheme of housing is undertaken during the
years immediately following the declaration of peace.
The opportunity is one which is not likely to occur
again in this generation, or indeed for many
generations to come, and any real effort in the
direction of drastic reform should receive the support
of the whole nation,
But if the housing of the people is to be put on a
secure and satisfactory basis it is obvious that
women must take their share in the planning and
arranging of their homes, and, as far as working
class houses are concerned, it is Surely the working
woman who has the right to speak, and who should
be urged to give the matter her most serious con-
sideration. She alone knows what the drudgery of
her life has been in the past, and how the inconven-
THE WORKING WOMAN'S HOUSE 77
iences found in the houses provided have affected
the lives of herself and her children. That she
has been for so long inarticulate on the subject
is no matter for surprise. Her opinion has not been
asked nor her criticism invited, and, unenfranchised,
she has not felt any encouragement to look upon
herself in any capacity but that of housewife. That
this is her most natural, as well as most important,
function is not denied, but the granting to her of the
vote will lead her to consider her duties as a citizen
of the State as well as mother of the race, and to a
higher conception of her duties in both capacities.
Regarding herself as a homekeeper, she will learn to
take interest in the homes of the whole community,
ând one of her first duties in citizenship will certainly
be in the direction of housing reform.
It is often asserted that working women are quite
content with their houses, and that modern conven-
iences, as such, do not appeal to them. “Why give
working women a bath,” say well-meaning middle-
class people, “it will only be used for coal.” “Why
go to the expense of a parlour,” they cry ; “it’s
only used on Sundays.” It is time the working
woman gave her own views and that she made it clear
that her so-called “ content ’’ arises merely from lack
of opportunity to express her opinion. This oppor-
tunity has lately been given her by the Housing
Campaign of the Women's Labour League,” now being
carried on by the Labour Party, and it is my purpose
here to give a short account of the results of that
campaign.
* See note on page III.
78 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
In the autumn of IQI'7, a sub-committee was
appointed and commenced an enquiry, the object of
which was to ascertain the opinions of working
women all over the country, in rural as well as urban
districts, on what they considered to be the best kind
of house, from the point of view of the housewife and
mother, both as regards external planning and internal
arrangements. To this end a leaflet was prepared
entitled “The Working Woman's House ’’ containing
two very simple cottage plans which the Committee
thought would provide a good basis for discussion, and
which had many qualities not usually found in
working class houses. The leaflet also contained a
short questionnaire dealing with the most essential
features of a well-planned and well-fitted housé.
This leaſlet has been, and is still being, sold in very
large numbers, is finding its way into all parts of the
country, and such bodies as Schools for Mothers,
Women Citizen's Associations, as well as Trade
Unions, Womens' Co-operative Guilds and Women's
sections of Local Labour Parties are making it the
basis of discussion at mectings. Answers to the
questionnaire are returned in large number while
many women into whose hands the leaflet falls are
writing long letters giving their views as to the
defects in their present homes, and suggesting many
interesting and most valuable reforms. Conferences,
too, have been arranged all over the country, at which
women join eagerly in the discussions and express
themselves with much decision. All the evidence at
present collected by the Committee tends to show
that working women are speaking on the subject with
THE WORKING WOMAN'S HOUSE 79
the authority born of long experience, and as the result
of much thought and study of housing conditions.
On certain points they are unanimous both in
town and country. That all agree in the necessity
of a bath is not surprising, nor is the fact that all
condemn the bath in the scullery, demanding a bath
in a separate bath-room. It is of the utmost
importance that architects should recognise this,
and should make a point in future planning to avoid
it. Women seem to be agreed that the bathroom is
far more convenient upstairs and this for two
reasons: children can be bathed and taken straight
to bed without any risk of draughts and cold, and
with a good lavatory basin all washing can be done
in the bathroom and other washing arrangements
be dispensed with.
Where, however, as is sometimes the case in
country districts, it is found necessary that the
bathroom should be on the ground floor, it is regarded
as essential that it should be a separate room with
a door opening into the entrance lobby and not
approached through the living-room or Scullery.
That this is important from the point of view
of convenience, will be easily recognised, for the
scullery baths are usually fitted with a table top, and
this has to be cleared every time the bath is used,
involving much labour to the woman. A man usually
prefers to take his bath immediately on returning
from work, and this at a time when the housewife is
Dreparing the supper and requires her Scullery for
her work. The objection usually made to the
bathroom being upstairs is that in mining districts,
8O WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
the man must at once have his bath, and the dirt
Contracted in the mine should not be taken upstairs.
To this, however, we would answer that baths should
be provided at the pit head and that it is not fair
to the woman that her husband should return to his
home in his mining clothes, involving her in much
unnecessary work.
From the evidence received by the Sub-Com-
mittee it appears that working women think their
houses should contain three rooms on the ground
floor, parlour, living room, and scullery-kitchen
with a larder, and in this connection it is important
to emphasise the fact that the houses of the future
should be built with a wide frontage, thus making
it possible for the rooms to be well-lighted and
with good aspects. The long, narrow house found
in most of Our large towns to-day is dark,
cheerless and difficult to run, the long passages
giving an infinite number of unnecessary journeys
between the rooms. Cooking in the future will tend
to be done in the scullery-kitchen, and this should be
of good size, and well equipped. It should contain a
deep porcelain sink, placed not under the window
but on a side wall with a good light, with draining
boards and a plate rack over it, which should in all
cases be a fixture. There should be a convenient
cupboard, compact and with plenty of shelves, and
here it would be well to adopt the American device
of a “cook's cupboard ” with inverted bins for the
usual cooking requisites, viz., flour, sugar, salt, etc.,
and with a let-down table which would make it
possible for the housewife to sit while mixing or
THE WORKING WOMAN’S HOUSE 8I.
