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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Bought with the income
of the
ANN S. FARNAM FUND

CATHOLIC STUDIES IN SOCIAL REFORM

A SERIES OF MANUALS
EDITED BY
THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD

VIII.
CHRISTIAN FEMINISM A CHARTER OF RIGHTS
AND DUTIES

BY
MARGARET FLETCHER

LONDON
P. S. KING & SON, LTD,
ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER
1915

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION ... 5
II. PRINCIPLES  9
III. LAW AND ITS LIMITATIONS ... 18
IV. SOME LAWS WHICH AFFECT THE PERSON
AND PRIVATE LIVES OF WOMEN. . 33
V. WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 49
VI. INTERNATIONALIZED FEMINISM . 74
VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY  86

INTRODUCTION
This Uttle book has been put together in the hope that it
will help the spread of study circles among women, by
offering a basis for thought and indicating lines of investi
gation. Progress, in contradistinction to mere change, is not so
much an onward as an upward movement. Any solid
work in an upward direction presupposes for its stability
a sure foundation ; hence all social construction which is
to be really progressive must be based upon the unchanging
moral law.
Women are naturally attracted most by those social
questions which more directly concern themselves and touch
their lives, and they rightly feel that they themselves
should take an active part in shaping the conditions of the
future. Now it is precisely in connexion with the subjects grouped
under the term " Feminism " that the moral law is apt
to be obscured, ignored, or denied. For this reason an
attempt is here made to give some simple and clear defini
tions. It is quite necessary for the Catholic student to
master these at the outset.
The attitude of any ordinary Catholic towards an exact
definition is quite different from that of an average non-
Catholic. The average non-Catholic in this country, even
if a Christian, has drifted a long way from the clear and
logical thought embodied in the mature traditional philo
sophy of the Church. He is suspicious of exactness, think
ing it to be a condition of thin and outworn thought, and
hugs the belief that vagueness of conception and loose
ness of expression cover vastness and profundity. For

6 INTRODUCTION
this attitude something may be said, for after all no other
is to be expected of the man who looks at things from a
purely natural point of view, more particularly if he is
honest and humble and does not wish to claim more know
ledge than he possesses. He suspects definiteness as
savouring of presumption. The Protestant, too, with his
reverence for private judgment naturally dislikes authori
tative statements. '¦
Now, just as there are objects outside the range of the
unaided human vision, so there are objects in the eternal
sphere outside the range of vision of the unaided soul.
And just as human sight needs supplementing, so the soul
needs the assistance of some principle of elevation. This
principle of elevation, according to Cathohc teaching, is
Grace. The impatience of the average mind, when in
contact with the clear definition of spiritual things which
it cannot itself discern unaided, has its parallel in the
indignation of the man of insensitive vision in the presence
of an artist's rendering of a familiar scene. He sees in
the picture precise and subtle colours which he has never
observed in nature, and he concludes that the artist has
invented or wilfully exaggerated. In proclaiming that
they do not exist in fact, he is conscious of feeling morally
superior to the artist in regard to mere veracity. Hence
the popularity among non-Catholics of that vague and
foggy thought on spiritual matters which actually embodies
what appears to lie at the frontier of unaided human vision.
Sincere minds feel bound to proclaim that what lies beyond
this frontier cannot be exactly defined. The Cathohc
believes that Grace extends the sphere of the soul's vision,
and that this vision penetrates further in the measure of
the abundance of the Grace bestowed.
The Church, Spouse of the guiding Spirit, custodian of
Revelation and of the Treasury of Grace, has come to
possess through the penetrating discernment of her grace-
illumined children, a number of exact definitions on spiritual
matters unattainable outside her borders.
Every Catholic knows this, and in matters of religion
he recognizes both authority and the existence and function

INTRODUCTION 7
of the expert in the exposition of that authority's enact
ments. In matters not strictly religious, however, many Catholics
are affected by the modern attitude of independence.
This is apt to be more particularly the case with untrained
minds of an energetic cast. To such minds there is a
certain amount of discouragement in finding so many
unprovable principles definitely settled. These axioms
they have accepted as of faith, without unfortunately
exercising their minds over the reasoning upon which they
are based. Their unused mental powers call for exercise.
Such people welcome a purely secular movement as an
opportunity for letting loose their thinking energies in an
untrammelled way. They are often heard to say with
evident satisfaction, that such and ^uch a question has
nothing to do with religion, whereas ultimately everything
has to do with religion and every question sends some
root down till it touches a moral law. By distinguishing
in this manual between divine law, which is unalterable,
and human laws, habits, conventions and prejudices, all of
which latter offer a legitimate field for change and develop
ment, it is hoped to stimulate sound constructive thought
as a basis of sound action among Catholic women. To
arouse such thought seems urgently worth while if social
reconstruction is to be founded on Christian principles.
In this manual only those subjects are touched on which
concern the normal hfe of normal women. It is hoped
at some future date to treat of matters which concern the
abnormal, and of those complex moral problems with which
the adult social worker is often faced.

CHRISTIAN FEMINISM

CHAPTER I
PRINCIPLES
1. SEX OF THE SOUL.1
Unembodied spirits are without sex.
The activities of spirits are conditioned by the bodies
to which they are united.
There is capacity in the spirit, apart from the body, for
energizing the physical faculties of either sex.
These conditions of activity during the spirit's union
with the body (its soul-life) are the cause of the different
manifestation of the spirit in man and in woman with
which we are familiar.
The spiritual human soul, while remaining itself sexless,
has the capacity of manifesting all those relative varieties
of function, intellectual, imaginative, emotional, which
we are accustomed to associate with the two sexes in the
human race.
2. INDEPENDENCE OF PERSONALITY.
The human soul, as the higher and elevating element
of our dual nature, produces personality, and personality
means essentially independence. No one can lawfully merge
his personality in the person of another. Therefore a per
sonality, or an independent person, is always ultimately
responsible for his own actions.
Consequently a woman has an inalienable right to all
that makes up her personality, including the free exercise
of her religion as part of her spiritual existence.
1 The Human Soul. Dom Anscar Vonier, O.S.B. Herder,
9

10 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
3. DESTINY.
Woman's destiny, like man's, is Eternal Life.
4. LIBERTY,
Which is only possible to beings gifted with reason, and
free-will, is possessed by men and women equally.
Liberty is the power to exercise an act of choice, or to
withhold it, subject to the control of reason. It is the
most essential note of our human nature. Human acts
being guided by motives are correct or distorted according
as the motive is correct or distorted. Hence acts wholly
uncontrolled by reason are simply animal and not human
acts. Human acts, acts in accordance with right reason,
are alone morally free.
For freedom or liberty may mean several things. It
may denote the absence of physical restraint (a discharged
prisoner or a horse in a paddock is free in this sense). It
may signify political immunity from vexatious laws (as
when we say that every Englishman is a free man). But
the highest form of liberty, viz. moral liberty, is the power
to develop unhindered one's personality to the highest
degree, to make one's way unchecked to union with God,
to repress the animal tendencies that would keep us from
Him. The obstacles to this moral freedom are inward.
Such liberty is not an inheritance ; it has to be painfully
acquired by the individual, aided by Grace.
The will has liberty to choose evil in this sense, that
it may choose a course which appears to be good for itself
because gratifying to itself at the moment, but which in
reality is the road to ruin. The light afforded by human
reason is dim and circumscribed ; thus, without further
guidance than that given by reason and without infused
strength, a woman may, without deliberately intending to
injure herself, choose for herself something which has the
appearance of immediate good, but which will in reality
lead to her destruction and hinder her from fulfilling her
destiny. The will being always influenced by some intellectually
apprehended motive, even one which is distorted or un
sound, does not deliberately choose evil, but only what

PRINCIPLES n
has at least the appearance of good. It can however
choose what will lead to ruin, and can be guilty of rejecting
the means which are provided for enlightening and guiding
reason. Guidance is provided in the Eternal Laws of
God, which are recognized as authoritative by reason, and
are dictated practically by a properly educated conscience.
Strength to carry out the dictates of reason is imparted
by x Grace which is the free gift of God, and which not only
enlightens the intellect to perceive, but braces the will to
choose moral good.
Thus by Grace the imperfect human faculties of reason
and free-will are supplemented, so that their actions, while
remaining truly human, are raised to the supernatural
plane. The teaching of Divine laws and tlje imparting of Grace
is the work of Religion, God acting through the Church
He has founded.
5. ONE MORAL LAW FOR MEN AND WOMEN.
From the fact that the human soul is a moral entity
essentially the same whether it energizes a male or a female
body, it follows that in either case it is subject to the same
moral law.
But although there is one moral law, the entity composed
of sexless spirit and sexed body may be so profoundly
different according as that body is male or female, that
the difficulty of obeying a given law in the complex code
of Christian morality may be greater in the one case than
the other. Thus the proportion of guilt in disobedience
can be adequately known only to the omniscient God.
The most penetrating of human judges is hindered in his
estimate by the essential limitations of human knowledge.
Therefore the verdicts of a human tribunal may often
differ from those of the Divine Tribunal. Only occasion
ally do we see what appear to be deviations from even justice
(deviations in the direction of leniency) in the administra
tion of human law. These seeming illegalities have in
reality their source in equity, being an attempt to do justice
i The Greek Testament, pp. 6-8. Martindale, C.T.S., id.

12 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
by the verdict both to society outraged by crime and to
the individual labouring under some exceptional handicap.
This tendency is more often found in Continental countries
than in our own.
If, on the one hand, we see in Courts of Law efforts to
harmonize Divine and human justice, why on the other
do we often find such unequal justice in social life in the
matter of the same sin committed by a man or a woman,
an inequality which bears hardly on the woman ?
Because though the same sin, whether committed by a
man or by a woman, may involve equal guilt before God
it yet may have unequal social consequences according
to the sex of the sinner. Even where the moral guilt is
less the social injury may be greater. Mankind looks
mainly to social consequences. Human laws must take
into account these consequences of sin, for their aim is the
welfare and protection of the social body as a whole.
6. CELIBACY.
A woman is as free as a man is to determine her state
of life. Therefore the Christian woman can choose celibacy
as a state, celibacy having been a distinctly Christian
ideal from the earliest times.
Voluntary Christian celibacy, the deliberate choice of
the single state from a supernatural motive, is neither nega
tive nor sterile, but spiritually fruitful. It must not be
confused with the involuntary single state to which so
many women are relegated in modern hfe by accidental
conditions.
7. MARRIAGE
Consists in the substantially free consent of the two con
tracting parties. Among Cathohcs marriage is not only
a contract, but also a sacrament, and as such is under
the control of the Church. Marriage viewed purely as a
contract is subject as regards civil effects to civil law.
The ministers of the sacrament of matrimony are the
two contracting parties, the priest being only the Church's
official witness. The matrimonial rights and obligations

PRINCIPLES 13
of the two contracting parties are identically equal. Never
theless in every organized society (and the family is an
organized society), there must be an official head. The
material duties and responsibilities of the man point him
out as the official head, though in reality he is in legal
language only primus inter pares (the foremost among
equals). The jurisdiction over the wife and the family given to
man is a trust of the gravest. It is a strictly limited and
constitutional jurisdiction, conferred, as in the case of all
legitimate authority, for the good of those subject to it.
It is in no sense an arbitrary or autocratic dominion, but
one circumscribed by inflexible laws.
The same moral code which defines man's conduct to
wards woman has its equally binchjig enactments con
cerning woman's conduct to man ; on reciprocal fidelity
to these laws rests the stability and happiness of the whole
social fabric.
It has been frequently asserted that the word " obey,"
inserted into the Anglican marriage service by the com
pilers of the Book of Common Prayer, was an innovation.
This statement has been readily accepted, since the word
does not appear in the Catholic marriage ritual which is
in present use in this country. Recent researches,1 how
ever, make it clear that it did figure in certain Catholic
rituals, that of Sarum for instance, and that where the
word is not present the whole tenour of the service implies
a certain measure of obedience in temporal matters.
But if the Reformers are not responsible for the intro
duction of the word, the result of their labours in the reli
gious sphere generally gave to it a totally new significance.
Because, in the non-recognition of clear and binding moral
enactments regulating the married relationship, obedience
on the part of a woman means her subjection to a husband's
private judgments and rulings in these matters, a state
1 On the Retention of the Word " Obey " in the Marriage Service
of the Book of Common Prayer. J. Wickham Legg, D.Lit. Wells,
Gardner & Co. The Bride's Marriage Vow, Rev. H. Thurston, S.J.,
Tablet, August 7, 1915.

14 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
of things which may constitute a breach of her moral
liberty.
- In a Catholic marriage on the other hand, a woman is
not at the mercy of a man's errors of judgment in the
moral sphere, even if he should be tyrannously disposed
in temporal matters.
Marriage, being by Divine enactment a permanent state,
is dissoluble only by death.
8. SEPARATION
Of married people, such separation in no way implying
dissolution of the bond of matrimony, evidently may be
at times advisable or even necessary.
Such separation with the annexed obligation of leading
a single hfe may have inconveniences and even hardships.
These have to be balanced against the flagrant evils which
follow in the train of divorce.
In balancing the two sets of evils as they affect society
at large, wide experience has proved that in insisting upon
the indissolubility of the contract the resulting hardships
are distinctly of less consequence than the destructive
effects on social hfe which follow divorce.
At times for legal reasons, as for instance in order to
safeguard inheritance, it may be lawful and even necessary
to seek at law the annulment of the civil effects of the
marriage contract. But a " divorce " of this nature in no
way affects the sacramental bond, which remains indis
soluble. Therefore no second marriage can be effected
by either party in the lifetime of the other.
9. THE NATURAL END OF MARRIAGE1
Is the continuation of the human race. Christian parents
are not permitted to limit the number of their children by
artificial means. They can only lawfully arrive at this end
by mutually agreeing to live matrimonially apart.
The marriage contract presupposes that the contracting
1 See Duties of Conjugal Life. By Cardinal Mercier, C.T.S., id.
The Church and Eugenics. By the Rev. T. Gerrard (Catholic
Social Guild, 6^.).

PRINCIPLES 15
parties have arrived at years of discretion and therefore
have attained some measure of self-control and self-govern
ment. It is a modern error to attribute to the unity and
indissolubility of marriage an unhappiness which has
its origin in a false conception of life and a total lack of
moral training in earlier years — in fact, to a moral equip
ment so unsound that it might ensure misery in any state
of life.
10. SELF-SACRIFICE AND LIBERTY.
A hfe of self-sacrifice dedicated to the service of others
for God's sake, is regarded by some non-Christians of to
day as one of immoral servitude and an infringement of
personal liberty.
Such a view proceeds from a wholby laudable desire for
freedom and self-realization distorted by a muddled con
ception of the ideas of " self " and " liberty " (see p. 10).
Before we can say whether self-sacrifice is morally good
or bad, we must first inquire what is the " self " which is
sacrificed and, moreover, what is the other " self " for which
it is sacrificed.
Self-sacrifice, self-suppression, mortification, considered
in themselves have no moral value whatever. If I aim
lessly throw my last half-crown down a drain I do a foolish
thing. If I give it to a hospital fund merely for the plea
sure of seeing my name in the paper, my act is of no moral
value. If I give it to a destitute beggar for the love of
Christ, I am sacrificing the lower to the higher, exchanging
the good for the better, and my act^has a moral value.
There is no taint of slavery about it.' v -/
Now the Cathohc Church maintains as stoutly as the
most rebellious Feminist can desire, that what is highest
and best in the individual may never under any circum
stances be sacrificed — whether to the State or to friendship
or to anything else. To sacrifice it would be a sin and a
kind of moral suicide. God wills the highest moral per
fection and the completest development and happiness
of His rational creatures.
On the other hand, the lower self must, unless we wish

16 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
to degenerate into bestiality and slavery, be sacrificed or
at least subordinated to the higher. The soldier who, in
a good cause, sacrifices his life on behalf of his country, is
no slave. Neither is the woman who neglects her own
ease or the exercise of artistic or literary gifts to nurse the
sick or help the poor for love of Christ. Some Sisters of
Charity might have shone as pianists or novelists. Human
activities cannot be exercised in all directions at once.
It is a question of relative values. The martyr surrenders
a good thing for a better. The hermit shuns the company
of men to enjoy that of God. St. Francis renounces fair
raiment because his Lady Poverty is fairer still.
Many fail to understand that Christian self-sacrifice is
not a negative and barren thing. It is not mere giving
up, but giving up as the condition of getting something
better. Can it seriously be maintained that all experiences are
equally valuable, and that every unrestrained manifesta
tion of " self " tends to liberty ? Is a man in a raging
temper more free than a man who, with the same impulses,
controls his temper ? If so, we must seek our ideals of
humanity in prisons and lunatic asylums.
Even in the natural order sacrifice is the law of self-
expression and self-realization. It is a condition of art.
It is actually a condition of life. It finds the mean between
a fanatical altruism and a selfish hedonism. This much
even thoughtful pagans recognized.
The Catholic Church adopts this teaching of the best
pre-Christian thought and clarifies it, giving it a deeper
meaning and a wider application. She is an expert in
values and an experienced judge of human nature. She
stands for liberty as she stands for order, since both are
needed for true human development. She alone can
reduce our conflicting impulses to harmony, and develop to
its fullest extent every human aspiration. And it is in
order that men may be truly free as well as supremely
happy that she urges them to walk along "the Royal
Road of the Holy Cross."

