Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/44

 by the introduction of machinery which could do ten, twenty, or a hundred times as much work as one man, caused widespread unemployment, with consequent starvation and misery. In their blind, ignorant rage the men smote the machines, thinking that these dumb, insensate things were the cause of all their woe. Education, gained partly in the public schools, much more in the school of life, and in particular through the realisation of the value of co-operation gained in the workshop, has taught men a much better way. Now their efforts towards the solution of the problem of the workless man are on the lines of the legal minimum wage, a shorter working day, national insurance against unemployment, and kindred measures. Along these lines will the working woman's problem also be solved.

But, in the meantime, the majority of women are not working women in the industrial sense. There were in 1901 12,500,000 women over twenty in the United Kingdom. Of these, about 5,300,000 are women industrially employed. The remainder are engaged in professional occupations and in home-making. By far the larger number of the women of this country, and it is true of the women of all other countries, are home-makers. But what, in these modern days, does the term home-maker connote. There are about 8,000,000