making pastry. The flooring should be of tiles, and
there should be a gas stove of the most modern kind,
which, however, should only be looked upon as a
temporary arrangement and care should be taken
that when electricity comes within reach of all
members of the community, it should be possible
to fit all the houses with electricity for lighting,
cooking, and cleaning. Hot water should of course
be laid on in all houses. The working woman
regards this as essential to her comfort and where,
as in country districts, a water supply is a difficulty,
the State should take the matter in hand and should
see that all its citizens are supplied with this most
necessary commodity. The tap up the village street
or the well in the garden should be a thing of the past
if housing reform is going to mean anything but
pious resolutions, and an adequate water supply
with hot water laid on in every house is the first
need of the country districts. The larder should
open out of the Scullery, and should be large enough
to hold a good store of provisions, and lighted by
a window, ventilators being most unsatisfactory.
The living-room of the houses of the future will serve
as dining-room and nursery and must therefore be
large, light and well-shaped. The old fashioned
kitchen range can be dispensed with, and should be
substituted by an Inter-oven which provides a
cheerful fire and can also be used for cooking when
necessary. Dressers, too, are condemned by working
women. Many shelves mean much dusting and glass
and crockery look well and keep clean in a cupboard
with glass doors such as is found in some of the new
4
82 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
garden suburbs. A good window seat is a cheerful
addition to the living-room, ànd a box under it
provides a cupboard where children can keep their
toys. It is difficult to see how they can be taught to
be tidy if they have no place of their own, and people
whose children are under the charge of trained nurses,
often forget, when condemning the working man's
child for lack of discipline, that the mother has not
the time to train them in tidy and careful habits, nor
the space to encourage them to take a pride in keeping
their toys and books in order. One of the vexed ques-
tions of the future houses is to be that of the provision
of a parlour. Many architects and reformers are
inclined to think that this is an unnecessary room in the
working woman's house, and that it would be far more
to her comfort to throw all the space into a really good
living-room. This may be so in the case of old
people, childless couples and single women, but as
far as the Ordinary family is concerned, working
women are unanimous in their demand for a
parlour. The contention that this room is only
used on Sunday is becoming more and more out
of date, and surely the fact that women feel the
need of the room should be enough to ensure that
it is provided for them. Where, if not in the parlour,
can those of the family who wish to study, find peace
and quiet P And again, where, asks the sensible
mother, can the young people bring their friends in
the evening for games and music if a parlour is not,
provided ? She knows the dangers of the streets
and country lanes for the adolescent boy and girl,
knows too that young people do not always want to
THE workING woMAN's HOUSE 83
be with their elders when entertaining their friends.
The parlour should be planned especially for these
purposes, and though it is not necessary to make it
as large as the living room it should be a bright sunny
room fitted with bookshelves and with door and
window and fireplace so arranged that comfort may
be found.
Three bedrooms are essential as a minimum, but
Some houses should be built with an extra bedroom
for a large family, while some small houses with fewer
bedrooms would provide sufficient accommoda-
tion for old and childless couples. The three
bedrooms, however, should be carefully thought out
and two at least should be capable of containing two
beds. A good hanging cupboard with a shelf for
boots at the bottom and two shelves at the top, should
be fitted into each bedroom, thus avoiding the
necessity of a wardrobe, a cumbersome and expensive
piece of furniture. With these cupboards and the
lavatory basin in the bathroom, the working man
will be relieved of the expense of two pieces of furni-
ture, besides -gaining the advantage of an extra
amount of space, while infinite labour will be saved to
his wife. The difficulty of obtaining plate glass
after the war will probably lead to casement windows
being substituted for sash windows in the new houses,
and these can be made perfectly satisfactory by
the top panes being made to open outwards or by a
revolving pane, and by the casements themselves
opening in reverse ways. Flooring, too, is becoming
a problem owing to the lack of timber, and it is
satisfactory to know that the Committee of the
84 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
Ministry of Reconstruction which is considering
the subject of new materials, is endeavouring to
find a way to meet this difficulty by the substitution
of some material other than hard wood, which is of
course the only material at present known for
perfectly satisfactory flooring.
But building in the future must be considered also
from a larger standpoint than that of the mere
convenience of the home. Towns are already too
large for health or comfort, country villages too far
remote for social life. The noble traditions of
English architecture have been ignored and our later
developments in building reveal something of the
spirit of a “nation of shopkeepers.” The specu-
lative builder has been allowed to run up houses
everywhere in a haphazard manner, with no regard
for open space and with no broad design. In the
new world after the war we need new towns, planned
on broad and generous lines, taken out into the
country, with factories “as beautiful as cathedrals,”
with houses in small groups, with tree-planted
streets, with green places and large gardens, bringing
the life of the town into the country. And our
villages too must be planned with regard to the
conditions of the district and to the nature of
its architecture in the past. Social life must be
taken into account, and it is surely not too much to
hope that the day will come when each village
shall contain its own small theatre, its reading
room with a good library, its well-planned
hall, where the workers' own educational needs shall
find a home, and where country dances and country
THE WORKING WOMAN'S HOUSE 85
Songs can add pleasure and gaiety to their gatherings.
Here, too, exhibitions of the arts and crafts of the
district can be held and expression given to the
artistic sense which, in spite of the materialism of the
past days, still exists in many parts of the country.
