Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/214

 which may arise by giving them a trade or a profession, saves them from the horrors of helpless dependency.

All these causes have combined to make the work of women a necessity, and time has made of it a fact which has to be reckoned with. Between five and six millions of women are to-day earning their own living. If in the future this number becomes larger it will be because the need for it is greater. Large considerations of the effect of her work here and there, on this person and on that, will not enter into the thought of the workgirl wanting food and shelter. She will do what she can and take what she can get. The problem for earnest-minded men and women, feminists and others, is not whether or not women should work outside their homes, but rather, how may women be properly equipped for the duty of supporting themselves, without injury to their special work as actual or prospective mothers, and with the minimum of injury and inconvenience to those men who have families to support. The unmarried men may take their chance in the open market with their unmarried, self-supporting sisters.

On the question of the economic position of woman, suffragists are divided. In the opinion of a considerable section the number of women's occupations should be strictly