Page:The Newspaper World.djvu/96

Rh tiplicity of demands on it, make it difficult to see how the claim of a new weekly newspaper can be listened to. It is but fair to add, however, that this is not the difficulty on which the Speaker laid stress, namely, "existing practice," when replying to a question on the subject.

That women, having proved that their sex can successfully enter some of the professions—medicine and law, for example, here and in America—now turn their attention to journalism, should not be a matter either of surprise or alarm to the men who now pursue the calling. The medical profession has not been ruined because a few women have entered it. In the paths of authorship and art, to say nothing of tuition, women have so long and honorably taken their place that in these spheres the question has not been debatable.

London requires the services of an army of journalistic writers and compilers of very varied capacities. That women possessed of the requisite literary ability -may succeed in some departments in this great field of work is not open to question. No one would say that abler contributions to current political thought could be had than those which the late Miss Martineau wrote for the Daily News; and where is better correspondence done than Mrs Emily Crawford now sends to the same newspaper from Paris? In other departments of journalistic work instances might be enumerated of ladies employed at the present time in London in sub-editing and reporting. But, while the ability shown by such women may be admitted to the fullest degree, it does not therefore follow that they will supplant men, or that their sex can look on journalism as an open and desirable field of employment. There are limited and special departments of newspaper work which they alone can successfully undertake.

In support of this assertion let us examine for a moment the various branches of newspaper work as ordinarily