PRINCIPLES 17
11. THE CHURCH ACCUSED OF BEING REPRESSIVE IN
HER ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN.
It has frequently been urged by the Revolutionary type
of Feminist that the Church's attitude towards women
has been repressive and contemptuous. Although Her
attitude does not, strictly speaking, constitute a principle,
it is as well to say a word upon it here. These charges
are based upon extracts from the writings of some early
Fathers, isolated from their context, inaccurately translated
and judged without sufficient knowledge of contemporary
history or of the kind of woman against which they were
mostly aimed — namely, pagan women, the declared enemies
of the new Christian virtue of chastity.
That the Church's attitude is the contrary of repressive
is easily estabhshed by authenticated facts — women are
canonized as Saints, are accepted as Doctors of Mystical
Theology, installed as rulers over large communities, in
some cases (such as in that of St. Hilda) over men. They
have been encouraged to undertake the highest studies,
and have filled professorial chairs in Papal Universities.
It would be an easy matter to cite the names of Catholic
women eminent for learning and distinguished in the arts,
who were illustrious for their virtue and were faithful
daughters of the Church. Indeed, it might be difficult to
find women in modern times outside the Church of the
same intellectual and moral stature.
At the so-called Reformation women were deprived of
all existing means of Education, for which, until very
recent times, nothing was substituted.
With the dishonour of the ideal of celibacy and the
materialized view of marriage consequent upon it, women
fell in the scale of freedom and consequently of dignity.

CHAPTER II
LAW AND ITS LIMITATIONS
1. SOURCE OF HUMAN LAWS.
Having considered moral principles, which are immu
table, we can turn our attention to human laws, which
in so far as they are not mere applications of the divine,
are eminently mutable. But before considering some of
these in detail it will be helpful to take a broad survey of
the subject, more especially since those least well informed
as to the nature and origin of laws are apt to cherish
exaggerated notions of the power of law as a moral lever.
Roughly speaking, laws or codes of law considered accord
ing to their source may be divided into two groups : — ¦
those which have been framed by individuals endowed with
autocratic power and a genius for government and imposed
upon a people lacking the liberty to criticize ; and those
which spring from the corporate wisdom of a popularly
elected assembly. It is laws of popular origin with which
we are mainly concerned.
Laws of either origin, as history shows, may be so excellent
that their permanent repeal is morally impossible, although
in times of Revolution they may have been suspended.1
Again, laws of either origin may be the outcome of passing
passion, panic or prejudice, destined sooner or later to be
repealed or to become obsolete on the Statute Book.2
2. PUBLIC OPINION AND LAW MAKING.
We are proposing to study social conditions as they
affect women's person, property and labour, and we cannot
1 The right to trial.
2 Laws against witchcraft. Penal laws against Catholics.
18

LAW AND ITS LIMITATIONS 19
do this without studying the legislation which deals with
the subject. This legislation, though some of it may be
rooted in bygone forms of government, has for the past
three hundred years been increasingly popular in origin,
and since the Reform Act of 1832 may be said to be almost
entirely so. Laws from this source reflect, not the advanced
ideas of a period, nor the conceptions of master minds, but
at the most the average thought level of the day. They
are in fact the outcome of public opinion, in advance of
which very little can be effected. But if public opinion be
on the one hand the master, it is on the other merely a pupil
capable of being educated. In this lies the real incentive
for spreading a wide interest in social questions. The mental
attitude of each one of us is either helping to change public
opinion or to fix it in its present condition. Although in this
country women have no direct share in framing laws they
have of recent years played a really important part in
shaping opinion. The Women's Industrial Council has, for
instance, since 1894 conducted researches into the condi
tions of women's labour which, by providing a fund of
accurate information, have directly influenced legislation.1
3. THE GROWTH OF MATERIAL FREEDOM AND MORAL
LIBERTY.
Notwithstanding sundry stains upon its pages, the
history of legislation in this country is in the main the
history of the growth of the security of the community based
on the security of the individual.
It is the history of the growth of material freedom, that is
of immunity from violence and exaction, but in the case
of women it is not equally the history of moral and spiritual
liberty. Let us take an illustration. In the early middle
ages a woman might have to go to church under escort for
the sake of bodily security, but her freedom to practise
religion was never questioned nor her personal responsibility
towards God in the matter denied as a principle, by husband
or guardian. In modern times when her person is in no
1 " Women's Share in Recent Industrial Legislation," by Dorothy
Haynes. Women's Industrial News, January, 1915. 7 John Street,
Adelphi, London.

20 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
danger, she may have considerable difficulty in practising
any religion at all, if her so doing is not agreeable to her
husband. And why? Because among the truths which
dropped out as a consequence of the Reformation was that
of woman being a spiritual independent entity in the sense
in which it is defined in the preceding " principles." With
the multiplication of sects a choice of religion was offered ;
controversy entered family life, and the husband having
become confirmed in the erroneous belief that his wish was
law for his wife in the moral sphere, readily constituted
himself arbiter of truth and sole judge in the matter of
religious belief.1 It is true that in English law a woman,
equally with a man, is now free to practise what religion
she pleases, but a large section of pubhc opinion, still rooted
in a false principle, views with leniency any measures which
a husband or father may take to enforce his wishes upon a
wife or daughter in despite of this legal liberty.
4. THE MORAL LIBERTY OF WOMEN.
Moral liberty concerns the spiritual, that is the highest
hfe, but woman's position in this sphere affects her position
in all others, is indeed their only reasonable and therefore
sure foundation.
We approach our studies as Cathohcs, tenacious of the
moral liberty which the Church has secured to women,
interested in tracing the action of this principle in social
life in the past, bent upon seeking its apphcation in the
present. We know quite well that the Church has not at any time
and does not now occupy herself directly with civil laws or
with defining woman's share in social or civic life. The
Christian religion works through the hearts and minds of
individuals, and through these permeates human society very
gradually. Even moral principles, backed by all her
authority though they be, can only prevail by the conquest
1 In 1670 by a Statute 22 Ch. ii. c. 2 (sec. 15) it is decreed that if
a woman is convicted of being at an unlawful conventicle the penalty
is to fall on the husband, thus recognizing the husband's responsi
bility for the wife's religious practice.

LAW AND ITS LIMITATIONS 21
of individual minds. But believing as we do, that the
religion of Christ is the Divine rule for human hfe and must
therefore meet the needs of divinely created human beings
as nothing else can, we believe it follows that a " Feminism "
capable of developing and satisfying the entire nature of
woman must be based on Christian principles. We do not
imagine that there is anything new to discover about woman,
only much to be developed.
5. IS IDENTITY OF LEGISLATION FOR MEN AND WOMEN
DESIRABLE ?
But why, it may be asked, since woman is man's moral
and spiritual equal, must we separate her case at all from
his, why for instance ,do we require to make a special
study of her share in industrial life ? purely her case does
of itself demand distinct treatment so far as this world
is concerned. There are peculiarities in regard to woman
which distinguish her needs from those of man, in domestic
and in civil life and in economic law. There are the interests
of her special temperament, and hence of her personality,
to be reconciled with the interests of the race in her person.
Both interests ultimately meet of themselves, but this fact
may easily escape the superficial thinker.
Hence identity of legislation for men and women by no
means implies equality of justice, a truth which is becoming
more and more apparent to the student of women's interests
in industrial Hfe. One thing however stands out clearly
enough. At no period since Christianity began to influence
society has there been anything approaching a planned
oppression of woman on the part of man such as obtains
in polygamous states. Social forces which we are reduced
to calling blind, because we can neither foresee the lines
of their operations nor control them nor understand them,
except sometimes in retrospect, are on the other hand
continually producing conditions which come as a surprise
equally to those who suffer from or benefit by them. The
restoration of justice can be achieved only when a spiritual
conception of life gains the ascendency and controls those
forces.

22 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
All this is familiar but also vague. Can we sum up in
one sentence the principle upon which as Catholics we
take our stand, and which we cannot under any circum
stances concede? I think we can. While in the moral
sphere woman is the equal of man and her position identical
with his, in the physical sphere her case is separate, and
the only way in which justice can be done her is so to arrange
the conditions of her physical hfe as to leave her moral
freedom intact.
If we base our studies upon this solid foundation I believe
we shall find that they will develop soundly and we shall
avoid drifting off into vague speculation.
The Church had no easy part to play in striving for
this principle with a world which in primitive civilizations
insisted exclusively on regarding woman from the side of her
physical value to the race, and as civilization developed,
conceded her merely an aesthetic value in addition. Chris
tian teaching fuUy recognizes woman's physical value, but
strives to raise the conditions of this side of life to a level
compatible with her dignity as a moral independent entity.
Occasionally the law is eloquent of the struggle between
Church and State in the matter of women's position.
Thus in 1344 the English House of Commons complains that
the Church allows married women to make wills, " which
is against reason " ; the King wishes that law and reason
should be maintained. (Pari. Rolls, ii, pp. 149-50.)
Startling statements are often made about woman's
status in pre-Christian societies by a school of writers bent
on proving that the Church has done very httle, and that that
little has been bad. A scholarly treatment of this subject
will be found in a tersely written httle pamphlet, What
Christianity has done for Woman.1
6. THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH IN ANGLO-SAXON
DAYS.
If we turn to the history of our own race, we find
great stress laid by Feminist writers upon the high status
1 What Christianity has done for Woman, by Gabriel d'Azambuja,
translated by Mrs. Philip Gibbs. Catholic Truth Society, 69 South-
wark Bridge Road, London, S.E.

LAW AND ITS LIMITATIONS 23
enjoyed by woman in Anglo-Saxon days, a status which
appears to have been derived from her physical virihty
and her abihty in law to inherit land which was then the
basis of power and influence. She not only possessed it but
she defended it either in her own right or as a wife in the
many absences of her husband. She also had some share
in the primitive government of the time. She was, in fact,
a working partner with man when social conditions made
it to the general advantage that she should be so. But a
status based merely on material conditions inevitably passes
with those conditions. Her position at this period was not
the outcome of any philosophical principle of justice held
by our forefathers. It came to her because she was a land
holder when in the interest of the power and influence of
the family group it was desirable that she should be so,
It is in another quarter we must sdek for the influence
which accorded her a status containing the elements of
permanence. The state of law in Anglo-Saxon times was chaotic, but
such formation as the old " Germanic " codes possessed
had developed in the midst of the traditions of the Old World,
many of which had been absorbed in the Christian code.
Therefore, if laws were then few and simple in form, they
were already complex in origin.
S. Augustine came to England in 597, to the land where
women were virile and influential. He must have brought
with him the knowledge of Roman law as it had emerged
from the hands of the Christian Emperors, notably from
those of Justinian, to whom women owed so great a gain
in independence.
To mention only a few of the reforms which Justinian
introduced into the old Roman law will give us some idea
of the extent of this debt. All differences between men
and women in the law of succession were abolished ; mothers
and grandmothers were appointed guardians of children.
It was a capital crime to carry off or offer violence to a nun,
the legal disabilities on celibacy and childlessness were
abolished, due provision was made for a wife, and facilities
were granted for entering the religious hfe.

24 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
7. WOMAN'S RIGHT TO REFUSE MARRIAGE.
The right to own land the Anglo-Saxon woman al
ready possessed, but in the granting of facilities to enter
religious life and in the safeguarding of the person of the
nun we have liberty based on a new principle, and far-
reaching in its consequences. What exactly did this mean
in those early days ? It meant that a woman could refuse
marriage at a time when marriages were arranged for her
almost entirely with a view to the interests of the family
group, either for purposes of defence or aggression, or for
political reasons of a wider reach. She was free to decide
upon a career independent of the family, dedicated directly
to God and devoted to the civilizing arts and the pursuit of
knowledge. The early monastery combined the functions
of a school of prayer, a college for higher studies, and a school
of varied arts and crafts and of agriculture. At a time
when marriage (in the determining of which love, as we
understand it, played little or no part) was the universal
rule, and numerous children a direct means of increasing
the power of a family, this freedom to enter a monastery
was a startling object lesson in the new Christian teaching
of woman's moral independence. Many an Anglo-Saxon
great lady entered monastic hfe, accustomed to wield
authority and enforce her will by violence if need be. In
entering the convent she passed under Christian disciphne
and learned to exercise moral authority.1
8. INFLUENCE OF THE MONASTIC LIFE ON MARRIAGE.
The monastic Ufe reacted favourably on marriage. If
the married state was to hold its own against the attraction
of the cloister it too must be brought under the civilizing
influence of the Church, and the rough and half-tamed
husband, inchned to be a law to himself and to enforce his
will by violence, must submit to the laws of the Church
which regulated marriage. Naturally when an alternative
1 We have the virile Anglo-Saxon woman christianized in the
person of St. Hilda, who in 657 founded her double monastery at
Whitby, renowned throughout Christian England, in which, during
her lifetime, five future Bishops were students at one time.

LAW AND ITS LIMITATIONS 25
life was thus opened to women they were in a position to de
mand to be chosen in marriage as individuals rather than
as members of a sex or at best of a family. Proof of some
personal preference if not of affection must now be given
by a suitor if the prospect of a life passed as his wife was
to appear desirable. For we must not suppose those early
communities to have been filled only with those who received
" vocations " in the stricter sense as we understand them
to-day. In Anglo-Saxon times the person of a woman was under
the protection of a guardian or over-lord until her marriage.
As a widow she could still claim the protection of an over
lord, but enjoyed the liberty of refusing a second marriage.
The nun was under the protection of Canon Law in those
early days the single woman obliged to, defend her own
interests did not exist. 4
9. THE CHURCH AND THE WOMAN TRADER.
As social life developed towns sprang up, and an urban
population came into existence composed of merchants and
artisans who speedily won for themselves a power and
influence equal to that of the landowner. In this new world
we find the Church's principles at work anew. She sought
to regulate the conditions of labour and commerce in accor
dance with Christian ethics and achieved this by means
of teaching from the pulpit and in the confessional, by rulings
in the ecclesiastical courts, and more particularly through the
powerful guilds in which the interests of aU were safeguarded,
and no one questioned that in principle it was the duty of the
strong to help the weak, or that remuneration for labour
should be sufficient to support life decently. Women who
traded in their own right were included in many of these
guilds and there is evidence that in some at any rate they
voted at the elections of guild officers.1 We are not to
suppose that the Church's task was easy, human nature when
unrestrained is ever in favour of the law of might. There
was man always ready to convert his headship into a domin-
1 English Gilds, by Toulmin Smith ; and History of Guilds and
Origin of Trade Unions, L. Brentano.

26 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
ation, there were the rough conditions of the time which
necessitated a certain seclusion of woman in the interests
of her moral liberty but, notwithstanding this, her right
to trade on equal terms was conceded.1 Right up to the
' Reformation ' the Church held a watching brief to see
justice done, on the principle that the conditions of labour
should be such as to support a decent hfe, albeit on frugal
lines. 10. EFFECT OF THE REFORMATION ON WOMAN.
And then came the " Reformation " with the en
thronement of the Rehgion of Individuahsm. The
cloister and all the liberty it stood for were abohshed ;
marriage was declared to be no longer a sacrament,
at most a symbol with a blessing attached, at least
a civil contract, and as such dissoluble by the State. An
era of " blind forces " was ushered in, and woman proved
to be very much at their mercy. The Reformers aimed no
blow at her intentionally, they probably imagined, in so
far as they gave her case any special attention at all, that
with the destruction of the ideal of virginity and of sacra
mental marriage she would enjoy an increased natural
happiness. A good deal was said about married unhappiness
caused by the intrusion of a priest between man and wife :
but the real quarrel was with the intrusion of the Church's
restraining laws. The new individualism simply handed
married women over to the mercy of a husband's private
judgment and prejudices in the region of ethics. The
" Reformed " Church never claimed any teaching authority
on this subject, and to-day is utterly powerless to exercise
any. The real nature of the promised freedom and happiness
we can now see in retrospect, and it is generally agreed that
the spectacle is a dismal one.
11. SHE IS DEPRIVED OF THE MEANS OF EDUCATION.
We find a total absence of any provision for education to
replace that which had been given in convents, neither was
1 The Status of Women under the English Law, by A. Beatrice
Wallis Chapman, D.Sc. (Econ.), and Mary Wallis Chapman, B.A.