The demand of the Labour Party that the people
shall be properly housed is not exorbitant. It is
merely one step in the direction of building up a
healthy and happy community, with the possibility
of the good life for all.
Light, air, space, Sunshine, room in which to
breathe freely and live decently, these would seem to
be necessities for the citizens of a great democratic
country. Under our present conditions, with their
lives one long tale of drudgery, working women grow
old before their time. What wonder that their
daughters hesitate to marry, cease to take that joy
and pride in housewifery which is their right, and
shrink from the responsibility of bringing children
into a world where the inequalities of life are so great,
and where there is literally no room for them in the
home 2
Remove the inequalities, build nobly on the true
foundations of beauty and justice, and the woman
of our country will prove her right to the name of
housewife, and be given at last throughout the land
the opportunity of becoming the perfect homekeeper
of the race. She asks now, as in the days when a
wise mother taught the great prophecy to her son,
King Lemuel, that the world should “Give her of
the fruit of her hands; and let her own work praise
her in the gates.”
THE LABOUR WOMAN’S BATTLE
WITH DIRT.
BY
KATHARINE BRUCE GLASIER.

O One knows better than the Labour Woman
N that there are two kinds of dirt, clean dirt
and—the other.
A healthy mother, living in the country,
can gather a child in, after a day spent in the sun-
shine and fresh air, muddy from head to foot, and
experience no sickening of heart : if she be wise she
will rejoice rather. But in our modern industrial
villages and towns, in our cities “built in black air"
this is not so. The Smoke cloud not only robs the
people and plants living under it of the Sunshine
essential to vigorous health, but its incessant soot-
fall represents a tax of toil upon the working wives
and mothers, crueller far than any levied upon his
captives by the taskmasters of some old-world
Pharaoh. For it robs the women who bend under
its burden not only of their own but of their children's
loveliness and so of half the joy of life.
Most working mothers in “the smoke belt ’’ give
up the attempt to see either themselves or their
children clean more than once a day. Their outer
clothing cannot be clean even then, unless it is just
fresh from the wash-tub. And when to the work of
the children there is added that of the home, however
simple, with all its window-panes and curtains, its
doorsteps and hearths, its floors and furnishings (not
to speak of its pots and pans), it is literally true that
THE LABOUR woman’s BATTLE WITH DIRT 87
to be clean, in the midst of factory chimneys,
represents a never-ending battle with dirt, unclean
dirt, dirt that ought never to have been, that
need not be and that will, we hope, at no distant day,
not be allowed to be.
Needless to say, therefore, all national and local
efforts at smoke abatement, with the exchange of the
wasteful open coal fires for gas or electricity, together
with decent sanitary systems and efficient daily street
and yard cleansing by scientifically equipped munici-
pal services have had, and will have still more in the
future, the Labour woman's enthusiastic support.
Insanitary dust heaps, open ash-pits, ill-drained and
badly paved yards and streets, grimy gutters, all
these, like polluted streams, have been served with
notice to quit by the same active influence.
Moreover, as the chapter in this volume on housing
will bear abundant witness, the shame of the social
system which has left just those who actually fight
the battle with dirt (the greater part of it, like the
smoke-cloud, socially created) the least well furnished
with hot water and other essential means for their
own and their homes' cleansing, is a shame no longer
to be endured by anyone of sensitive conscience.
Cleanliness may be next to Godliness, but although
in twenty-five years in the Labour movement the
writer has met not a few God-like men and women
among those whose hands and garments were work-
soiled, never yet has she known one among those who,
being outwardly spotless, had yet no care for the
plight of those by whose ministry their cleanliness
was won. More and more it is being recognised that to
88 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
be willing to live “clean '' oneself in airy, spacious
dwellings, and to do nothing to help cleanse the world
for others is simply to be “unclean '' in soul.
During the last ten years this new social conscience
has been specially directed by Labour women to
what has been termed “ Industrial Dirt.”
Let us make no mistake about it. On this ques-
tion Great Britain lags far behind the United States,
Canada, Australia (of late), and most of the western
countries of Europe. The citizens of continental
cities, of New York and Montreal, and Sydney, have
long ago made up their minds that the grime and
grease, the flue and dust, that is incurred by workers in
the factories, machine sheds, mills and mines, ought
not to be brought out into the streets, and the trams
and trains,—and most assuredly should not be
allowed to enter the homes of the people.
Students of political psychology might do well to
inquire whether a really free and democratic citizen-
ship,-built on the self-respect and frank sense of
essential equality between the different citizens—
can ever be built up without this reform.
The Women’s Labour League began their crusade
to this end, for it was nothing less, with “Baths for
Miners.””
In every mining village in Wales, Scotland and
England the members had found conditions existing
which meant black slavery in the home for the brave
wives and mothers.
All over the country there were not three miners'
houses in a hundred fitted even with a hot and cold
water tap over the sink 1
& 3.
* See note on page III.
THE LABOUR womAN's BATTLE witH DIRT 89
In Durham and many of the older coal fields there
are still tens of hundreds of one and two roomed
homes without even a sink, and with sometimes scant
water supply.
But even where the home was comfortable, and
fitted with a bath-room with hot and cold water,
the coming in daily of a black, abominable burden of
coal dust on the muddy and often foully smelling
clothing, of, probably, in such a home, several
miners (with those clothes also needing to be washed
by the women at home), involved a battle with the
intruding pit dirt that ought never to have been.
Our contention was and is that the whole of this
pit dirt ought to be left at the pit head : and that
it ought to be an integral part of the duty, enforced
wpon the employers by law, wherever an industry
soils the persons or clothing of the workers to provide
ample means for their cleansing : for it is not only
the persons of our workers, their working clothes
have to be thought of as well.
