Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/247

 honouring to women and less harmful to men.

Feminists there are who would like to see the principle of equality so rigidly carried out in the letter that the spirit of equality would be practically defeated. The spirit is the important thing, and if that be safeguarded there can be no objection to social arrangements which, on the surface, appear to bear somewhat unfairly upon women. For instance, it is certainly desirable that a married woman should be in a position to command the means of life for herself independently of another individual. It should not be possible for a woman to have to wring every penny she spends upon herself or her children from a mean and reluctant husband. Nor should she be permitted to starve if an idle husband declines to support her or runs away from his responsibilities. Economic independence for married women is of the utmost importance; but is the best way of securing this an equal division of the husband's weekly wage, as some feminists suggest? The best working men, and they are not a few, give the whole of their scanty earnings to their wives for the needs of the household. The women could get no more from them in any circumstances. The best men realise that their wives are as much entitled to that weekly wage as they themselves, for they work at