LAW AND ITS LIMITATIONS 27
any training provided for any sphere of private or public
usefulness. The Religion of Individualism bred a political
philosophy of Individualism, a reign of self-interest in com
merce, of unrestrained competition in wages. A state of
things grew up so divorced from Christian ethics, so ap
parently uncontroUable, that economists began to build up
a theory of iron laws, and the behef spread generally that
Rehgion and social forces worked upon different planes.1 It
was held that if self-interest and selfishness procured the
good of an individual, then the good of the State must
follow. 12. THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY DISASTROUS TO
HER INTERESTS.
From the end of the eighteenth to the latter part
of the nineteenth century the classical*English pohtical
economy which embodied this creed held the field, and to
doubt it was heresy. Neither in professional life nor in
commerce was there any room for woman, even if she
could have secured for herself the education necessary
for success. Into industrial life alone she entered as
an unskilled worker under the most abject and inhuman
conditions. Life for women in the well-to-do classes
meant segregation in a home which under the new
thought-conditions was often a very dull little kingdom
under despotic rule, in which there was no room for her
personality. The fact that thought concerning women rapidly fell
into feebleness, veneered either with sentimentality or with
coarseness, shows forcibly how great had been the elevating
power of that Catholic conception of woman which the
Reformation destroyed.
13. THE BIRTH OF THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT.
Christian principles had been lost, material progress went
on its way, wealth and luxury increased, but something
1 The Social Sense : Its Decay and Its Revival, by Alexander P.
Mooney, M.D., id. English Economics and Catholic Ethics, by
Rev. Michael Maher, S.J., D.Litt., id. Cathohc Truth Society, 69
Southwark Bridge Road, S.E.

28 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
was wrong at the heart of civilization, and out of that wrong
as it affected women modern Feminism has been born,
born of a sense of emptiness, of loss, of injustice. In the
early half of the last century that battle for education was
begun which was fought so strenuously for some thirty years,
doors were forced open, and the movement grew with the
oncoming strength of a rising tide. On the ethical side it
was a vague movement not knowing its goal or which road
to take. In a measure it appeared as a revolt against
Protestantism, which with some justice was represented
as subjugating women. At the heart of the movement lay
an instinctive desire to recover a lost inheritance. The
claim appears sometimes in an ugly egotistical dress. When
Ibsen's " Doll's House " was first played in London the
pubhc mind was scandalized. The plea for self-development
which it contained appeared to be a challenge to the
domestic gods and thus to the whole fabric of society.
The play was a herald of revolt but it was also a cry for
life and health.
The problem of modern Feminism, with aU its aspir
ations, aberrations, heroisms and folhes, is one to which
Catholics possess a solution and to which they should there
fore bring sympathetic understanding and help. For the
claim to moral independence if divorced from obedience
to Christian ethics, is one charged with disaster to the
individual and to the State. It is then merely an intense
form of Individualism. The same Church which proclaimed
the moral responsibility of woman also laid down her duties
and obligations to God. This Christian independence is
part of a whole ethical fabric ; one part cannot be de
tached from the whole and retain its beneficent character.
14. WOMAN'S POLITICAL CLAIM— A MORAL INFLUENCE
MUST DIRECT THE USE OF POWER.
And now we must touch on woman's political claim which
has been advanced since 1847, and which has come to
absorb public attention so entirely as almost to exclude
the deeper moral aspects of the Feminist movement.
Some falsely assume that these deeper questions can be

LAW AND ITS LIMITATIONS 29
ignored in the present and summarily dealt with in the future
by means of political power when once this is won. The
political claim is one for a direct share in the making of laws
by means of the vote. As laws are in this country popular
in origin and the concern of the average citizen, it is certainly
logical that, in proportion as women become educated in
civic hfe and have a stake in the industrial state over
and above their abiding interest in the laws affecting their
personal security, they should enjoy a direct share in the
direct framing of laws which directly affect them. In a
democracy which recognizes the right of the people to
frame their own laws, it is surely a just claim and therefore
moral ; unless it can be shown that there is some reason
intrinsic or extrinsic why women should not vote. But
since the Church has not pronounced on the matter one way
or another, this claim is recognized by Catholics as one which
belongs to the realm of private opinion. There is nothing
in the claim which transcends the hmits of moral liberty,
or is detrimental to woman's physical welfare. Catholics
need to be very clear on this point, because an almost
incredible confusion of thought has arisen around the subject
outside the Church. We hear the suffrage spoken of as a
" moral lever " ; of this movement for enfranchisement as
a moral and a rehgious one. We hear it alternately urged
that woman must have the vote because her influence is
always for good, and again, that she must have it because
she is entitled to it in justice as a citizen who pays rates
and taxes without reference to sex, and that how she exer
cises it is no one's business but her own. This last is the
only logical basis upon which to demand pohtical rights.
The civil authority has the power to take away the right
for due cause, but it has no power to determine to what
ends it shall be exercised. The influence which 'controls
the use of power is a moral one and belongs to Religion.
The power might be granted by a materialistic government,
and the prevailing feminine opinion might be in favour of
licence. To the Cathohc the question of political rights
must always remain on its own proper plane.
In treating the question as a purely academic one, it

30 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
is evident that a State which accepted Christian principles
but in which the franchise was not a factor in the government,
might give a position to women perfectly in accord with
justice and moral liberty. Viewed practically, however,
the question presents itself thus. In a State in which the
suffrage is accepted as the sign of citizenship for the vast
majority of its men, the exclusion of women is tantamount
to a declaration that she is not fitted for the performance
of the same civic and national functions as man performs.
Round this question of identity of or distinction of social
function of the sexes, the controversy rages. The subject
is all the more complicated because it cannot be discussed
on a clean slate. The question of rights came on to the scene
as a philosophic one after the obligations of citizenship in
the shape of taxes had already been placed upon the shoul
ders of women, automaticaUy as it were and without any
discussion of principle. Happily the Cathohc woman, being
in full possession of her inheritance of moral and spiritual
liberty, is unhkely when engaged in zealous work for this
or that political end to lose her power of discriminating
among the values of the question, and so to lose her mental
balance. In the eyes of Cathohcs the moral law is so
indispensable a foundation and so sacred a possession that
any act contrary to it in order to gain a pohtical end,
even if that end is in accordance with justice, is indefensible.
Surely the key to the phenomenon of mihtancy with which
we have been made painfuUy farmliar in connexion with the
woman's movement is that, in the confusion of thought which
prevails, the whole question of woman's moral status has
become hopelessly entangled in the non-Cathohc mind with
that of her claim to the suffrage.
15. A GREAT STEP FORWARD.
But the greatest step towards the restoration of woman's
lost inheritance was made by the Married Woman's Pro
perty Act of 1882. In this, for the first time since the
Reformation, she was recognized as an independent entity.
The moral principle is not stated, it is true, but it is neverthe
less implied in the material concession. There is no need to

LAW AND ITS LIMITATIONS 31
be too critical as to the manner of the restoration of a right,
the fact of restoration reacts upon the popular mind, and
prepares the way for the acceptance of an ethical principle.
16. THE NEED OF SERIOUS STUDY OF ACTUAL CONDI
TIONS.
Meanwhile the whole trend of legislation has, for the past
eighty years, been increasingly inspired by a sincere desire
to rebuild the State upon principles of greater justice. By
much of this legislation women have directly benefited.
They will benefit to a greater degree when they learn to
organize on a larger scale and when they apply them
selves more seriously to a systematic study of the con
ditions which promote or are contrary to the welfare of
their sex. #
A large number of women are now equipped to undertake
serious study. All cannot engage in research work, but all
can profit by the result of such labours, and can thus help
to make a sound public opinion. In the preface to the
invaluable bibliography Woman in Industry, by Lucy Wyatt
Papworth, M.A., and Dorothy M. Zimmern, M.A., we read,
after a comment on the scarcity of material deahng with
women in industry, of the tendency of such as exists to
treat woman's interests either as identical with man's, or
when this practice is discarded, as identical with those of
cMdren : —
" At other times the interests of women and of the community
are held to be identical. There is, for instance, hardly any dis
cussion of the problem of married women's work, which so much
as touches on the woman's point of view. The effect on the race
alone is considered. The effect on the women themselves,
which after aU has its bearing on the race too, is quite ignored.
" Indeed it is the absence of the woman's point of view which
has struck us over and over again in this compilation. Many
an interesting article dealing with questions of vital importance
to working women has had to be omitted because their existence
was ignored. Many have been included when they contained a
brief paragraph, which did no more than indicate the existence
of a problem which the writer did not feel caUed upon to do more
than mention.
" It must in fairness be said that women themselves are in

32 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
part to blame for this neglect. Too often have they been content
to let others manage their affairs for them ; too often have they
failed to press forward their own particular needs."
Enough has been said, I hope, to convince CathoUc
students that there is much to study, and grave reason for
studying. A new society is being born, not without peril
and pain. How far woman realizes her own most complete
development and through this gives of her best to social
life will depend to no smaU extent on the part played by
the comparatively small band of Catholic women in this
country.

CHAPTER III
SOME LAWS WHICH AFFECT THE PERSONAL AND
PRIVATE LIVES OF WOMEN
1. GROWING INTEREST IN THE SUBJECT.
We may now consider the laws in this country which
bear most directly upon the lives of women and which also
come within the scope of this manual.
j.v In 1912 the International Council of Women * brought
out a little volume entitled Women's Position in the Laws of
the Nations.2 It is a trilingual publication ; articles are
contributed by representatives of eighteen countries and are
written in either English, French, or German ; Madame
d'Abbadie d'Arrast contributes an interesting introduction.
The purpose of the book is to emphasize the inequalities
in law which exist to-day and which are unfavourable to
women. No historical surveys are given and no attempt [is
made to measure laws against moral principles. It is for
the most part assumed that any separate treatment consti
tutes an injustice in itself. The inequalities in law are also
frankly put forward as a plea for Woman's Suffrage, while
at the same time the existence of those who may desire the
reform of laws without desiring the Suffrage is recognized.
In the foreword it is stated that the International Council
had two main objects in view,
" the one to reach the great body of women in every country and
popularize among them a study of the laws of their own country,
and an intelligent comparison of these with the laws in other
1 A description of this Council will be found in the chapter on the
International Aspect of Feminism.
2 Woman's Position in the Laws of the Nations. G. Braunsche
Hofbuchdruckerei und Verlag, Karlsruhe i. B. Price M. 2.40.
33 0

34 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
countries. The other is to provide a clear statement, suitable
for circulation in many lands, which would serve to show that
existing laws often bear adversely, and with entire injustice
upon women, and can no longer be regarded as in harmony with
that higher standard of enlightenment, that broader culture, and
stronger grasp of public duties and responsibilities, which are
characteristic features of present-day womanhood in every great
nation of the world."
2. THE NEED OF STUDY BY CATHOLICS.
Everywhere the leaders of Feminism are endeavouring
to stimulate an interest in this subject and to organize pubhc
opinion in favour of certain reforms. It is therefore of the
utmost importance that Catholic women should share this
interest, and not only acquire the legal facts but consider
them in the light of moral law. Unfortunately the state
ment that a law is " no longer in harmony with that higher
standard of enlightenment," etc., in the mouth of a modern
Feminist may mean that it is in harmony with that Christian
law which a " higher standard " has rejected. There is
another reason for the spread of information, and that is
the need of self-protection. There are some women who
have been ignorant of the existence of a law untU they came
to break it, others who have continued to suffer injustice
through ignorance of the existence of a law which might
have been invoked on their behalf.
3. A FIELD FOR RESEARCH.
The laws of this country on the whole compare favour
ably twith those of any other in the matter of justice
to women ; at the same time they appear to be the least
consistent. England has never been subjected to a complete
legal code, either Roman, or the Napoleonic code which
may be described as Roman law brought up to date. Neither
has it been subject to a Revolutionary cataclysm which
broke abruptly with the past. Laws which now caU for
reform may not have been oppressive untU they became
anachronisms. The whole subject of the past history of
Enghsh law as it related to women, and of the influence of
the Church and of Canon Law upon it, is practically an

LAWS WHICH AFFECT THE LIVES OF WOMEN 35
unworked field for which it is to be hoped a labourer will soon
be found. A cursory glance at some of the marshalled facts
of the law such as those to be' found in The Status of
Women under the English Law l (this book is, however,
mainly concerned with woman's position in public life)]
reveals how much prejudice has already been outgrown and
how much disability removed from women. Much in the
past upon which it would be extremely interesting to have
hght remains obscure, as for instance what were the causes
of the strong waves of feeling which seem to have arisen
from time to time against women continuing to enjoy
privileges they seem to have exercised. Had these feelings
a theoretic or a practical origin? In 1290 we find women
disabled from bearing witness in a question of villein or
free blood : "for the blood of a man shalt not be tried by a
woman." a Was this the result of frequent cases of perjury
committed by women ? Or did the determination to exclude
women spring from opposition to the Church's championship
of her claims ? Was there a wave of reaction on the part
of the natural man dismayed at the sight of the number of the
victories already won on woman's behalf ? The inconsisten
cies in pre-Reformation laws are eloquent of the conflict
between secular and ecclesiastical thought. In 1344 we
have the protest of the Commons against the Church's
permission for married women to make wills,3 and yet in
the following year we find that according to borough
customs4 a married woman trader can sue and be sued
apart from her husband.
Inconsistencies in law are a feature of the present no less
than of the past, but while those of the past offer fascinating
fields for exploration to the research student, those of the
present provide the average woman with grounds for
practical action.
1 The Status of Women under the English Law, by A. Beatrice
Wallis Chapman, D.Sc. (Econ.), and Mary Wallis Chapman, B.A.
George Routledge & Sons.
2 Page 14.
3 Page 16.
4 Page 16,

36 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
4. MAINTENANCE.
(a) Of Single Women.— The Poor Law of Elizabeth's
reign, which had to deal with an appaUing problem of
pauperism, laid it down (43, c. 2, 3, 6) that parents, grand
parents and children were hable for the maintenance the
one of the other : (1) if the person maintained were un
able to work ; (2) if the person maintaining were able to
afford it. The decision was to rest with the Justices in
Petty Sessions, and the obhgation to extend to lawful blood
relations only. Parents were to be bound to maintain
their children up to the age of sixteen — if they would other
wise become chargeable to the poor rate. An able-bodied girl
therefore cannot claim maintenance from her parents above
the age of sixteen.1 This law is in force to-day.
Side by side with this Poor Law are other legal enact
ments of somewhat conflicting tendency.
Thus : —
1. A girl may legaUy contract marriage at twelve years
of age.
2. She cannot under the age of twenty-one marry without
the consent of her parents. In the case of minors
the consent of parents must be obtained before a
marriage licence is granted. This is a regulation
of procedure only and failure to conform to it does
not invahdate a marriage which has been duly
solemnized.
3. In industrial and educational legislation she is con
sidered to be a child tiU she is fourteen years of
age.
4. In industrial legislation she is, between the ages of
fourteen and eighteen, described as a " young
person," and is subject to special protective pro
visions — as to health, hours of work, etc.
5. She is legally obhged to domicile with her parents tiU
she is twenty-one years of age, at which date she
attains her majority in English law.
1 This law applies to both sexes, but as the woman's case is our
present consideration, laws are only referred to in their bearing upon
it.