Robert Smillie, who from the first was one of the
most active of our supporters among the miners'
leaders, wrote in one of the Womens’ Labour League
pamphlets, that he had himself seen the sick mother
or little children under the care of the doctor, living
in the room where all the bathing of the men and
boys from the pit had to be done, and where the foul
smelling pit clothes had to be dried before the
common fire. Medical men had told him that in
many of our miner's houses (one and two roomed
cabins were a better name) serious and even minor
operations which had to be performed in the homes,
90 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
became a very difficult matter, because of the
poisonous fumes from germ-laden pit clothes dried
in the house. Wounds could not be kept clean in such
an atmosphere.
If that be true of pit clothes what must be the
condition of the clothing of open ash pit emptiers or of
“artificial manure '’ workers ?
“When it has been a wet day and my husband's
working clothes have had to be dried in front of the
kitchen fire, the children and I are nearly driven out
of the house by the stench," an ash-pit man's wife
told a member of the League. In many other
trades, sorrowfully many to-day in our unnatural
age, noisome and even dangerously poisonous dust
is continually falling upon the workers.
What, then, is the remedy ?—The answer was fully
Set forth in a series of illustrated pamphlets, issued
by the Women's Labour League under the title
“Baths at the Pit Head and the Works.”
These pamphlets, which were sold literally in the
tens of thousands in mining and industrial Com-
munities, pressed home the special possibilities and
advantages of hot and cold spray bath installations,
arranged with private cubicles, and carefully designed
for the drying of damp clothes.
They also advocated the use of special working
clothes or overalls which could be washed and
mended as well as dried at wash houses attached to
these installations. In many pits in Belgium before
the war, as in several of the great industrial establish-
ments of the United States, where such “better-
ment ’’ has attained to a fine art, each worker has
THE LABOUR WOMAN’S BATTLE WITH DIRT 9I
two sets of working clothes with a stamped number
or name attached. For a small charge soap and
towels are provided by the management, and women
are employed to wash, dry and mend the overalls,
with scientific laundry appliances to help them.
But in Britain, when first pit head baths were
advocated, in spite of the apparently obvious
advantages, the prejudices against such an inno-
vation were fierce,—even among the kindly wives of
the miners. They had no clear understanding of the
scheme, and moreover an ill-considered clause (77)
in the Mines Act of IQII, making the use of
such pithead baths when provided, compulsory,
naturally offended against the older fashioned
British sense of personal liberty.
But the W.L.L. educative agitation was actively
backed by all the intelligent miners' leaders, headed
by Robert Smillie who had personally visited the
installations in Belgium and France, and the less
attractive ones of Germany.
Finally, a Ruskin-taught and exceptionally broad-
minded firm of colliery proprietors, Messrs. Fletcher,
Burrows & Co., of the Atherton Collieries in
Lancashire, put up first a small experimental
1nstallation, and then in September, IQI5, a large and
fully equipped pit bath establishment for 400 men.
After the first six months the success of these
baths was being proclaimed all through the mining
world. The testimony alike of the miners and their
wives, and of enlightened employers and inspectors
was unanimous. In the early summer of IQI4 the
movement to obtain the two-thirds majority vote
92 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
which was necessary under the Act to compel the
employers at any given mine to set up similar
installations was spreading through Lancashire.
In South Wales, the Ocean Collieries of Rhondda
Valley were specially active. *.
Messrs. Brunner, Mond & Co. had previously set
up a fine set of spray baths for their chemical
workers, at Winnington. The more elaborate spray
and Swimming baths of Messrs. Cadbury and
Rowntree and other benevolent employers are well
known. One or two municipalities have made a
beginning, notably Poplar, with spray baths for their
destructor men ; and Wallasey Borough Council,
as a result of the W.L.L. agitation, provided their
dust-cart men with brown overalls.
But when we compare what has been done with,
for one instance, New York where the town's dust-
men, road-sweepers, etc., are provided daily with a
clean white suit of overalls, and look their part as
servants of Public Health as attractively as our
hospital nurses, we realise how our own country,
before the war, can hardly be said even to have
begun their thinking on this matter.
But although the war has stopped the actual
building of pithead baths it has in no wise stopped
the agitation for their erection. Tens of thousands
of our soldiers too, have learned in hospitals and at
the base centres the practical meaning and
marvellous restorative powers of spray baths.
The dirty and often dangerous nature of the work for
munitions has compelled the use of overalls, and
wise Welfare Workers are everywhere backing
THE LABOUR WOMAN's BATTLE WITH DIRT 93
Trade Union leaders in insisting on the necessity of
abundant and pleasant as well as, shall we say,
dignified means of cleansing. The mingling of
classes among the women especially has “tuned up "
the workers to higher standards in outward appear-
ances which we hope may deepen into spiritual
realities.
The dirt in the air is no less important a problem.
Partly, it is the result of our faulty coal grates and
can be cured by better fire-places and slow-com-
bustion well-fires.
So far as it is the result of industrial causes, the
Public Health Act, 1875, in an “optional" clause,
made the emission of black smoke by factory
chimneys (except for a strictly limited “firing up ’’
period) an indictable offence—but black smoke
persists because local authorities will not move
against the vested interests of smoke producers.
The men and women of the Labour Party have
everywhere put up a brave battle for better
wages and shorter hours, for wholesome food
and healthier houses. Let them now pledge them-
selves to war to the death with “dirt,” in the sky,
in the river, in the street, on the human body, in
the home. For dirt has been rightly defined as
“ matter in the wrong place.” It is always an out-
ward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual
disgrace either in the individual or in our social
system.