LAWS WHICH AFFECT THE LIVES OF WOMEN 37
6. Up to the age of sixteen her religion is determined
by her father. At sixteen she is free to choose it
for herself. But if she is under the care of the Poor
Law Guardians she is free to choose her religion as
early as twelve years of age.
7. According to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of
1885 she can legally consent to her own ruin at the
age of sixteen (this Act raised the age of consent
from thirteen), but it is a crime to remove her from
the custody of her parents against their will if she
is under the age of eighteen.
In all these we seem to see no less than six distinct
influences at work.
1. There is the influence of the old Roman Law, which
fixed the marriageable age in accordance with the early
physical maturity attained in Southern Europe, and which
gave always immense authority to the father, who could
dispose of daughters in marriage as he pleased.
2. There is the Poor Law, which was mainly concerned
with the prevention of idleness and vagrancy and the pro
blem of rendering the masses self-supporting, rather than
with restrictions on excessive labour or with the interests
of the workers themselves. This Poor Law, in accordance
with the attitude towards child Ufe which prevailed at the
time of its origin, sought to make children barely out of
infancy contribute to their own support.
3. There is modern educational legislation which is
occupied with raising the general level of education and with
promoting technical training, and which is therefore anxious
to prolong the period of childhood and to postpone as long
as possible the date at which the child can be claimed as a
wage earner.
4. Then there is the mass of industrial legislation of the
last hundred years which seeks to protect the health of the
workers from insanitary conditions, excessive hours, etc., etc.
5. There are also the industrial laws of more recent
origin which regulate wages, the relation of employer and
employed, and the action of Trades Unions, etc.
6. There are the modern reforms of criminal law, the

38 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
tendency of which is to postpone the age of moral responsi
bility to coincide not with physical maturity alone, but with
moral maturity also.
The beneficial changes which have been effected through
legislation in recent years have not come about as the
result of any ethical theory, or any conscious return to
Christian principles in social life, rather they have been
empirical in nature. Each reform, though it may have
been inspired by humane feelings, has been the result of
some observed detail of injustice which at the time it seemed
possible to deal with practically. But, unconsciously and
by a process of working backwards from experiment to
theory, modern legislation is happily approaching much
more nearly to conformity with Christian principles than
was the case fifty years ago.
Undoubtedly the age at which self-maintenance is obliga
tory remains low, and the point of interest for us hes in how
far this affects the Catholic ideal of family Ufe and the
exercise of moral control by parents.
It is a question which affects the poorer classes almost
exclusively. In the well-to-do classes the custom is to regard the
obligation of maintaining a child as extending at any rate to
the age of twenty-one, when the moral control of the parent
is supposed to cease and the father's house is no longer its
legal -domicile. This custom is practically a necessity, since
the education for professions and skilled occupations is a
protracted one and extends for several years beyond school
age. But it might happen that from passion or prejudice
a well-to-do father might drive a daughter from home, if
for instance between the age of sixteen and twenty-one she
exercised her liberty to change her religion, and in doing
so he would be legally within his rights. But if he had failed
to educate her to be self-supporting, and if when turned out
of her home she as a protest took the extreme step of going
to the workhouse, the guardians would compel the father to
provide her with suitable maintenance until she was in a
position to support herself in a way suitable to her state in
life.

LAWS WHICH AFFECT THE LIVES OF WOMEN 39
With regard to the poorer classes the case is often re
versed, it may be the wage-earning daughter who, offended
with a father, leaves the home rather than continue to con
tribute to the family budget. The working-class father is
not likely to invoke the law of domicile on his own behalf,
and the girl's independence becomes complete. In all classes
when the obligations of paternal and filial piety motived
by religion do not bind individuals and where strong affection
is absent, economic independence, in whatever manner it is
arrived at, becomes the basis for emancipation.
The wage-earning girl of sixteen who contributes a sum
covering her maintenance to the family budget, actually
fills the position of a lodger in her father's house. Con
scious of the possibility of complete independence she is not
likely to put up with irksome restrictions on her actions.
Her remedy is simple ; she leaves her father's house and
becomes a lodger in that of some one else.
It is worth noting how a modern school of writers,
anxious to spread materialistic doctrines, welcomes this
early economic independence as the basis of moral freedom
for women, as they conceive of freedom. Plays, novels
and pamphlets with literary merit and persuasive earnest
ness preach the logical right of the independent young
woman to take her natural impulses and inclinations and
her crude reasoning powers as her guides in Ufe and are never
weary of ridiculing the futile efforts of parents, who are
presented as narrow-minded and out-of-date, to retain a
moral control over their children.
The old-world conception of a father with despotic power
over sons and daughters supported by law and by public
opinion is, it is true, gone for ever, and there is no reason
to regret the fact. The conflict now lies between an exces
sive individualism on the one hand and the Christian con
ception of family life on the other. Cardinal Gasquet, in
Christian Family Life in Pre- Re formation Days,1 writes : —
" There is much, no doubt, in surroundings and circumstances,
but there is no home so humble that it may not be a school of
1 C.T.S., id.

40 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
sound, solid, practical Catholic Ufe ; there are no surroundings
and circumstances, however hard and difficult, in which the
Christian family, recognizing its obligations, cannot practise
the lesson taught by the Holy Household at Nazareth. OI
course it is religion which must bind the members of the family
together, and no ties are secure, or wiU bear the stress of hfe,
which are not strengthened by prayer and the faithful practice of
rehgious duties."
No young member of a really Christian family would think
of claiming emancipation from the moral control of parents
on the ground that she earned sufficient to pay for her share
of the food and shelter provided in the home.
The Poor Law was designed against idleness and aimed at
ensuring as early a relief as possible to overburdened parents
of the working classes.
The remedy for premature moral independence in the
young lies solely in a return to Christian faith and practice.
(b) Married Women. — A married woman is entitled to
reasonable maintenance from her husband. That is to say,
she can claim enough for the actual necessaries of Ufe
which are proper to the class to which she belongs. How
ever great the wealth of the husband, she has no further
legal claim upon it.
(c) Widows. — The maintenance of widows will be found
under "Inheritance."
5. THERE IS ANOTHER SIDE TO THE SHIELD. WHAT
IS A WOMAN'S OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE MAINTE
NANCE ?
(a) An unmarried woman is responsible for the mainten
ance of parents and grandparents, if they would otherwise be
chargeable to the poor rates and if in the opinion of the
magistrates she is able to provide it, and if there is no son
or grandson married or unmarried able to do this. She is
not in law responsible for collaterals.1 In dafly life, how
ever, we constantly find an unmarried woman supporting
sisters or a brother when charity demands it.
1 Her responsibility for illegitimate children does not come into
the scope of this manual, and will be dealt with in a second part
which it is hoped to bring out later.

LAWS WHICH AFFECT THE LIVES OF WOMEN 41
(b) A married woman is responsible for the maintenance
of her husband (and her children up to the age of sixteen)
under the same conditions, but she is not responsible for
the husband if, while being potentially a worker, he is
merely idle or vicious. A married woman also equally
with an unmarried is responsible for the maintenance of
parents and grandparents, but only from her own separate
estate, if she have one, or from her independent earnings.
(c) A widow is responsible for the maintenance of her
children untfl they are sixteen years of age.
6. INHERITANCE,
(a) Testamentary Power.— The power of bequeathing pro
perty rests with the individual owner (man or woman) abso
lutely. Neither can be obUged to leave i* to their children or
their next of kin. There is no part inalienable from the family
by law as [is the case in France where a portion is secured
to relatives. A daughter then has no legal claim on the
property of parents. Although in the vast majority of cases
parents do leave their property to their children in conform
ity with justice and natural affection, cases may and do
occur when this liberty of the individual is used to the injury
of descendants. A father, for instance, from punitive mo
tives, or acting from prejudice or passion, may leave his
property entirely away from his wife or chUdren, even if by
so doing he leaves them destitute and chargeable to the rates.
In such a case the widow would be legally bound to work
for the maintenance of the chUdren, and if she failed they
would have to be maintained, in some way direct or indirect,
by public money. Rehgious prejudice is the most frequent
cause of a punitive ahenation of money, and this ahenation
is the act of one who faUs to recognize the principle of the
spiritual freedom of the individual.
Again this complete liberty in the matter of bequest is
a logical outcome of the theory of complete ownership of
property as against that of mere trusteeship. The theory
of complete ownership has penetrated deeply into English
thought, and has in fact come to be universally accepted.
A parent is considered to be within his rights in disinheriting

42 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
a chUd who has proved himself vicious or unworthy of the
family position and tradition, nay more, to be acting in
defence of the moral law and of society in so doing. But
surely a deeper view is to see that the very moral failure
of the child constitutes a claim upon the family rather than
upon the pubhc, since the failure arises either from defective
upbringing or from some predisposition obtaining in the
family ancestry.
(b) Intestacy. The law only steps in and regulates the
succession to the property of an individual when he or she
has failed to make a valid disposition of it, or is incapable
of so doing, as in the case of a lunatic.
(c) Personal Property. The succession to the personal
estate of an intestate, including leaseholds, is regulated by
the Statute of Distributions. The law makes no distinction
of sex.
Right up to the Probate Act of 1857, the estate of an
intestate came under the jurisdiction of administrators in
the Ecclesiastical Courts. Prior to 1275 the law decreed
that one-third of an intestate's estate should be used by the
Ordinary for pious purposes, but an Act in that year required
the Ordinary to pay the debts of an intestate before devoting
the portion to pious purposes — and again in 1357 it was
enacted that the Ordinary shall appoint the next and most
lawful friend of the deceased to administer the goods.
By the Act of 1857 the jurisdiction passed to the new
Court of Probate.
Under this Act a chfldless widow takes half of a man's
estate and the rest passes to his next-of-kin, and faiUng
these (which would only fail in the case of a bastard without
issue) passes to the Crown. If there are children she
takes one-third, two-thirds being divided among the children
irrespective of sex or seniority.
By the Intestates Act of 1890 the widow takes a sum of
£500 from the estate before a division is made.
(d) Real Estate (landed property). — The succession in the
case of intestacy is governed by the Inheritance Act of 1833.
Here the male line has the preference, and it is only in
default of male issue that the female line comes in. If a

LAWS WHICH AFFECT THE LIVES OF WOMEN 43
man dies intestate, leaving landed property, his eldest son
takes the property as his heir at law, and if he also died
intestate his eldest son would succeed. The male lineal
issue of the original heir at law must be exhausted before
the younger brother of the original heir at law, or the issue
of such younger brother, inherits. This law operates only
in the case of intestacy. An heir on coming into possession
of landed property can leave it to whom he pleases by will,
and can if he choose give the preference to a daughter. The
landed property of a woman dying intestate passes to her
nearest male relative.
(e) Entailed Estates. — A word must be said on the matter
of entailed estates. The entailed estate is the creation of
an individual owner. When there are large family estates
and a title it is usual to leave the estates m strict settlement
to go with the title. The owner of such an estate, when
he marries settles it on himself for hfe, then to the eldest
son for life with remainder to the heirs of the body of such a
son. By the same settlement a jointure is provided for the
widow and portions for the younger children, and the eldest
son takes the estates saddled with these provisions. When
the eldest son of the eldest son comes of age they two can
and usually do bar the entail and re-settle in conformity
with existing family circumstances.
All this concerns the free-wiU of the individual owner.
It is not possible to do more here than briefly indicate
leading lines, for English law is complicated, intricate, and
honeycombed with exceptions.
To sum up, the law has nothing to do with the free
bestowal of property which is the right of the individual
man or woman, who may or may not exercise this right in
conformity with abstract justice. The law merely regulates
succession when the owner has made no deposition. In the
matter of personal property the law treats the sexes equaUy.
In the matter of land the law gives preference to the male
line — but it must be borne in mind that the individual owner
is perfectly free in his bestowal by will to give preference
to the female Une.

44 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
7. GUARDIANSHIP.
The strongest of all natural ties is that between mother
and child, and any inability placed on a woman as guard-
1308 Pari ian of her child is felt by her as an iniustice'
Rolls' Record The law relative to the guardianship of children,
edn. 1,278a. much as it has been impr0Ved in the latter part
of the last century, still caUs for further reform. The history
of this branch of legislation corresponds closely with the
fluctuations in women's position in social Ufe.
(a) Early rights. — In 1308 the wardship of the children
of persons holding in " socage " passed to the nearest
relative and, apparently, irrespective of sex. Thus a
mother on the father's death would become the guardian of
her children, and cases are on record in which she claimed
and obtained this position.
(b) Lost at the Reformation. — But in 1660, when
tutes 12 Ch. the " Reformation " had done its work, we find
11. u. 2 (sec. a iaw abohshing "wardship," and giving power
to the father to leave the guardianship of his
children to whom he will. The mother is not even mentioned.
1839, 2 and (c) Partially Recovered in Nineteeth Century.' —
3 Vict., c. In the nineteenth century the mother very
54' gradually begins to recover her rights. In 1839
it is enacted that if the mother petition, the judges
may, at their discretion, order that she may have access
at stated times to infants in the sole custody of the father
or persons appointed by him. The Judges also have power
to give the mother the charge of children under seven years
of age.
1873, 36 and Again in 1873 a mother (by her next friend)
37 Vict., c. may petition Court of Chancery for access to her
chUdren. The Court, if it deems fit, may allow
her custody till they reach the age of sixteen. Such an
arrangement is not to invalidate any agreement for separa
tion between the parents which may exist.
1886, 49 and A great step forward was made in 1886.
50 Vict., c. The mother, by an Act passed in that year,
has now the right of joint guardianship with any
guardian who may be appointed by the father. If the

LAWS WHICH AFFECT THE LIVES OF WOMEN 45
Court appoints a guardian the wishes of the mother as well
as those of the father are to be taken into account. More
over a mother may herself appoint a guardian on the hus
band's death or incapacity ; she may also endeavour to
safeguard the interests of her children after her death by
appointing a guardian to act with the father. But unless
the father can be proved unfitted for the sole care of his
chUdren, he cannot be compelled to accept a joint guardian
ship. The mother, on the other hand, is obliged to accept
a joint guardianship with whomsoever the father may
appoint. Thus, although the law requires a widow to
maintain her children by her own unaided exertions, it
does not yet recognize her as being capable of acting as their
sole guardian. In the past the law was doubtless intended
to be protective and was based on ike assumption — for
which there were some grounds — that a woman was unable
to cope with the situation alone, and that from her lack of
knowledge of the world and experience in affairs outside the
home, her children's interests would inevitably suffer. But
the circumstances are changed, and women are daily becom
ing more fitted for responsibility. The right to prove
fitness to be sole guardian and the power to refuse to accept
a colleague chosen without reference to her wishes, should
surely in justice be accorded to a woman.
8. RIGHT TO EARNINGS AND THE HOLDING OF PRO
PERTY.
(a) Single Women. — A single woman has complete con
trol over her earnings and her inherited property.
(6) Married Women. — The history of the married
woman's position under these heads during the last century
shows steady progress towards justice.
In 1833 a blow was struck at the widow's right
tutes 3Sand to dower, which she had previously enjoyed, by
4 wai. iv, an Act which disallowed her claim upon income
105 ' derived from land which had been either disposed
of by her husband during his lifetime or by will.
In 1837 an Act which concerned wills states
tutes 1 Vic", expressly that no new power is given to a married
c- 26- woman to make a will without her husband's
consent.

c

46 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
1857 sta- In l857 a married woman may dispose of her
tutes 20 and reversionary interests in personal estates with
21 Vic. c. 57. her husband's consent.
In 1870 the wages and earnings of married
tutes 33Sana women are declared to be at their own disposal,
34 Vict., u. as also is inherited personal property under
£200 in value and all inherited real property.
1882, 45 and An Act °f this year> OIle °f the m°St reVolution-
46 v'ict., c. ary in the whole history of legislation, repealed
75- all preceding ones and placed married women on
exactly the same footing as single ones with regard to the
ownership and disposal of property. Thus in law a married
woman is recognized at last as a morally independent
entity.1893 h6 and A married woman is to be bound as to her
57 Vict., c. separate property by all contracts she enters into
63" otherwise than as an agent to her husband.
Thus quite justly is she held accountable for her own
action as a reasonable being and cannot claim immunity
from responsibility which no longer accords with her right
to control her own property.
9. LE CONSEIL DE FAMILLE.
It is'felt by many that some equivalent of the French
" Family Council," might beneficially be established in this
country. The " Family Council " was instituted in France
in 1803 by the Code Napoleon — (a Code which is in many
respects anything but favourable to women). This Council
consists of six members, male and female, of a famUy group,
usually selected from among parents, grandparents, and
elder relatives, approved by the Juge de Paix, who presides
at its dehberations and sees that its decisions are carried out.
Such a Council can be appointed, on the apphcation of any
one concerned, to look after the interests, both moral and
material, of lunatics, semi-lunatics, degenerates and persons
morally irresponsible from whatever cause. The Council
appoints a guardian who has the immediate supervision of
the " defendeur " (the individual in whose interests the
Council has been called) . A husband is by right the guardian

LAWS WHICH AFFECT THE LIVES OF WOMEN 47
of his wife, a wife may be and often is the guardian of her
husband ; a daughter is occasionally the guardian of her
father. The individual who has applied to have any one
put under guardianship is not eligible to act as guardian
or to be a member of the Council, He or she may, however,
be present at its meetings, but without the right to exercise
a vote. No one can be placed under guardianship who has
not first been interviewed by some one deputed by the
Juge de Paix.
Such an institution as this Council would act as a check
against the exercise of despotism or any form of spoliation
of those not capable of defending themselves. It would
greatly strengthen the solidarity of the famfly, and would
effectually prevent the ruin of the fortune of an entire
family which can so easily be brought about by the mis
conduct of one irresponsible member.
10. PUBLIC RIGHTS IN MUNICIPALITY AND STATE.
We may conclude this section by a statement of the
Public Rights in Municipality and State enjoyed by women
at the present time.
(a) A single woman can vote in the following elections : —
County Council, Town Council, Urban and Rural District
Councils, Metropolitan Borough Council, Board of Guar
dians and Parish Councils. A woman votes as an occupier,
no woman votes as an owner.
(b) A married woman can vote as an occupier for the
following: — Rural and Urban District Councils, Metropolitan
Borough Councils, Parish Councils, Boards of Guardians,
and (in London only) for the County Council. She cannot
qualify as joint-occupier with her husband. No married
woman can in England and Wales vote in a Town Council
Election. (c) A woman may sit on the London County Council,
she may be elected as " Councillor or Alderman of the
Council of any County or Borough." She may be elected,
but she cannot in these capacities act as a magistrate.
She is eligible also as District and Urban Councillor and
as Guardian of the Poor.

48 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
(d) The foUowing posts are open to women : — Registrar of
Births, Deaths, and Marriages, Churchwarden, Parish Clerk,
and the lower ranks of the CivU Service.
Single women and widows axe eligible as Sanitary Inspec
tors, Factory Inspectors and Health Visitors.
(e) Professions open to Women. — Medicine, Dental Surgery,
Pharmacy, Accountancy, Architecture, Agriculture, Horti
culture, Nursing, Dramatic Profession ; the practice of the
Arts of Music, Painting, etc., etc. ; Teaching.
The profession of Law is not open to women, either as
Barrister or Solicitor. In France and Italy women are now
allowed to plead in the courts.
(/) Universities. — The Universities of the United Kingdom
give degrees to women, with the exception of Oxford and
Cambridge. These latter give no scholarships, degrees, or
fellowships to women, but they admit them to examinations.
Women hold appointments as tutors, lecturers and demon
strators, in London and provincial Universities and at the
present several professorships are held by them in Irish
Universities. Information of this nature rapidly becomes out of date.
The English Woman's Year Book, published annually by
A. and C. Black, contains a summary of laws which affect
women passed in the preceding twelve months, as also the
latest facts about women's professions, employments, etc.

CHAPTER IV
WOMAN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION
1. "No man} may with impunity outrage that human dignity
which God Himself treats with reverence, nor stand in the way of
that higher Hfe which is the preparation of the eternal Ufe of
heaven. Nay, more ; no man has in this matter power over
himself. To consent to any treatment which is calculated to
defeat the end and purpose of his being is beyond his right ;
he cannot give up his soul to servitude ; for«it is not man's own
rights which are here in question, but the rights of God, the most
sacred and inviolable of rights.
-J- 9{S 5p S|C :{c
The working man in Uke manner has property and belongings
in respect to which he should be protected ; and foremost of
aU, his soul and mind." x
Here we have a definition of that fundamental right for
which it is our duty to contend by all lawful means. It is
the voice of the Church calhng the world back to Christian
principles. We have now to consider woman's lot in industrial life
as seen in the light of the legislation of the past hundred
years, and until we come to the history of quite recent times
we shah be concerned only with that of working women.
We have seen how, since the Reformation, woman had in
this country been totaUy excluded from the fields of com
merce and industry, therefore we shall not expect to find
her in the ranks of employers of labour, or in those of the
builders of the new industries which sprang up upon the
introduction of machinery.
When women re-entered industrial life as carried on out
side the home, they came through the door of poverty, and
as members of a defenceless and easily exploited class.
1 Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII, May 15, 1891.
49 D

50 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
There is a growing literature deaUng with the history of
industrial legislation. Facts have been diligently amassed
and theories are advanced one day to be overthrown the
next, for not only do obvious evils cry for remedy, but there
is the need of finding principles upon which to base remedial
measures of a nature to commend themselves to the public
conscience. Catholics have no need to rediscover what they have
never lost. We have inherited our principles intact, our
duty is to make them widely known. We cannot in common
fairness be reproached with having only recently broken
a silence which lasted through the years of greatest stress,
because the centuries which produced a de-Christianized
economic world were also busy with the attempt to eradicate
the Catholic Faith.
[•: In our case the study of the subject is simplified because
we read history in the steady light shed from fixed principles.
Nevertheless it remains intricate and confused owing to the
mass of detail available, and we soon find ourselves in the
plight of those who cannot see the wood for the trees.
2. THE SUBJECT CONSIDERED AS A DRAMA.
But let us help ourselves by endeavouring to view the
struggle between capital and woman's labour as the in
tensely human drama it is, the final acts of which have stUl
to be played. Let us begin by ringing up the curtain upon
an empty stage and proceed to exercise our creative imagina
tions on the lines indicated by a placard fastened to the
bare back-cloth. " Imagine the thought-conditions of the
early nineteenth century." Then we wiU have each of
the actors called before us in turn, and inverting the usual
order we will begin with the weakest and most insignificant.
When we know something about them all, and when we
have formed some opinions on the sort of lives they lead,
judged by the principles with which we set out, we will call
for the drama to begin. If it has power to rivet our attention
and to touch our sympathies it wiU live in our memories
and accompanying us in whatever studies we may under
take, save us from losing our way among practical details.

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 51
3. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS
IN PUBLIC LIFE.
And now let us endeavour to recreate the thought
atmosphere of the early nineteenth century as it enveloped
the average citizen. Without this effort we shall certainly
make the mistake of judging the men and women of that
period by lights which were not then shining. It was in
fact a very dark period. Divine Science had been cast
aside as unpractical, and physical science had then hardly
started on her ijourney. All belief in the brotherhood
of man (other than in a vague and conveniently mani
pulated sense) had ceased to exist. A complete divorce
between economic law and ethical law was accepted as
inevitable. In mediaeval times the Church had fought hard
to bring the whole of life under the control of Christian
ethics, and, looking back over the period covered by this
struggle, we can see how nearly she came to accomplishing
her task.1 Her most formidable opponent was Roman
jurisprudence, which though at no time accepted in this
country as a legal code, was assiduously taught in the
Universities in the twelfth century and undoubtedly greatly
influenced not only thought generally but the legal decisions
of courts. It was the highest embodiment of human wisdom
and statecraft, it was a lucid and equitable expression of
the spirit of the world. In it was enacted the absolute
ownership of property, the right of free contracts between
employer and employed, the non-existence of an objective
standard of value, and the theory that a bargain between
buyer and vendor was a lawful pitting of wit against wit.
Opposed to this code was the Church's insistence that the
ownership of property was not absolute, but that the owner
was merely a trustee responsible to God and morally bound
to give of his surplus to the poor ; her declaration that
there was a limit to the freedom of contract between em
ployer and employed, that limit being a wage to the em
ployed which would support a human life ; her doctrine
that in the matter of a bargain each was to be guided by
1 Economic History, Vol. I, Prof. Ashley; Part I, chap, iii., Part II,
Chap. iv. Longmans & Co.

52 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
the counsel to do unto others as you would be done by, and
that to profit by the ignorance of another of the real value
of a thing offered for sale was to commit a fraud. As
economic life grew more and more complex the Church's
task of applying Christian principles would doubtless have
increased in difficulty, but could never have amounted to
the gigantic problem of re-making a society which for a long
period had been wholly given over to the task of building a
State upon the spirit of the world.
4. THE PERSONAL PIETY OF THE PERIOD.
In England during the eighteenth century this un
christian spirit worked out in a very satisfactory way for
the well-to-do, the strong and the efficient ; and very dis
astrously for the weak and the poor. But it would be a
mistake to suppose that because during this period Christian
ethics had disappeared from pubhc hfe, Christian piety
had disappeared from private life. There was a great deal
of individual piety, and hearts were touched and consciences
stirred at the sight of poverty and misery. It was generally
taken for granted that God ruled the world in some obscure
way, and there were heart-searchings to find His will —
heart-searchings which drove men back into seeing in the
words of the Psalmist, " The Heaven of Heaven is the Lord's,
but the Earth He has given to the children of men," a justi
fication for declaring that moral laws were not intended to
apply to industrial life. The idea was stiU strong that God
had some rights, but in the popular mind these were largely
compressed into a right to the homage of a grim sort of
Sabbath observance. It is rather touching to find a petition
presented by the Operative Bleachers of the west of Scot
land to their employers, in 1853,1 praying for a reduction
of the hours of labour, urging their plea on the ground that
their observance of the Sabbath suffers from excessive hours
of work on week days and renders them either unable to go
to Church at all or " listless and haggard in the House of
God." Here at least is a survival of the consciousness that
1 The History of Factory Legislation. B. L. Hutchins and A.
Harrison. P. S. King & Son, Ltd. Page"i32.

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 53
God and their souls have rights. But for the most part the
pious well-to-do are driven to convenient conceptions of the
attributes of God. He is believed to be inordinately grati
fied by " industry " in His creatures, and has so ordained life
that to cease to be incessantly industrious is to fall into vice.
His blessing and approval is seen in the success in business
of individuals and in the commercial prosperity of nations.
The successful are His elite, the poor are somehow a neces
sary part of His plan and will very likely have things made
up to them hereafter ; meanwhile man is not responsible
for them, and God Himself has said " the poor you have
always with you." Add to this comfortable acquiescence
in the Divine Plan on the part of the successful a vast
ignorance of the causes of and nature of disease and the
possible remedies produced by hygiene and sanitation, and
we have a very fair idea of the mental atmosphere in which
the drama is to be played.
5. INFLUENCE OF REVOLUTIONARY LIBERTY.
But we must not forget to add that the new doctrines
of " Liberty " let loose at the French Revolution had some
echo in this country. They stirred the proletariat with dim
thoughts of revolt and led them to sporadic action here and
there, and strengthened the well-to-do individualist in his
conception of personal freedom. The horror with which
the EngUsh Individualist had come to regard the possibility
of a State control which should touch his property or practice
was heightened by disgust at the despotism of tyrants,
engendered by the Napoleonic wars.
6. WOMAN'S POSITION.
As for the popular ideas about woman, she was in
some sort of not-to-be-too-clearly-defined way man's pro
perty. Did not the Divine plan of creation provide a help
meet for man and did not an emancipated conscience pro
claim man's absolute ownership of property and therefore
of helpmeets ?
7 CHILD ACTORS IN THE DRAMA.
' And now let us call for the youngest actors to come upon
the scene. We ourselves belong to an age which children

54 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
have completely conquered. Never before in our history has
every one been so concerned with creating a happy, healthy,
child-world, or the State so busied with the education and
the rights of the children of the working classes. And
although all this is tinged with materialism, and the child
is apt to be sacred as the future " healthy citizen " rather
than as the heir to immortality, the change is exceUent as
far as it goes. It is a crowd of strange little beings which
comes before us, composed of the children of the poorest
classes of great towns. Eyes which have been shielded
from no ugliness or degradation are strained, anxious and
dull, or preternaturally sharp and cunning. But whether
they are dull and timid or bold and defiant, they equally
lack confidence. For them life is work, uncertain work, and
they know of no other conception of it. They look forward
to working harder and harder until perhaps they have chil
dren of their own to work for them. It does not seem
strange to them if their parents are sometimes idle and live
upon the earnings of their children. It has been so
dinned into them that they should be grateful for every
crust they eat that there comes to be a httle shame
attached to the eating of that which they have not
earned. They have heard of heaven, they have seen so
many little comrades fall out of the ranks, too weary
to go on, they have seen them droop and die and
"go to heaven " which to them seems full of this tired
company. They have heard of a Father in heaven, but the
father on earth is a being who at best toUs and toils and has
a heavy hand to punish, so the news means little more than
that there is another taskmaster awaiting them when they
too fall out of the ranks. Of play, full of the joy of life,
they have no conception, and of holidays they know almost
nothing. They have perhaps been taken to see a man
hanged as a rare treat, and to an occasional fair or wake
in which brawling and drunkenness are a great feature, and
where they are the tolerated spectators of their parents'
amusements. They have no " rights," but mercifully they
are not all strangers to love. Many come from homes full
of misery and ignorance but sweetened by the strong natural

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 55
affection which hardship intensifies in some natures. It is
useless to question them, they have no views, no theories,
all is taken for granted ; they have nothing with which to
compare their hves and they are not looking for any one to
rescue them.
8. WOMEN ENTER THE SCENE.
And close on their heels come the women — their
mothers— who have done all the work for them when they
were not yet four years old and so unable to begin to do
their share. The mothers who cooked and washed and
scrubbed and made and mended and carried on at the same
time a home industry or went to the factory to work ; who
had sharp tongues, rough hands and worn-out tempers,
but who yet for the most part loved them. We see before
us a group of women who also have notning to say. They
work usuaUy because the man cannot earn enough to
keep the family, and they cannot suffer the children to
starve. They are staunch to the solidarity of the home ;
they have no notion of a " right " of their own or any case
against the husband. Hard as hfe is they accept it as part
of a universe they have not made and do not dream of re
making. They toiled themselves as far back as their
memories go, they had no rights as children, they do as they
were done by, and there is no margin of energy left from
which initiative or self-help could spring.
9. THE WORKING MEN.
Now come the men — a far more varied group — and
with them comes the first hint of an independent spirit and
gropings after constructive thought. They are ground
down but they are not beaten. They have never lost the
tradition of the power of combination and the possibility
of collective bargaining. They have heard some echoes of
the old guilds, they know something of the history of smaU
unions of craftsmen, self-governing and successful.1 They
are ready to fight out their salvation in the new industries
if they can discover how. They are alert and suspicious.
1 History of Trade Unionism, Webb. Longmans & Co.

56 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
Many are self-seeking and ambitious, only looking to climb
up into the class of employers ; others have a sense of class
loyalty and solidarity. In their homes they are the masters
and their rights are manifold, but for the most part they do
not shirk responsibiUty. They have no academic theories
about the work of women and children. AU that is decided
by the nearness of starvation. They have much that is con
fused to say of their wrongs and of the classes above them,
but the natural leaders among them lack education and help
must in the beginning come from the very class of the
oppressors. 10. EMPLOYERS AND PHILANTHROPISTS.
Now the big employers come before us and with them
comes logical argument. They have a great deal to tell us
about economic laws and about the bases of a nation's
prosperity. They explain that they are the pioneers of
industries which wiU bring unexampled wealth to all classes
in the country. They point to the smaU employer and the
owners of domestic workshops whom they are come to
supersede, as offering worse conditions of labour than they
do in the factories. They point out with truth that child
labour is general, they have not introduced it. They
demand to be free from the meddUng of the sentimentahst
and that outrage on their liberty — State interference. They
tell us that if they prosper, their work-people wiU ultimately
benefit, if they fail in the race for success their work-people
wiU starve. They are an efficient, hard-headed, energetic
race. Among their ranks are those who are only concerned
with success and who are not at aU troubled about the wel
fare of their employees, beyond the point of keeping them
at the point of bare efficiency. That some are born to toU
and fail, others to succeed, they honestly believe. They
openly oppose and despise the race of statesmen-philan
thropists who now enter and mingle with them. They
regard them as enemies to " progress." They pit their wits
against them and they become ingenious in dodging and
evading the legislation which in time is successfuUy brought
into being. But other employers are full of heart-search
ings as to their duties and responsibihties ; they welcome

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 57
the philanthropists as friends and are willing to experiment
their theories and second their efforts. They are not con
tent to wait for their own success and enrichment to react
in favour of the worker ; they are anxious that each forward
step of their own should correspond with some amehoration
for labour.
We are now acquainted with all the actors whom it is
necessary to know previous to i860. After that date the
educated woman wiU enter the scenes as the would-be
champion of the working woman, but we will wait to study
her and to consider her influence until the earher acts have
been played out.
11. POOR LAW CHILDREN.
The scenes are laid in the mills of the textile indus
tries in which the first legislative experiments were
made. But there is a prologue before the woman's drama
begins, upon which the curtain must be rung up as early
as 1802. During the latter part of the previous century
an agitation had begun over the condition of the poor-law
chUdren. A custom had grown up of apprenticing these
almost in infancy, without any guarantee as to the char
acter of the employer or any provision for watching over
the interests of the child. The parish authorities, very
careless of child Ufe in those days, were so anxious to be
rid of their responsibilities at the earliest possible date
that they even gave a bonus with the children in order to
induce employers to take them. These children were in
great demand among owners of domestic workshops and
proprietors of factories placed, for the sake of water power,
in lonely vaUeys where labour was scarce. Their misery
and their defenceless condition were so evident that no
controversy arose over a BiU introduced by Sir Robert
Peel in 1802, Umiting their hours of labour per day to
lth twelve. The BiU was hardly looked upon as
and Morals introducing a new principle of State control
of Appren- since these children were already the property
Geo8 ra! 42 of the State. But such was the dislike of State
c- 73- interference among employers that, rather than

58 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
submit to the visits of inspectors they began to employ
" free " children in place of the poor-law apprentices. In
consequence of this an agitation arose on behalf of all chU
dren employed in factories, mainly owing to the labours
of Robert Owen in whom was represented the best type
of philanthropist mill-owner. Naturally an opposition to
this move sprang into being furnished with plausible argu
ments. There were commissions, newspaper agitations,
meetings, controversies and wire-pullings. It must be
remembered, in order to understand this opposition, that
child labour in the mills was necessary to adult labour
and therefore that its restriction implied some rearrange
ment of the whole scheme of labour. Notwithstanding the
strength of the opposition, in 1819 a great step forward
was made, and the principle of State protection for the
. , , weak and helpless was established. Nine is
An Act tot"
the Reguia. fixed as the legal age at which chUdren can be
*lon °f Cot- employed, and a twelve-hour day is henceforth
Factories, to be the working day for all under sixteen
39 Geo. hi, years. Needless to say both these Acts were
c 1819. subsequently tinkered and finally repealed in
favour of more comprehensive ones.1
12. THE LABOUR OF ' FREE ' CHILDREN.
Up to 1833 the struggle rages round proposed legis
lative restrictions on the employment of children and
young persons only. In that year an Act was passed which
satisfactorily settled their case for the time being. This
. „,.„ Act fixed an eight-hour day for aU between
3 and 4 Will. , . ° . J . ..
iv, c. 103. the ages of eight and thirteen. It is very sigm-
r11 AiCtttCth ficant that during all this stormy period, when
Labour of the rights of children were under discussion,
Children and the women of the well-to-do classes are entirelv
Younj? Per-
sons in Mills silent. Between 1833 and 1869 women were
and Fac- totally excluded from even municipal Ufe. We
can well imagine that the prevailing ideas of
the period gave them little encouragement to form and
1 This remark applies to all factory legislation prior to the Factory
and Workshops Consolidation Act of 1901.