When human beings finally find their rightful
places one with another in a world-wide fellowship
we prophecy fearlessly,–dirt will have disappeared.
THE WOMAN WAGE EARNER.
BY
A. SUSAN LAWRENCE, L.C.C.
OR the woman wage earner the success of
F the Labour Party is no matter of remote
or academic interest. Her whole position
will be determined by the one question of
whether or not there will be a strong party in Parlia-
ment prepared to make the interests of the workers
its first concern.
The position of the woman wage earner will be
one of great difficulty immediately after the war.
Trade may or may not revive rapidly. The best
judges anticipate a period of reorganisation and
industrial confusion, followed by a short trade boom,
followed, in its turn, by a long period of depression.
The first of these periods is certain whatever may
be the case with the others.
There mnst be a period, short or long, of dis-
Organisation and unemployment, when the great
munition contracts cease and the country turns
from the arts of war to those of peace.
Supposing, to take the most favourable view, that
we are as busy a year after peace, as we were the
year after the declaration of war. Even in that case,
we may expect and must be prepared for a time com-
parable to the last months of IQI4, and the first
months of IQI5, a time of acute distress and unem-
ployment, when women will find their old
occupations gone and the new not ready.
We have had some little foretaste of what we
\,
•r-—
x-
, THE WOMAN WAGE EARNER 95
have to expect. In the first months of this year, the
demand for certain classes of munitions had slackened,
owing, apparently, to the facts that Russia needed no
more cartridges, and that stocks of small shell had
been accumulated. At the same time, the demand
for other classes of munitions was still very great.
The government, faced with this temporary falling
off in demand, had no thought but to get rid of the
workers as quickly as possible. They turned them
Off—as a contemporary says—exactly as one turns
off the gas. At least one national factory was
closed. We know how in a month or two the
demand for munitions again became urgent. It is
impossible not to believe that the loss of the factory
in question, and the disorganisation of so many
others, was a serious loss to the country. If this
was done—in war-time—when the future need for
munitions was certain—what have the workers to
expect when peace really comes 2
Unless the workers can have the protection of a
party of their own, they will be left to face, unaided,
all the evils of unemployment.
Women will be the greatest sufferers during the
period of change, for the very simple reason that
they have—far more than men—been drafted into
new and temporary occupations.
This interval will not only be a time of suffering
for those concerned, but must, if matters are left
to themselves, result in a degradation of the whole
standard of life.
For the woman wage earner, the two great and
pressing questions are what should be done to
/
/
Q6 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
protect their standard of life, and to mitigate the
evils of unemployment. ^
With regard to wages, our course is clear.
We have had in the past partial and imperfect
wages legislation. That legislation bears in every
line the marks of its history—a history, that is,
of concessions extorted piece-meal by a permanent
minority. -
It is easy however to show that women have
benefited greatly by what has already been done.
It is still easier to sketch the great improvements
which might be made if labour were, for the first time,
free to act for itself and on its own plans.
At the present moment the wages of great masses
of women are in a sense artificial wages—wages
regulated, that is, not solely by industrial bargaining
or by Supply and demand, but by laws and by statu-
tory orders. This is true of the larger part of women
subject to the Munitions Acts, and of those (probably
about 300,000 in number) who come under the
operations of the Trade Board Acts. The Munitions
Acts are temporary war measures, and the protection
afforded to wages by their orders will terminate with
the war. The protection afforded by the Trade
Board Acts is permanent. The orders affecting
wages under both sets of enactments are largely due
to the action of organised Labour and of the Labour
Party.
Whatever have been the deficiencies of these Acts,
both in structure and administration, it is neverthe-
less true that the wages of the women have been very
greatly improved, both in comparison with what they
THE WOMAN wAGE EARNER
97
formerly earned and in comparison with unprotected
workers doing similar work.
The following table gives the wages in certain
representative munitions firms before and after the
application of the orders.
Powder work
Cartridge work . .
Fuses * *
Aeroplane canvas
work
Woodwork
Electric accessories
Shell
Foundries
Rate before applica-
cation of ordeys.
2%d. an hour ; 3d.
an hour and #d.
danger money.
3d. an hour.
23d. an hour Pre-
mium bonus
basis rate. 3d.
an hour Premium
bonus basis rate.
2}d. an hour Pre-
mium bonus
basis rate.
2%d. and 3d, an hour.
2}d. and 3d. an hour
(during war).
I5s. and I2s, a week
in IQ 15.
Ios., IIs., and I2s.
a week.
Present yate.
5%d. an hour and #d.
danger money,
plus 6s. a week.
5%d. an hour plus
6s. a week.
4; d. an hour Pre-
mium bonus rate
plus 6s. a week.
5d. an hour Pre-
mium bonus rate
plus 6s. a week.
4#d. an hour Pre-
mium bonus basis
rate, plus 6S. a
week.
6d. an hour Pre-
mium bonus
basis rate, plus
6s. a week.
5%d. an hour plus
6s. a week.
Min. for day work,
6d. an hour, plus
6s. a week, with
min, of 30s. a week.
Men's piece prices
equival ent to
about £2 IOS. to
£3 a week.
5%d. an hour and 6s.
a week.
A couple of instances will show how impossible it
is to suppose that we are here dealing with a spon-
taneous rise in wages.
98 WOMFN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
*
Messrs. A. B., Staffordshire employers, were
engaged on Admiralty work. In November, 1917,
the wages paid to adult women varied from 18s. 8d. to
I5s. 4d. for a fifty-three hour week. The workers
received in December the 3s.6d. a week given by a
general order of the Ministry to munition workers,
and Subsequently proceedings were taken by their
organisation under Part I. of the Munitions Act.
An award was obtained giving weekly wages in some
cases of £I IOS. 3d. and in the remainder of £I I2s. 6d.
Messrs. C. D. (employed on parts of mine mechan-
ism), held a meeting of their workers in January,
I918, and obtained the consent of the workers in
writing to a scale of wages for adult women com-
mencing at I5s. per week of fifty-three hours. By
arbitration under Part I. of the Act, an award was
obtained of hourly rates from 5; d. to 6d. an hour,
plus a war advance of 2s. 6d. per week.
Similarly, we can compare the wages earned by
women munition workers with those of the Women's
Land Army. Until a recent date, this wage was only
18s, a week, and has now been raised to £I.
The wages in industries under the Trade Boards
are not so good, but nevertheless in most instances
substantial protection to the workers has been
secured. Rates of 5; d. an hour have been fixed for
tailoring and shirt-making, and a strong movement
is on foot among the workers to obtain an increase.
We can perhaps measure best what has been
achieved by comparing the course of wages in two
analogous trades, the laundry trade, for which the
employers successfully resisted a trade board, and
THE WOMAN WAGE EARNER 99
the Confectionery and jam trade in which a board
was estabished shortly before the war. The class
of workers employed in the lower branches of jam
work and laundry work were very similar, and the
wages were alike, varying from about 9s. to I2s. per
week. The jam workers have now a minimum wage
of 4%d. an hour, while the wages actually paid to
laundry workers are in some cases as low as I4S. 6d.
in London and I2s. in the provinces. (The scale of
wages recommended by the Laundry Employers,
Association are better than these latter figures, but
are by no means universally paid). The rate of
4%d. is, of course, in itself an unsatisfactory rate, and
proposals for a rate of 5d. have now been issued by the
Trade Board—the comparison, however, may fairly
be taken to show that even a weak trade board
is considerably better than no board at all.
Legislation with regard to wages can, therefore,
produce good results. That it may, in the wrong
hands, produce very unfortunate results, can be seen
by the action of Parliament with regard to agri-
cultural labour. A minimum was there fixed at
25s. a week, with prices at war level, and in the midst
of the greatest boom that the farming industry has
ever known. *
Now, wages legislation on a large scale is absolutely
necessary for women workers ; and everything for
them will depend upon whether the scope of this
* [This minimum may be raised by the Agricultural Wages Board,
and up to the present no district wage has been fixed at so low a
level as 25s.-a proof of the value of the Trade Union organisation
behind the workers' representatives on the Central and District
Boards.-EDITOR.]
IOO WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
legislation is sufficiently large and its spirit
sufficiently sympathetic. The Munitions Acts are
war measures, and the protection given by the wages
orders under that Act are temporary, and as each
firm turns over to private work, it will be enabled to
strike a fresh bargain with its employees, perhaps on
the lines of the instances quoted above.
War conditions have resulted in lifting whole
trades from sweated conditions, to a position where
a reasonable minimum is paid. If these are not to
revert to their previous states, and if all the remaining
poorly paid women's trades are to be raised, we shall
want trade boards on an altogether unprecedented
scale. There will be much opposition to this. The
trades which particularly need some attention will
bring every device to bear, and an early safeguard is
that there shall be a party in Parliament strong
enough to overbear the activity and zeal of those
whose interest is concerned. The Labour Party
policy is to amend the Trade Board Act, and to secure
tts extension to all employments where any considerable
number employed receive less than 30s. a week.
Such measures are necessary if the standard of life
is to be permanently maintained. They will not
help the distress of the worker who is out of work.
The Labour Party stands for two great principles:
first that it is the duty of the government to find
suitable work for all, and secondly, that wherever
it is unable to fulfil this obligation, it must provide
the worker with maintenance.
Very few words are needed on the second point.
The principle has been admitted,—though the
-THE WOMAN WAGE EARNER IOI
practice is niggardly and partial. For some workers,
(as far as women are concerned few except
munition workers) an entirely inadequate unem-
ployment benefit of 7s. is paid. All workers should
have a sufficient unemployment benefit—they
should not be allowed to run out of unemployment
benefit, and that benefit should be administered for
trade unionists through their trade unions.
The case against adequate unemployment benefit
is, avowedly, that given such a benefit women would
not be ready to accept any sort of work at any sort
of wages. That is an argument which does not
appeal to the Labour Party. A.
The other duty of the State, that of providing work
for the unemployed is not recognised by any of the
other political parties. The Labour Party asserts
that there is enough work to be done to occupy the
workers ; that in times of slack trade, public works,
such as housing and roads, should be undertaken,
and that the various purchasing departments should
then accumulate stock. The government demand
for many classes of articles can be accurately fore-
seen in normal times. Nothing—except that rarest
of all things—a little foresight, prevents the whole of
that demand being concentrated in the times of
slack trade.
The woman wage-earner wants security—security
against sweating—security against unemployment.
She wants other things besides—but she wants this
first. If the Labour Party succeeds she will obtain
this—and many other good things will be added
unt O her
WOMEN AND INTERNATIONALISM.
BY
MARY LONGMAN.
ABOUR women have always been keenly inter-
ested in internationalism, and have con-
sidered the unity of nations and their peaceful
co-operation as one of the first objects of
Labour policy. Mrs. Ramsay MacDonald, speaking
at the inaugural conference of the Women's Labour
League in I906, Sounded the international note, and
at every succeeding conference it has been heard
again, both from the lips of fraternal delegates and
visitors from other countries, as well as in the record
of the League's work.