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 59
express opinions on public matters even in private life.
The fashionable chivalry of the hour was engaged in pro
tecting them from the knowledge of painful facts. And
yet at this same period Elizabeth Fry had begun her won
derful public work on behalf of prisoners, and Caroline
Chisholme her less-known but even more remarkable labours
for emigrant convicts. Was it because the father was the
legal guardian of the child, the arbiter of its religion and
its education, the custodian of its person, that he appeared
to be fittingly the avenger of its wrongs ? Anyhow we
know that Robert Owen tried to enlist the pen of Harriet
Martineau on behalf of his reforms, and failed. There is,
it is true, Mrs. Browning's poem The Cry of the Children,
which may have given expression to a widespread sensi
bility. But the poem lacks that touchy of actuality which
personal contact with the subject would have given.
13. STATE INTERVENTION SECURED.
And now, with the establishment of the principle of
State interference in the case of the children, the pro
logue comes to an end. The play proper concerns woman's
labour. Before the Act of 1833 few women had been
working in the factories, but when the restrictions on child
labour rendered the employment of children less profitable,
a demand arose for women to take their place, their labour
being the next in order of cheapness. They entered the
factories in numbers, but as individuals, unorganized and
nearly as helpless as children to fight their own battles.
14. MOVEMENT TO LIMIT WORKING-DAY FOR ALL.
Meanwhile in 1825 a movement for securing a ten-
hour day for aU factory labour had sprung up among work
ing men, who, although unenfranchised, were to some
extent organized and possessed of considerable influence.
This movement took firm hold of the working classes from
1830 onwards, but as this claim for a limitation on the
working day ran a little ahead of public opinion, the men
astutely sheltered it behind the agitation then being con
ducted on behalf of the children. The men were convinced
that the limitation of children's hours would shorten those of

60 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
the motive power of machinery, and that thus they would
themselves benefit.
15. BATTLE FOUGHT ON BEHALF OF WOMEN.
They were doomed to disappointment, and after 1833,
when futile efforts to procure a legal limitation of motive
power had been made, the men again took cover, this time
sheltering themselves behind an agitation for a restricted
day for women. Between the years 1841 and 1847 the
battle was ostensibly fought on women's behalf. How
bitter was the fight can be judged from the tenor of a
leader in The Times of March 20, 1844, commenting on the
passing of an amendment to a government Act of that
year, which secured a ten-hour day for women and young
persons by the indirect means of defining the hours (in
clusive of meals) between which they might be legally
employed as 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. It contained the following
passage :—
" It is a triumph of humanity. We have to sit stiU before
we can comprehend it. When aU is hushed, when the inward
ear begins to listen, and the inward eye to gaze steadily, then at
last it dawns and grows upon us, though we can hardly beUeve
it . . . that a few hours since . . . one legislative House of the
greatest Empire in this world resolved on the largest national
interference in favour of poverty and industry to be found in the
history of this or any other country." 1
We in our turn to-day have to sit stUl before we can
comprehend that this is not written in irony.
16. A TEN-HOUR DAY SECURED TO WOMEN.
In 1847 a ten-hour day was finaUy and
Vict., c. 29. directly secured to women and young persons.
l^1 ^th*0 ReJ°icmgs followed the passing of this Act. In
Hours of all industrial areas it was regarded as a great
Labour of victory. The men confidently counted on the
sons and limitation of woman's labour working out in
Females in practice as a limitation of their own. In this
x* 3.C tories they reckoned without the ingenuity of the
owners, who at once devised a system of " relays."
1 History of Factory Legislation, B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison.
Page 67.

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 61
17. THE RELAY SYSTEM.
By this arrangement women worked in shifts replacing one
another, and thus a long day of full work was secured to the
mill without the time limit for an individual woman being
exceeded. But so far as the women were concerned the
advantages of the Act were by this device completely nulli
fied. Although no individual woman worked longer than
the scheduled time, during the intervals of her: unemploy
ment she hung about the neighbourhood of the factory
with nothing definite to do and nowhere particular to go,
as her home was usually some distance away and the time
at her disposal too short to make it worth while to return
there. Thus, instead of wholesome recreation or home
interests being secured to her, she became too often a fre
quenter of the public house and wors*. The inspectors
did their duty and prosecuted employers for evading
the intentions of the Act, but in the north of England
the magistrates sympathized with the owners and would
not convict. The owners appealed to the Home Secretary
who compromised by recommending the inspectors not to
lay information. The inspectors showed great spirit, de
clared that the Home Secretary had no power to suspend
the law, and continued to prosecute. Those employers who
obeyed the intention of the law, and happily there were some,
complained bitterly of the competition of those who did not,
and the state of things for the first few years after the passing
of the Act of 1847 was chaotic. But in 1850 a Bill was passed
which fixed the hours of labour for protected persons from
6 a.m. to 6 p.m., or from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., including one
and a half hours for meals.
18. THE RELAY SYSTEM APPLIED TO CHILDREN.
This should have been a death-blow to the possibility
of a fifteen-hour day with its relay system, and there
fore an immense gain for all, although it fixed a ten-
and-a-half instead of a ten-hour day. But a way of
evasion still lay open to the owner, and it was probably
intended that it should. This Act referred to women and
young persons only, it ignored children whose labour

62 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
therefore continued to be regulated by the previous Act
of 1844 which although limiting the total hours of em
ployment for an individual child laid it down that they could
be employed any time between 5.30 a.m. and 8.30 p.m. They
were intentionally left out of the 1850 Act because their
labour was necessary to that of adult men, and by continuing
to arrange for work in shifts and by substituting children for
women, it would be still possible to keep the mills going four
teen or fifteen hours. From this moment men decided to
fight their own battle openly and demanded a ten-hour day
for themselves and the restriction of the motive power of
machinery. 19. TEN-HOURS DAY FOR ALL SECURED.
The time was not yet ripe for such a conception
of their rights, but in 1853 Lord Palmerston brought
in a Bill which defined the children's day as between 6 a.m.
and 6 p.m. or 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. (and left the limit of their
employment per day as six and a half hours or ten on
alternate days, to which it had recently been restricted).
With the passing of this Act a ten-hour day was at last
secured for men without any admission of the principle
of State intervention on their behalf.
20. THOUGHT CHANGES FOLLOWING 1847.
During the twenty years which followed 1847 no Factory
Act of first-class importance was passed with the exception of
the modifying Acts of 1850 and 1853. But though legislation
was practically stationary thought was moving on. Hither
to legislation had been inspired by benevolence and aimed
at protecting the interests of weak and helpless classes.
But working-men were becoming more extensively organ
ized and were thinking for themselves and, gradually, com
bined discussion and collective bargaining between labour
and capital, joint and more or less friendly endeavours to
find equitable solutions to problems, took the place of
the older philanthropic atmosphere. Women too, in those
industries in which their labour was protected, had bene-

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 63
fited by improved conditions and were becoming increas
ingly capable of forming opinions of their own and of
realizing the power of association.
21. EDUCATED WOMEN INTERVENE.
And now it is that we must pause and have before
us the last actors, those who have come to play so large
a part in the still-unfinished arena — the educated women.
They enter the industrial arena in the seventies as an
indirect political influence. As we see them before us
the dust of battle is upon them and its wounds are upon
the spirits of some of their number. Women have already
founded colleges and promoted the opening of schools,
thus by their own efforts and insistence winning back a
right of which they had been deprived. They have re
covered the right to exercise a Municipal Vote (1869),
and obtained that of sitting on School Boards (1870).
They are about to be admitted as inspectors of workhouses
(1874), and as poor law guardians (1875) ; and, moreover
the married among them had obtained the control of their
own wages and earnings (1869). They have been one
and all promoters of the movement for what were then
called comprehensively " Women's Rights." They are
naturally imbued with the individuahstic and liberal doc
trines of Liberty of their great champion, John Stuart
Mill. Many of them are animated by a spirit of grievance
against man, and they have some cause. They have
clamoured for an outlet for their energies and powers and
for a fuller and freer life — and for long in vain. The men
of the middle classes, to which most of them belonged,
were with few exceptions intensely conservative where
their women were concerned, and excessively jealous of
any infringement on their monopoly of professional and
commercial life.
In the middle classes women are but rarely owners
of property, real or personal, as are the women of the
highest class. In cases in which they were, no advan
tage accrued to married women before the passing of
the Married Women's Property Act of 1882. In these

64 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
classes men were in the early half of the last century
practically the sole creators of wealth and its sole
administrators. Their sense of social distinctions was
great, and their thoughts concerning the women of their
class were enclosed in a water-tight compartment. They
took a real pride in the undeveloped and dependent con
dition of their women, as one which raised them clean
above the classes below them. Thus the middle class
woman in her struggle for improved conditions had to
fight against a false philosophy about her position which
was pecuhar to her class. Those whose studies go back to the
earlier days of the woman's rights claims and who recall the
bitterness of the struggle will have little difficulty in under
standing how a note of " sex-antagonism " introduced
itself into the movement.
22. THEIR CHAMPIONSHIP BASED ON A FALLACY.
These educated women then come into the drama full of a
sense of sex solidarity and eager to be the champions of
their oppressed sisters in all classes. But their long exclu
sion from pubhc life was a heavy handicap on their judg
ment, and their doctrinaire theories of liberty were no
substitute for first-hand knowledge of the lives and thoughts
of working women. They imagined a simUar state of
things to exist in the labouring classes as that which per
tained to their own. They were convinced that working
men were anxious to drive women from the labour market,
and in the light of this belief they read the history of factory
legislation. But no such antagonism existed. The conditions were
totally different. No one questioned the working-class
woman's right to work, only a few had questioned her right
to over-work. She was not the victim of oppressive re
strictions but of exploitation. But these educated cham
pions of the working woman, hypersensitized to injustice
by their own experience, restricted in outlook by their
lack of knowledge, saw only in the inclusion of " women "
together with young persons and children in the Factory
Acts an infraction of their liberty. They argued that

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 65
they should be treated as the equals of man and therefore
be considered capable of deciding for themselves how
long they should labour.1 They seem to have beUeved
that the men's Unions had used their influence to' obtain
shorter hours for women from motives of jealousy in order
to render their competition harmless, and that they hoped
to deprive them of the right to work and therefore to enslave
them. It was further argued that it was unjust to legis
late away the hberty of an unenfranchised class. All very
plausible, but as we know now the facts were against them.
Men had fought not to exclude women but to secure with
them a common advantage.

23. THE EXTENT OF THEIR INFLUENCE.
This Women's Rights party worked through its
spokesmen in Parliament and by means of its influence
over women's unions, and worked unceasingly in order to
extricate the adult of their sex from being associated in
legislation with young persons and children.
In those industries to which the Factory Acts had been
applied for the preceding thirty or forty years the posi
tion of women had become immeasurably better than in
those where " freedom " stiU pertained. The women were
healthier and happier, they were organized, and had deve
loped opinions of their own strongly in favour of the Factory
Acts. Happily the Women's Rights agitation working,
though unconsciously, in a retrograde sense, was powerless
to affect the big industries. These champions of theoretic
rights fought vahant rearguard actions, but, as facts came
to hght and knowledge increased, one argument after
another had to be abandoned and one intellectual position
after another left intact, but there was always a stand to
be made on the case of the liberty of the individual versus
State intervention. At last some undefended ground was
found which they could occupy.
1 A similar position was taken up by Feminists in France some
twenty years later, doubtless inspired by English women, see Initia
tives FSminines, chap, iv., Max Turmann. E

66 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
24. THEIR SUCCESS A DISASTER TO THE SWEATED
WORKER.
It had been discovered that the conditions of work
for the home worker were even worse than those which
had once obtained in factories and workshops. A proposal
to bring the woman worker in domestic workshops under
the protection of legislation was brought forward (1874)
in connexion with a Bill then under discussion. It was
a moment when an effective deathblow could have been
struck at sweated industries. The home-workers were
weak, scattered, ignorant, without leisure to think or the
spirit to struggle. The middle-class women at last scored
a victory for their theories by securing the exclusion of
home workers from the Bill. Thus, all unwittingly were
the wrongs of one class avenged at the expense of another,
and thus triumphed a false conception of liberty. Such a
triumph can only be temporary for in the long run facts
prevail against theories from which they are divorced.
But the confusion which has been introduced into the
problems of woman's labour is not yet at an end. It did
not dawn upon these reformers that God had rights which
were threatened by excessive hours of toil. They could
not see that to respect these was also to secure the rights
of the individual.
Having now followed the history of industrial legislation
to a point which illustrates the principle that woman's
inalienable right to independence of personality and the
free exercise of her spiritual faculties is the basis of her
claim to justice in all spheres, we can leave the subject
and consider some modern feminist tenets.
25. THE NEED OF CLEAR DEFINITIONS.
The volume of influence exercised by educated women
has grown and is to-day enormous and inspired by excellent
intentions, but the Cathohc who wishes to join hands with
their endeavours is embarrassed by the absence of any
clear definition of moral principles with which to agree or
from which to dissent. Again where workers, though
professedly Christian, are quite untrained in an ethical

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 67
code, it seems inevitable that their very eagerness in the
search for truth should lead to an utter confusion of mind
as to what constitutes a commandment and what a counsel
of perfection.
In the matter of principles the non-catholic worker
seems all the while to be standing upon shifting sand.
And again in the detailed application of an Act based upon
a principle which is sound, Cathohcs are constantly con
fronted with attempts to introduce irrelevant propaganda
into the work. For in fact, " liberty " has to-day come
to be understood as freedom to act according to inchna-
tion, and " freedom of thought " to embrace any attrac
tive theory which commends itself at the moment. When
reform coincides with moral law it is found to work and
to promote real liberty ; when it is not in accordance it
does not work even on a material plane. For instance
when the struggle for " woman's rights " dealt only with
her relationship to man and not also with the relationship
of both to God, it expended itself over a false theory of
Uberty. And the difference of these two attitudes, the
one which includes a divinely instituted law and the one
which does not, is the vital difference which separates social
workers.
26. SOME MODERN VIEWS ON THE PROBLEM OF MAR
RIED WOMEN'S WORK.
We can iUustrate this by examining the confusion
of thought manifested in the controversy over the work
of married women. There are those who regard the
subject only from the point of view of the State and the
need for securing " healthy citizens " (a hard-worked term
just now) and who would further any legislation tending
to secure these. There are again those who hold that
the women themselves should decide the extent of their
labour, each one for herself, and that to deprive her of the
right of choice is an infringement of her Uberty and an
attack on her dignity. These argue, that quite apart from
the necessity which drives married women to supplement
the insufficient earnings of their husbands and deprives

68 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
them of any freedom of choice, Ues a question of principle.
It is urged that there is a type of women, to be found in
aU classes, which has no taste for domestic work and ctrild-
rearing, which is gifted in other ways but which is yet
capable of producing healthy chUdren. Women of this
type in the upper classes, it is contended, foUow their incli
nation and hire " skUled experts " (another very favourite
phrase) to supply their place in the home without incur
ring censure by so doing. Why, it is asked, should we
deny to working-class women a liberty of choice accorded
to the weU-to-do ? Champions of this supposed " right "
dream of a day when science and a communal spirit shaU
have practically emptied the home of labour and indeed
of famUy-life itself by the supply of communal kitchens,
washhouses, etc., etc. These views wiU be found in a
Uttle book just pubUshed1 which embodies the Report
of an inquiry into the subject undertaken by the Women's
Industrial CouncU. IncidentaUy, we find that one or two
of the investigators employed on this work used the oppor
tunity for canvassing the opinion of the women on the
subject of increased facihties for divorce. And indeed,
in those who hold that moral laws are determined by the
baUot, such supplementary zeal is easUy understood.
27. THE CATHOLIC ATTITUDE.
How are we Cathohcs to view the question of married
women's work in the light of our principles ? To begin
with, these principles define the area of woman's Uberty.
She is free to choose between married and single Ufe, but
if she chooses married hfe she is not free to play fast and
loose with its duties and obligations. The farruly is a
divinely instituted society, and it is instituted for the rear
ing of children who should be not only " healthy citizens "
of this world, but heirs to immortality. For the perfect
fulfilment of this task the care and devotion of both parents
is necessary and during the infancy of chUdren the constant
supervision of the mother is needful.
1 Married Women's Work, Bell & Sons. Edited by Clementina
Black.