Co-operating with men on equal terms, as they
have always done in the Labour movement, women
have taken their share in the successive International
Socialist Congresses, of which the British Labour
Party forms a part. As the special organisation of
women developed in the different countries, it was
natural that the idea of a woman's international
conference should also take shape. The International
Socialist Congress of IQ07 gave a favourable oppor-
tunity for such an experiment, as it was held in
Stuttgart, the home of Frau Clara Zetkin, the leader
of the German women, and the best known woman
leader of the working class movement in any country.
At that time there was no formal women's
international organisation, but Frau Zetkin sent
invitations to the women in each country to send
delegates to a conference to be held shortly before the
International Socialist Congress, and a very interesting
WOMEN AND INTERNATIONALISM IO3
and useful meeting was held. The Women's Labour
League, though then barely a year old, was glad to
send delegates, some of whom took a prominent part
in the discussions, and the Independent Labour Party
and Social Democratic Party also sent representatives
from among their women members. This conference
marks the beginning of the international organisation
of Labour Women. Frau Zetkin was appointed
International Secretary, the women's organisations
in each country were invited to maintain communi-
cation with her, and gladly entered into correspondence.
When the next International Conference was held
at Copenhagen three years later, the reports from
different countries showed that the organisation of
women had already made considerable progress.
At this conference there were present strong dele-
gations from Germany and Austria and each
of the Scandinavian countries. The Finnish dele-
gation included women members of Parliament.
There were several Russians, but the only represent-
ative from any Latin country was a delegate from the
Portuguese Tailoresses' Union. The British delegation
was numerically strong, and consisted of members of
the Women's Labour League, the Independent Labour
Party, and the Social Democratic Party.
As these bodies in the British delegation had not
at that time any common organisation, and differed
on certain matters of policy, it was difficult for them
to speak with a common voice. So strongly did those
present feel that this division handicapped them in
international deliberations that on their return to
England they determined to form a joint body which
IO4 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
should be able to speak in international affairs in the
name of the women of the British Labour and Socialist
movement. A meeting of delegates was accordingly
held in November, IQIo, at which it was resolved “to
form an International Committee of British Women
Socialists to include women representatives of socialist
Societies and trade unions, and other bodies eligible
for affiliation to the Labour Party and International
Socialist Congress.” The body formed in accordance
with this resolution was named “The Women's Inter-
national Council of Socialist and Labour Organisations,
British Section,” this rather clumsy title being chosen
in order to define the scope of the Council. Mrs.
Ramsay Macdonald was the first Secretary. The
Women's Labour League, Independent Labour Party,
Social Democratic Party and Women's Trade Union
League affiliated to it from the beginning, and var- ,
ious trade unions and other bodies joined afterwards.
This section was founded on certain definite prin-
ciples which have been faithfully adhered to in its work.
These recognised that such a body, representative of
all sides of the Labour movement, must necessarily
include many shades of opinion. But as the object
of the section has been to express the views of that
movement as a whole, it has always aimed at guiding
its public policy, after frank discussion with its own
ranks, by agreed decisions. Another of its principles
has been never to take sides or express judgment on
questions which might arise within the working class
movement of another nation, but to maintain corres-
pondence, so far as circumstances might allow, with
each section. These two principles have each been of
WOMEN AND INTERNATIONALISM IO5
immense service during a difficult time, in maintaining
unity respectively between the women of the British
Labour Movement, and within the Women's
International as a whole.
The international work of women in this country
has grown from small beginnings, but has always been
of considerable importance. Its two main branches
are (I) discussion of matters of public interest, with a
view to coming to agreement between ourselves, and
formulating reports and resolutions for international
conferences, whenever these might take place, and
(2) by constant correspondence with the International
Secretary, and correspondents in other countries,
to exchange opinions and information, and to improve
our knowledge of each other. This correspondence
has provided material for many interesting reports,
as well-as for the notes which are published monthly
in The Labour Woman, the official organ of the
section. In IQI3 a Suggestion was made that a working
women’s visit to Germany might be organised with
valuable results. This plan aroused considerable
interest and was discussed with Frau Zetkin. It
was postponed at the time, however, and since then
has naturally been impossible. In the same year
Mrs. Kate Richards O'Hare visited England, as one
of the United States delegates to the International
Socialist Bureau, and English Labour and Socialist
women had great pleasure in entertaining her at a
women's luncheon.
The first half of IQI4 was a very busy time, with
preparations for the Women's International Con-
ference, which was to have been held in August of that
IO6 WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
---
year. The Secretary of the British Section visited
Germany during the spring, and was present at the
meeting of delegates from various countries which
discussed the arrangements for this conference.
The outbreak of the war put a sudden end to all
these preparations. During the anxious days of July
Labour women watched developments from hour to
hour, hoping against hope that war might be averted.
Wishing to do anything they could to prevent it, they
proposed a great meeting of women to advocate
England’s neutrality. At our suggestion, this proposal
was taken up by other women's organisations, and a
wonderfully impressive demonstration was held
at the Kingsway Hall. We could not then foresee
all that was to come, but the meeting expressed a
united will to peace and sense of international re-
sponsibility. But hope of neutrality had even then
disappeared and the meeting was held under the very
shadow of the ultimatum to Germany on the violation
of Belgium.