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 69
28. INFANT WELFARE.
Here we may pause to consider a modern movement
closely bearing on this subject. It originated in France,
latterly so exercised in mind over her faUen birth rate, but
took root with us in 1907 and has since then rapidly deve
loped. It may be comprehensively described as the move
ment for infant welfare, and its primary object the pre
servation of infant Ufe. It includes such developments
as " Schools for Mothers," " Baby Clubs," " Infant Con
sultations," milk depots, cheap or free dinners for expectant
and nursing mothers, health visitors, etc.
On the passing of the Notification of Births Act of 1907
many local authorities appointed health visitors whose
duty it was to visit the mothers of the newly born and by
advice and instruction tactfully given, enlighten any ignor
ance as to infant nurture which they might find. In 1908
the London County CouncU legalized these appointments,
subject to regulations to be made by the Local Government
Board, and in 1911 these appointments were legalized in
the Provinces. At the same time the experiment of " Schools
for Mothers " was made in several centres. Attached to
these " schools," which were established in some suitable
room either in connection with another work or independ
ently, were for the most part a medical officer and a superin
tendent (usually a trained nurse). The mothers of the
district were invited to bring their babies at regular and
stated times, that they might be examined, weighed, and any
mistakes in their nurture or clothing detected and rectified.
The carrying out of the instructions given was to be super
vised by the Health Visitor to the Home. There are now
in this country over 200 of such centres, varying in detail,
but alike in general aim and character. It became apparent
to those thus brought in closer contact with the maternity
problems in poor districts that if infant life was to have a
fair chance, many of the mothers must be better fed, and
that pure milk must be brought within the reach of the
poor. Hence cheap or free dinners to expectant and
nursing mothers and municipal milk supplies were insti
tuted. The movement received an impetus in 1911 by

70 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
the founding of the National League for Physical Education,
which enthusiastically set to work to promote adequate
milk suppUes, etc. There is every reason for Catholic
co-operation with this movement, subject to that watch
fulness with which we can never dispense. Over and above
the preservation of hfe and the raising of the standard of
health, the movement tends to keep the mother in the
home and thus to preserve family Ufe. By providing
necessitous cases with nourishing food for three months
before and nine after the birth of a child, the mother is not
driven to the factory or the workshop, and the child is
breast fed.
29. SOME DANGERS.
But there is a danger against which Catholics — and
indeed aU moral people — are obliged to guard, and one
which very weU illustrates the difficulties often encountered
by Cathohc workers. Enthusiasts for physical culture
are often enthusiasts for new morahties. Health visitors
and consultants can easily introduce their personal convic
tions, such as the expediency of artificiaUy limiting a
famUy, with other advice, and when in contact with weakly
or very poor parents may be strongly prompted to do so
from feehngs of pity. Where possible Cathohcs should
estabhsh their own Welcomes (the Cathohc Women's
League has already opened several x), and where this is not
possible should see that their own Health Visitors are
attached to other " Welcomes " for the purpose of visiting
Cathohc homes. A Catholic " Welcome " is also a means
of combining physical with moral instruction, and of help
ing the mother not only to rear the child's body, but to
train its soul.
The question of the work of married women, when
the children no longer need their care in the home, is in
another category, and it is no infringement of Cathohc
principle if a mother chooses to work in order to provide
a better education for her growing sons and daughters.
Her primary duties have been already fulfilled. The feehngs
1 In Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, Leeds, etc.

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 71
of married working women generally appear to be sound
enough. The mother instinct is strong in them, in the
great majority of cases they deplore the necessity to work
outside the home. This very recent book upon the question
is evidence, if any were needed, that educated women
workers are still endeavouring to indoctrinate the prole
tariat with their cherished conception of liberty. Against
this nothing effective can be done but to endeavour to
convert them to the true doctrine.
It is true that from necessity the best of Christian mothers
may be obhged to leave her young children in the creche or
with a neighbour and go out to work. But this necessity is
born of evils which it should be the aim of reformers to
remove, and it is no more than accidental. While the evil of
insufficient wages remains, it is only right to work for the
mitigation of its effects on the married woman worker ;
but this must be done without losing sight of the need to
remove the evil itself.
30. EQUALITY VERSUS IDENTITY OF TREATMENT.
There is danger that the fallacy of identity of treat
ment may come to be accepted by democracy to a point
which is harmful to women's interests, and may find expres
sion in legislation. For instance, there is a growing tendency
to assume that able-bodied men and (unmarried) women
between specified ages are all equally capable of being
wage-earners. This surely is only true, if at all, in the
class strictly caUed " working." That is to say, the class
from which the state removes the most burdens from the
individual and in which the family group is reckoned as
consisting of parents and young children only, the exi
gencies of bread-winning precluding any other. But when
we consider the classes which form a graduated scale from
the labouring class up to that which enjoys enough in
herited property to exempt its women from the task of
self-support, the facts are not in accord with theories of
equahty. Unmarried women are not all equaUy with
men potential wage earners. The aged and the sick of
the extended family group fall to their care in the home.

72 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
Often the women devoted to this service wiU either inherit
nothing or the slenderest of portions, and wiU very Ukely
only be relieved of their duties at a comparatively advanced
age. Such a woman between the ages of 50 and 70 can
hardly be counted a skilled wage earner. It is difficult
to see how the need of such service in the home will
diminish, and we know that it is exclusively woman's
service. Quite often, too, a woman already embarked on
a self-supporting career is obliged to abandon it for some
years in order to undertake the personal care of aged parents,
and is not again able to take it up under advantageous
circumstances. Such work is, of course, necessary to
society, and is in accordance with natural affection and
Christian charity, but equally of course, it is unremunerated.
Now, if women claim equal justice as distinct from identity
of treatment, there are occasions when this can only be
arrived at by dealing with their case separately. For
instance, special treatment might have been accorded to
women circumstanced as we have described when it was
a question of increasing the death duties on inherited
property.
31. NEED OF DEFINING FIRST PRINCIPLES.
Unfortunately social workers of different schools of
Christian thought are driven to trying to work together
on the practical plane alone, because each is sUent about
the principles which lie beneath, about which they may
be very tenacious but of which they do not speak from
motives of tact, and for fear that even a superficial union
might cease to exist if they did. This state of things is
very unreal, and is a source of weakness to Christian society.
There is a real need of definite discussion of first principles.
When such discussions take place, it is not too much to
hope that a large number of women belonging to the various
rehgious bodies in this country will reconsider some of
the alliances they have formed for the sake of a theoretic
Feminism, and the concessions of Christian principles
which they have made for lack of a sound ethical grounding.
It is perhaps natural that those who hold that private

WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION 73
judgment and individual conscience are the supreme arbiters
of truth should dread argument as the sure occasion of
perpetual quarrels. But to cultivate a merely superficial
harmony is not the way to arrive at truth. If discussion
is desirable, it is no less desirable that it should be based
upon such accurate information as will remove misunder
standings. Therefore the most valuable contribution which
we Catholic women can make to the woman question is
to endeavour to make known the principles upon which
we base our Feminism.

CHAPTER V
INTERNATIONALIZED FEMINISM
(Revolutionary and Christian)
So long as Feminism confined its action within national
boundaries, it did not always stand out clearly in the
eyes of a superficial observer as a definite movement,
or at any rate as a movement which involved a definite
philosophy. Its claims were sometimes closely interwoven
with demands for more general reforms, it was often forced
to be opportunist in tactics and alhed with, or opposed
to, a particular political party. But as soon as Feminism
became internationalized and common ground for world
wide action was sought for, it became more clearly separated
as a movement, and we now cannot faU to recognize that
there are two distinct kinds of Feminism, the one based
upon Christianity, the other upon revolt against revealed
religion. 1. THE ROOT OF FEMINISM.
It is true, as Max Turmann points out in his Initi
atives Flminines,1 that Christian inspiration Ues at the
root of all Feminism, that it has only sprung up spontane
ously in those civilizations which have been built upon
Christianity, and that its legitimate aspirations are a con
sistent growth from the original seed of woman's moral
and spiritual equality. But if the original seed from which
all Feminism springs is of Christian origin, it cannot be too
strongly insisted on that it has often germinated and
developed in a poisoned soil.
The legitimate claims of the movement have been weU
defined by M. l'abb£ Naudet in Pour la Femme as constitut-
1 Initiatives Fiminims, by Max Turmann, page 4. Victor Lecoffre.
74

INTERNATIONALIZED FEMINISM

75

ing a demand for certain rights which are ignored by law,
and for an equitable social position which is refused bv
society.
2. WHY IT DEVELOPED OUTSIDE THEjCHURCH'S INFLU
ENCE.
It may naturally be asked, why, if Feminism is a
Christian growth, has it developed first and so vigorously
outside the direct influence of the Catholic Church, and
why did an organized Catholic Feminism only spring into
existence when it became of urgent necessity to counteract
the anti-Christian and demorahzing elements at work
in the revolutionary section of the movement? Can we
not find some explanation in the foUowing considerations ?
The Catholic women of any country, even if for one reason
or another they have been poorly educated or have been
living under irksome social restrictions, have never been
deprived of an essential moral liberty, and have therefore
never had occasion to experience that soul-suffering, which is
more intolerable than any suffering of a more superficial
nature, and which infallibly in the long run drives those who
experience it to seek for a remedy. Again, if we separate
practical action from theoretic Feminism, we shall find that
Catholic women have always been engaged in energetic
and sustained social work, both as members of the great
religious orders and as lay women. Finally, we may find
reasons why the social work of Catholics may not always
have kept pace with increasing scientific knowledge (al
though in soul-knowledge or psychology it has always led
the way), in the modern anti-Christian persecutions in
certain countries, and in the capture of the Universities
by a secularist spirit. For this reason Catholic women
have long been debarred from frequenting them, and have
almost of necessity led a somewhat segregated life while
cultivating a spirit of loyalty to the past.
3. PROGRESS IN THE ABSENCE OF THEORETIC FEMIN
ISM.
But in illustration of the undoubted fact that in despite of
the absence of theoretic Feminism in a Christian country, its

76 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
women may yet in some respects hold there a better position
than in one where it is highly developed, take the case of
Belgium. There, where the Code Napoleon is in force (a
code which gives to women a very inferior position to that
which they now hold in English law) and where revolu
tionary Feminism has obtained only a slight hold, there
was to be found before the tragedy of 1914 a far more
developed training for women in agriculture, in domestic
science and for technical employments than is yet arrived
at in this country. The great Agricultural CoUege at
Hevele, near Louvain, directed by a religious order of
women, and State-aided, is probably the best of its kind
in existence. And so developed was women's share in the
agriculture of the country that already in 1909 a second
great Congress of Women Farmers was held in Namur, at
which forty-one associations were represented and nearly
600 delegates were present.

4. THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN.
But to return to the International side of the move
ment, it is not surprising to find that the initiative came
from the women of the English-speaking races. Among
these, Feminism had permeated most widely as part of the
national life and had not been at that date characterized
by extravagance or violence. English women have a
capacity for and love of organization, and as members of
an Empire comprising races in various stages of develop
ment, have a share in that attitude of mind which conceives
itself as under a moral obligation to diffuse a civilizing
influence. With these ideas American women were in
close sympathy. Accordingly in 1888, a meeting of dele
gates from various Feminist societies was convened at
Washington, and the International Council of Women was
brought into existence under the presidency of Mrs. Faw-
cett. Five years later, in 1903, its first Congress was held
in Chicago, and from that date Congresses have been held
every five years and the movement has spread rapidly.
At the present time the National Councils of twenty-two

INTERNATIONALIZED FEMINISM 77
countries are affiliated in the International Council.1 Of
these sixteen represent European countries, the National
Council of Republican Portugal being the latest addition
(1914), and the remainder represent North and South
America and the English-speaking colonies.
5. ITS AIMS.
In the preamble to the Constitution of the Council we
read : —
" We women of aU nations, sincerely beheving that the best
good of humanity wiU be advanced by greater unity of thought,
sympathy and purpose, and that an organized movement of
women wiU best conserve the highest good of the family and of
the State, do hereby band ourselves in a confederation of workers
to further the application of the Golden R^ile to society, custom,
and law, ' Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.' "
No hint is given as to how unity of thought is to be
arrived at or upon what it is to be based. Apparently, the
dream was that the enthusiasm of all and the labours of
aU were to form a common fund for the use of all.2 Un
doubtedly an increased energy would be generated and a
1 In England the National Union of Women Workers is affiliated
with the International Council of Women and probably represents the
most Christian element in it. The present corresponding secretary
of the Council, 1915, is Dr. Phil Alice Salomon, Neue Ausbacher-
strasse 7, Berlin W. 50.
* The objects of the Council are further stated in the Constitution

(a) To provide a means of communication between women's
organizations in all countries.
(b) To provide opportunities for women to meet together from
all parts of the world to confer upon questions relating to the welfare
of the commonwealth, the family, and the individual.
Some difficulties were evidently foreseen as likely to arise from
the divergent opinions represented, for under General Policy we read :
" This International Council is organized in the interests of no one
propaganda, and has no power over its members beyond that of
suggestion and sympathy ; therefore no National Council voting to
becSme a member of the International Council shall render itself
liable to be interfered with in respect to its complete organic unity,
independence, or methods of work, or shaU be committed to any
principle or method of any International Council beyond compliance
with the terms of this Constitution.

78 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
good deal of practical knowledge diffused by means of these
representative gatherings. Moreover, they would in them
selves constitute an object lesson on the intellectual develop
ment of women which has been arrived at by means of
higher education, on their earnestness and on their power
of organization. In fact, the whole thing would work
excellently if there were no such thing as underlying prin
ciples, and if a state of enthusiasih could be maintained
without its being in any way based upon convictions.
6. CO-OPERATION ON AN UNDENOMINATIONAL BASIS.
The mental attitude defined upon paper as " undenomina
tional " has no existence in the human mind; the nearest
approach to it is indifference. Below all sustained enthu
siasms lie strong convictions.
It is true that in this country we have arrived at
some success in holding " undenominational " assemblies
by temporarily separating the practical aspects of subjects
from their basic philosophies, and by practising a courteous
restraint when it is necessary to refer to the rehgious behefs
of other bodies, but this ideal is only arrived at when there
are some fundamental behefs which are held in common
by aU the parties represented. When violent sectarianism
is present (and the anti-religious spirit is both sectarian
and violent) the practice of tactful accommodation, in
order to achieve results on the practical plane, becomes an
impossibUity. In any mixed assembly the energetic mem
bers of a particular school of thought, profiting by the
timidity or want of acumen in others, easily gain an ascend
ency and soon attempt to dominate the whole meeting.
Before long such an " undenominational " gathering cannot
fail to appear what it really is, a gathering of exceedingly
denominational persons, all striving under an appearance
of fair play to further the causes which they have at heart.
Of such " undenominational " material is the International
Council of Women composed. It is necessary to bear in
mind that the Anglo-Saxon conception of " undenomi
national " courtesy is too frequently replaced, on the
Continent, by the ideal of a free assembly in which any

INTERNATIONALIZED FEMINISM 79
one may assail the most cherished beUefs of another because
that other has the right of retaliation. In order to under
stand that some of the debates of the Council have already
borne testimony to the presence of mutually destructive
creeds, let us examine the character of three of the
constituent nation CouncUs.
7. FRANCE.
(a) Revolutionary Feminism. In France, Feminism was
born of the Revolution, and in its earhest phases was anti-
Christian and had a full share of the extravagances and
eccentricities which usuaUy characterize the beginning
of a ferment of new ideas. At first the movement consisted
largely of leaders without a following, but from 1848 on
wards Feminism gained some hold upon the more liberal
sections of the public, and numerous small intellectual
Feminist coteries sprang up. In 1870 a society and " As
sociation pour 1' Emancipation progressive des femmes "
was founded — which was quickly followed by others.
During the twenty years following 1874, MdUe Maria
Deraisme, who was in close sympathy with the Republican
Opportunist party, figured as the principal leader of Revolu
tionary Feminism. Gradually various societies closely
corresponding to contemporary political groups were
organized, among which that of L'Avant Courriere was the
most moderate and conservative in character.1 But the
group which claimed most public attention and whose
fame spread to other countries was that of La Fronde, which
was violently anti-religious in character and was possessed
of a daily organ bearing that name — this fact will show
how numerous the adherents of this school had become.
The spread of a sane and moderate Feminism in France
was retarded by the scandal too frequently given by the
women constituting this wing of the movement.
(b) Christian Feminism. In 1896, Mdlle Maugeret, the
first French woman to conceive of a broad Feminist move-
1 Several modifications of injustices in laws relating to women
have been secured by the women's societies which were closely
alhed to the governing party in France.