During the first weeks of the war, intercourse with
other nations was at a complete standstill. We after-
wards learnt that Frau Zetkin had endeavoured to
communicate with the correspondents in each country,
but her letters were returned to her months later
through the post. In November the British Section
determined to break through the wall of silence, and to
express their continued sense of international solid-
arity, even at a time of temporary separation. They
drew up a manifesto which was published in The
Labour Woman, and sent to every correspondent in
allied and neutral countries, with a request that the
WOMEN AND INTERNATIONALISM Io'7
neutral correspondents would do their best to convey
our message to those whom we could not reach
directly. This enterprise was successful. Our mes-
sage was received with the warmest cordiality and
provoked an immediate response from neutrals and
belligerents alike. British women are proud to have
been the first after the outbreak of the war (even
though their priority was due only to the accident of
the post) to convey a message of sympathy and hope
for future peace to the working women of all nations.
Since that time our international communications
have never been entirely cut off. With the women
of allied and neutral countries we have naturally
been able to maintain a correspondence, though even
that is subject to the many uncertainties of post in
war time. And our neutral comrades have done
their utmost to preserve communication between
the working women of belligerent countries. Letters
have necessarily become rarer and less informative as
the war went on, but we are still able to exchange
our papers, and do so gladly. We know that The
Labour Woman is still read in Germany, and not
infrequently see quotations from it in the organ of the
the women of the German Minority Socialists.
After a few months of war, women of the Labour
and Socialist movement felt a longing to express
their unity and mutual sympathy in a more concrete
form, and the plan of a woman's international confer-
ence took shape. The idea Sprang up simultaneously
in various quarters, and as soon as mooted it was
welcomed. The conference was convened by Frau
Zetkin, the acknowledged leader of the Women's
IO8 woMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
International, and was arranged by the help of com-
rades in two neutral countries, Holland and Switzer-
land. It took place in Berne, in March 1915, and
formed a historical gathering of the utmost significance.
It was necessarily small, but eight nations were repre-
sented in a conference of about thirty delegates, and
it was the most impressive gathering in which those
present had ever taken part. Our delegates returned
full of hope, and bearing with them the text of
agreed resolutions expressing the united mind of the
Conference.
It was a wonderful gathering. The German women
had come at great risk to themselves and knew that
on their return to their own country they might have
to suffer imprisonment ; but the comradeship of those
few days was worth the danger they faced. All of
them belonged to that brave group of men and women
led by Liebnecht who have throughout the war
carried on a ceaseless struggle against the reactionary
and militarist forces in their unhappy land. They
were at that time full of hope that in their own party
they would prevail and that German Social Democracy
might be united in the task of bringing about an
honourable end to the terrible war that was devast-
ating Europe. The resolutions of the conference
showed an agreement which was achieved without
difficulty, and the only dissentients to any of the
propositions put forward were to be found in the
small group of Leninites among the Russian
delegation.
This Conference of women adopted thus early in
the war the policy which is now accepted by the whole
WOMEN AND INTERNATIONALISM IO9
of the Socialist and Labour Movements in the Allied
countries. It showed that belligerents can meet and
discuss the situation ; it was a forerunner of the
gathering of the whole International for which the
Allied Socialist and Labour Movement is now asking.
Its peace demands are also re-echoed in the
Memorandum recently adopted by the Allied Socialist
and Labour Conference in London. We need only
quote the following few lines to prove how the ideas
set forth by the women, have after more than two
years been reiterated by the whole of the democratic
forces of Allied countries :—
“The Conference asks the immediate end of this
horrible strife between peoples and a peace without
anexation of conquest. It asks for a peace that
recognises the rights of peoples and nations, both
large and small, to independence and self-government,
that enforces no humiliating and insupportable con-
ditions upon any country, that requires expiation
of the wrong inflicted upon Belgium, thus clearing the
way for the peaceful, friendly co-operation of the
nations. Such a peace is a necessary condition, in
order that in the belligerent countries the workers
may awake from the spell of a capitalist conception
of nationalism, and that the Socialist and Labour
organisations may assume their task as the conscious
vanguard of progress, gathering and uniting the
masses in a solid phalanx round the flag of
Nº. socialism.”
Since April, I915, the women have looked forward
to the holding of another conference when the war
shall have come to an end. The Council is already
IIO WOMEN AND THE LABOUR PARTY
preparing the resolutions and reports which will be
put forward, and in every country concerned active
preparations are on foot. The bonds of union which
were laid before the world was overwhelmed by war
have gained in strength ; they have not only borne
the strain but are firmer and more tightly drawn.
Women realise more clearly than before the need not
only of understanding but of close interaction, the
need not only for the exchange of opinions, but for
the adoption of a common poliey binding together
towards the same ends the women of all nations
throughout the world. Labour women have taken
a definite part in maintaining the union of the
workers of the world and being women and non-
combatants they may have found it easier than men
to remain comrades of their sisters in all countries.
They have had a share in saving internationalism
from being wrecked in the storms of war, and when
peace comes they will have a large responsibility
in the tasks of re-building a society in which inter-
national sentiment is expressed in terms of inter-
national Organisation.
-** NOTE.
See pages 47, 61, 99.
Until January, I918, the Women's Labour League was the
only political organisation of Women within the Labour Party.
At the Conference of the League held in that month it was resolved
that when the new Labour Party constitution was adopted, which
provided for individual membership of Local Labour Parties for
men and women, the separate existence of the Women’s Labour
League should cease and its members be urged to join the
Women’s Sections of the Local Labour Parties in their con-
stituencies. The past activities of the Women’s Labour League
are referred to several times in the foregoing pages. Arrangements
L. being made for the transference of these activities to the
abour Party, which is 1tself carrying on the work of political
organisation amongst women.
Headley Brothers, Printers, 18, Devonshire Street, E.C. 2; and Ashford, Kent.


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