80 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
ment based upon a sohd Christian foundation, started a
monthly magazine, Le Feminisme Chretien, which, equally
with its flourishing antagonist La Fronde, was entirely
printed by women. In its pages Mdlle Maugeret, undis
mayed by the difficulty of her task, set to work to separate
the gold from the dross of the Feminist movement, and to
urge a similar Catholic movement as an urgent need for the
preservation of Christian society. She did ample justice
to the ability and sincerity of those who were her opponents
in the moral sphere, and was deeply impressed by the great
power for good or evU which a higher education had placed
in the hands of women. In 1900, she founded the Federa
tion Jeanne d' Arc, an affiliation of existing Catholic Women's
Societies, which held its first Congress in that year and was
presided over by the Archbishop of Paris and largely
attended by members of the French hierarchy. At this
Congress Mdlle Maugeret, by her earnestness and eloquence,
succeeded in converting her audience to her views, and
from that day a widespread Catholic Feminist Movement
may be said to have dated. In 1900 was also founded
by Madame Chenu L' Action Sociale de la Femme, directly
educative in aim and concerned with the promotion of
sound thinking on industrial and social questions. In
1901, La Ligue des Femmes Francaises was started, with
the aim of attaining national proportions, but in 1902
there separated from this League under the title of La
Ligue patriotique des Femmes Francaises 1 those members
who were convinced that more modern weapons than
those which found general acceptance among the "Femmes
Francaises," must be used in the struggle against moral
anarchy which lay before Catholic Feminists. The mem
bers of the new Ligue patriotique des Francaises, with
immense energy, undertook public speaking, canvassing
at elections in the interests of Rehgion, and a whole host
of activities directed to the creation of an army of women
able in the defence of the Faith in which alone a permanent
1 Ligue Patriotique des Francaises, 368 Rue St. Honore, Paris.
This League grew so rapidly that in a few years it had spread over
the greater part of France and numbered over 500,000 members.

INTERNATIONALIZED FEMINISM 81
progressive Feminism could be rooted. It was precisely
in the year 1900 that the Revolutionary groups of Feminists,
which for years had been in touch with the movement in
other countries, formed a National Council and joined the
International Council of Women.
8. GERMANY.
(a) The Feminist Movement in Germany first developed
among Protestant women of liberal tendencies, led by the
more revolutionary spirits among them. In 1897 German
women Feminists formed a national society and affiliated
to the International Council. As early as 1885 Woman in
the Past, Present and Future,1 by the Socialist leader Bebel,
first appeared, since when up to the present time numerous
editions have been issued which corresponded with the
development of the author's ideas. This book is anti-
Christian, unscholarly, unscientific and totally lacking in
refinement, but it is vigorously written and calculated to
appeal to the half-educated and those not equipped for a
detection of the errors and faUacies with which it bristles.
It undoubtedly both directly and indirectly contributed
to the spread of revolutionary Feminism,
(&) As a consequence of this propaganda, a forcible
Catholic literature upon the subject of Feminism began to
develop, and the first edition of Der Frauenfrage, by P.
Augustine Rosier, C.S.S.R., appeared in 1895 — the en
larged edition of which (1907) remains the standard
authority on the world-wide development of the movement.
Catholic women also began to organize. In 1895, the
great Catholic Teachers' Association, the Lehrerinenverein,
had been founded by a woman. German Universities are
inter denominational (as distinct from undenominational),
and from the year 1898, members of Religious Orders
of Women followed University courses. In 1902, the
1 An English translation of an early edition constitutes Vol. I of
the International Library of Social Science, and circulates among
various Socialist and Feminist groups in this country. For a
thorough refutation of its contents see Bebel' s " Woman in the Past,
Present and Future," by Rev. W. McMahon, S.J., Catholic Truth
Society, 69 Southwark Bridge Road, London, id.

82 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
Charitasverband (an association of Women's societies)
published a monthly magazine Die Christliche Frau, and
in 1903, the Lehrerinenverein issued another monthly
organ Mddchenbildung.
But ~ the year 1904 was the . momentous one in Ger
man Feminism, for it was then that the third Congress of
the International Council was held in Berlin, and caused
a sensation equally by the abiUty and energy displayed on
the intellectual plane and the confusion on that of ethics.
True to its dream of undenominational union the Council
endeavoured to secure the sympathy of Catholics, and
many attended the meetings of this Congress. The painful
impression made upon them and upon the Cathohc body
generally was deep enough to inspire immediate action,
and in the autumn of the same year the Cathohc Frauen-
bund was called into existence at the direct instigation of
the Catholic hierarchy.
It is noteworthy that whUe in France women took the
initiative in promoting a Christian Feminism, and obtained
the concurrence of the Bishops in the movement, in Germany
it was the Bishops who urged upon women the need of.
national organization.
9. ITALY.
In Italy the history of the growth of the two camps
of Feminism has followed more closely on the lines of those
of France, except that Itahan CathoUcs had never quite
lost the old tradition of University education for women ;
and even after the secularizing of the Universities a certain
number of practising CathoUcs continued to attend them
side by side with women of liberal tendencies. Various
local Feminist societies came into existence in the latter
part of the last century, more frequently among women of
free-thinking and Socialist tendencies, but some definitely
Catholic groups were also formed. In 1900 a Catholic
Feminist organ appeared, L'Azione Muliebre ; but for
some years the antagonistic tendencies latent in the whole
movement were not very clearly accentuated in Italy. In
1901 the Liberal element formed a National Council of

INTERNATIONALIZED FEMINISM 83
wonien and joined the International group— a step which
led to a great development of feminine energy.
The fateful year of demarcation was that of 1908, when the
Italian National Council of women held a Congress in Rome.
Numbers of CathoUcs followed the proceedings, which were
attended with great eclat. Enthusiasm was contagious,
and it is not quite certain how it came about — probably
heads were not sufficiently clear— but numbers of Catholic
members of the Congress appeared to have voted for resolu
tions without quite realizing their nature. Anyhow they
were on the morrow somewhat crestfallen to find they had
assisted in passing a resolution for abolishing religious
instruction in schools, and had smiled upon a project for
erecting a statue to Salvatore MorelU, the apostle of free
love. The pages of L'Azione Muliebr% for that year were
filled with lamentation and anxiety for the future, but
those of the Vita Feminile Italiana, a magazine started in
1907, which reflects the undenominational ideals dear
to the International Council, sang a paean of triumph.
Women were proclaimed in its pages as beginning at last
to exercise their minds. Of course it, too, wanted the
continuance of religious instruction in schools, but in a
form so broad as tb be equally acceptable to Mohammedans,
Jews, Buddhists, etc., etc. ! It was but too evident that
Catholic women needed organizing and educating if they
were to enter on a wider life without disaster. Accord
ingly in 1909 L'Unione fra le Donne Catholiche Italiane
came into existence and rapidly spread its branches through
out Italy.
10. CATHOLIC INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION.
Enough has been said to make it no matter of sur
prise that new-born CathoUc Feminism early turned its
thoughts towards an International Federation.
From the first the Ligue patriotique des Francaises had
hoped for this, and their hopes were shared by every league
as it came into existence. Catholic Women's Leagues
had developed rapidly— that of England in 1905 ; Austria,
1907; Switzerland, 1908, etc. etc.

84 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
In August 19 10 a meeting was held in Brussels convened
by the Ligue patriotique des Francaises, supported by
U Action Sociale de la Femme, which was attended by
delegates from leagues established in Austria, Belgium,
Brazil, England, France, Germany, Holland, Portugal,
Spain, Switzerland and Uruguay. Letters of encourage
ment and approval were received from Cardinal Mercier,
Archbishop of Malines, and from the Archbishop of Paris.
When reports of the aims and activities of all the societies
represented had been read, it was found that they shared
in common a recognition of the fact that the danger of the
hour was primarily an intellectual danger, against which
Catholic women must prepare by a sohd and wide educa
tion both for self-defence and for apostohc work — that the
duty of those women capable of becoming leaders lay in
preparing themselves as pubhc speakers, lecturers, etc.,
in order to bring help to those most exposed to the danger
ous propaganda of revolutionary Feminism. It was seen
that it was rapidly becoming a question of saving whole
classes to Christianity. Even if this may have appeared
at the time a somewhat alarmist diagnosis of the situation,
it wUl not be found so now that the extent of the spread
of anti-Christian ideas has been revealed by the European
War. 11. UNION OF CATHOLIC WOMEN'S LEAGUES EFFECTED.
At this first meeting in Brussels it was resolved to form an
International Union of Catholic Women's Leagues,and a code
of statutes was tentatively drawn up. Subsequent meetings
have been held in Madrid, 1911 ; Vienna, 1912 ; and London,
1913 — and at these the Constitution of the Union was further
considered and plans of study and schemes of activity
matured. In the Autumn of 1913, the completed Con
stitution was approved by Pius X, and the International
Union became firmly established. The suppression of the
White Slave traffic was chosen as the principal subject for a
conference which should have been held in Cracow in 1915.1
1 Information concerning L' Union Internationale des Ligues
Catholiques FSminines can be obtained from the office of the Cathohc
Women's League, 116 Victoria Street, London, S.W.

INTERNATIONALIZED FEMINISM 85
Who will venture to forecast the future, or predict the
date by which the wounds of war will have healed suffi
ciently to allow of another International Meeting ? But
this we can assert with confidence, that Catholic Feminism
will be more determined than ever in urging forward the
pre-eminent importance of a study of the aims which under-
Ue the Feminist movement, and in demonstrating the
abortive nature of all " progress " which is not based upon
sound principles.
Finally, to sum up, Christian Feminism seeks to build
upon Christian principles and to discover for women
a wider scope for the development and exercise of their
powers in conformity with these, and thus to procure for
them a greater share of justice in social hfe. Revolutionary
Feminism, founded on a claim to equality of the sexes and
freedom for complete self-realization for the individual,
is seeking to make a new path and is convinced that
whatever seems to obstruct this work stands, for that reason,
condemned, whether it be revealed religion or traditional
morality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
British Freewomen, by Mrs. Carmichael Stopes. (Ge'orge
AUen & Unwin.) 2s. 6d. net.
Economic History, Ashley, Vol. I, Parts i. and ii. (Longmans,
Green & Co.) 5s.
English Guilds, Toulmin Smith. 1870. (Early English Text
Society.)
History of Gilds and Origin of Trade Unions, by L. Brentano.
(Kegan Paul.) 2s. 6d.
The History of Trade Unionism, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
(Longmans, Green & Co.) ys. 6d.
A History of Factory Legislation, by B. and L. Hutchins and
A. Harrison. (P. S. King & Son.) 6s.
The Human Soul, by Dom Anscar Vonier, O.S.B. (B. Herder.)
Initiatives Feminines, by Max Turmann. (Lecoffre.) 5 frs.
Psychology (Stonyhurst Series), by M. Maher, S.J. (Longmans.)
6s. 6d. 30th thousand.
Woman in Industry from Seven Points of View. (Duckworth.)
2S.
Women's Work and Wages : a Phase of Life in an Industrial
City, by Edward Cadbury, MJCetile Matheson, George Shann,
M.A. (T. Fisher Unwin.) is. net.
Woman's Position in the Laws of the Nations. A compilation
of the Laws of different Countries, prepared by the Inter
national CouncU of Women (undenominational) concern
ing the legal position of women, with an Introduction by
Mme. d'Abbadie d'Arrast. G. Braunsche Hofbuchdruckerei
und Verlag, Karlsruhe i. B.
The Status of Women under the English Law, by A. B. W. and
M. W. Chapman. 92 pp. (Routledge.) 2s. 6d.
* C.T.S. PUBLICATIONS
Bebel's Libel on Woman, by Rev. W. McMahon, S.J. id.
Christian Family Life, by the Right Rev. Abbot Gasquet,
O.S.B. id.
Christian Democracy before the Reformation, by Abbot Gasquet,
O.S.B. id.
Christianity and Woman's Rights, by the Rev. J. Keating, S.J.
id.
* Catholic Truth Society, 69, Southwark Bridge Road, London- S E
86

BIBLIOGRAPHY 87
Christian Womanhood, by the Bishop of Northampton, id.
English Economics and Catholic Ethics, by Rev. Michael Maher,
S.J., D.Litt. id.
Duties of Conjugal Life, by Cardinal Mercier. id.
What Christianity has Done for Woman, by Gabriel D'Azambuja,
translated by Mrs. PhiUp Gibbs. 3d.
ARTICLES TO BE FOUND IN THE CRUCIBLE.
(This Magazine can be seen at the office of the Catholic
Women's League, 116 Victoria Street, London, and at the
Cathohc Reference Library, 54 Victoria Street, London. Single
numbers can still be obtained from the C.W.L.)
" The Cathohc and the Feminist Movement," by Margaret
Fletcher. December, 1907.
" The C.W.L. and Contemporary Feminism," by Margaret
Fletcher. December, 1909.
" The Evolution of Christian Women," by Margaret Fletcher.
June, 1905.
" Father Augustin Rosier and the Woman Question," by Dom
Lambert NoUe, O.S.B. September and December, 1908 ;
March, 1909.
" The Higher Education of Women in Pre-Reformation Days,"
by J. E. KendaU, O.S.B. June, 1910.
" More about International Federation : An Introduction and
some Comments," by Margaret Fletcher. December, 1907.
" Medieval Women and Others," by AUce Abadam. March,
1907.
" Restrictions on Woman's Labour," by Brighid Stafford.
March; 1910.
" Work and Wages," by Clementina Black. December, 1906.
" Woman and Arts in Past Ages," translated from the French
of Lucie Felix Faure Goyau. March, 1912.
" Working Class Wives," by Henry SomerviUe, March, 1913.
THE WOMEN'S INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL,
6 Adelphi, Strand, London, W.C.
has issued Publications on the foUowing subjects :
Price i\d. each post free, unless otherwise stated, or for quan
tities (penny pamphlets) 8d. for 13, postage 4^., 5s. for 100,
postage 8d. Other prices pro rata. Terms : Cash with
Order.
Wages
The Trade Boards Act, by J. J. MaUon. is. each post free.
(Last few copies)
Extending the Trade Boards Act, by J. J. MaUon.

88 CHRISTIAN FEMINISM
The Trade Boards : Their Determinations to Date, by D. M.
Zimmern.
Clothing and Textile Trades : Summary Tables, by L. Wyatt
Papworth and D. M. Zimmern. i\d. each, post free.
Women's Wages, with Summary Tables, by D. M. Zimmern.
Truck, Fines and Deductions, by B. L. Hutchins.
Maintenance Grants under Separation Orders, by Mrs. R. L. Reiss.
Trades.
Report on Home Industries in London, is., postage 3d.
Artificial Flower Making, French Polishing, JeweUery,
Jewel Case Making, Metal Trades, MiUinery, MUitary
Embroidery, TaUoring (2 parts), Wire Mattress Making.
Industrial Legislation.
Labour Laws for Women and Children in the United Kingdom,
Australia, and New Zealand, France,
Canada, Germany,
United States of America, Italy.
Labour Laws for Women and Children at Home and Abroad,
which brings aU the above up to date.
What's Wrong with our Industrial Legislation ? by L. Wyatt
Papworth.
Working Women and the Poor Law, by B. L. Hutchins.
The Need for more Women Factory Inspectors, by an Expert.
Home Workers and the Trade Boards Act, by R. H. Tawney.
Women Laundry Workers and Legislation, id. each, post free.
Women Workers and the Factory Act. id. each, post free.
Registry Offices and Public Control, id. each, post free.
Children
The Present Position of Child Labour Regulation, and Blind
Alley Labour, by Frederick Keeling.
Girl Workers and the Opportunity of the Juvenile Advisory Com
mittees, by Mrs. Bernard Drake.
Trade Schools for Girls , by N. Adler, L.C.C.
Labour Exchanges and Juvenile Employment, by M. E. MarshaU.
Juvenile Employment Bureaux, by Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon.
Separate Courts of Justice for Children, Probation and Probation
Officers, by N. Adler, L.C.C. (Last few copies.) 6d. each,
post free.
Blind Alley Occupations, by R. H. Tawney. (Last few copies.)
6d. each post free.

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