The Englishwoman's Review of Social and Industrial Questions

1900

Janet Murray, Myra Stark

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315396163
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

The Englishwoman's Review, which published from 1866 to 1910, participated in and recorded a great change in the range of possibilities open to women. The ideal of the magazine was the idea of the emerging emancipated middle-class woman: economic independence from men, choice of occupation, participation in the male enterprises of commerce and government, access to higher education, admittance to the male professions, particularly medicine, and, of course, the power of suffrage equal to that of men.

First published in 1984, this thirty-second volume contains issues from 1900. With an informative introduction by Janet Horowitz Murray and Myra Stark, and an index compiled by Anna Clark, this set is an invaluable resource to those studying nineteenth and early twentieth-century feminism and the women's movement in Britain.

New Series—Vol. XXXI. No. III. Jan. 16th, 1900.

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THE
ENGLISHWOMAN’S REVIEW
OF
Social and Industrial Questions.

_____________

EDITED BY HELEN BLACKBURN
AND
ANTOINETTE M. MACKENZIE.

______________

CONTENTS FOR JANUARY, 1900.

______

ARTICLES: I.—Regulation versus Interference. II.—The Housing of the Educated Working Woman. III.—Mid wives’ Registration Bill

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE.—Notes of the Quarter. Victoria. Norway. Holland. National Liberal Federation and Women’s Suffrage.

ELECTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATION INTELLIGENCE.—British Women Graduates in 1900. London University, &c., &c. Secondary Education. Elementary Education.

NOTES AND INCIDENTS.—Freedom of Labour Defence. Factory and Workshops Act in relation to Creamories. Royal Hospital for Incurables. The late Mrs. Emma Marshall. Women Guardians. Church of England Assembly, Victoria. The Place of Women in Lay Work of the Church. An Incident of the War. Women in Music.

REVIEWS.—The Priest’s Marriage. For a God Dishonoured. Woman’s Century Calendar. Feminismo. Study of Mary Wollstonecraft.

OBITUARY.—Miss Anna Swanwick. Miss Eliza Wigham. The Right Hon. Jacob Bright. The Marchioness of Salisbury. Miss Bridges. Jessie Craigen.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.—American. Erratum.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE “ENGLISHWOMAN’S REVIEW,’

22, BERNERS STREET, OXFORD STREET, W.

AND FOR THE PROPRIETOR BY

WILLIAMS & NORGATE, 14, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London;
and 20, South Frederick Street, Edinburgh.

PUBLISHED QUARTERLY as near as possible to the 15th January, April,
July, and October.

Englishwoman’s Review.

CONTENTS FOR OCTOBER, 1899.

_____

ARTICLES:

I. An Englishman’s House is bis Castle.

II. Not under Grace bot under Law.

III. Women’s Suffrage in Holland.

IV. Legal Position of Women in New Zealand and South Australia.

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE:

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE.

ELECTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS:

Free women. Royal Bed Cross, &c., &c.

UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE :

London. Victoria. Royal Ireland. Durham. Oxford. Aberystwith, &c.

NOTES AND INCIDENTS :

Married Women Occupiers. Opposite Cases. The Grace Darling Life Boat. Mrs. Bear-Crawford. Colonial Nursing Association. National Council of Women, New Zealand. Helen Keller. An American Mail Woman. International Congress, &c.

REVIEWS :

Women and Economics (Mrs. Stetson Perkins). Frauenrecht. Herr Jastrow. Poems by Eva Gore Booth. Our Baby. Cookery for Two, &c.

OBITUARY :

Mrs. Laurie. Frau Schwerin.

PARAGRAPHS :

Women as Citizens. Fur Pullers. A Contrast, &c.

BIBLIOGRAPHY :

Education, Employment, &c.

TITLE AND INDEX.

THE
ENGLISHWOMAN’S REVIEW.
(NEW SERIES.)

No. CCXLIV..—JANUARY 15TH, 1900.

ART. I.—REGULATION versus INTERFERENCE.

THE large family of young nations growing up in the traditions of Angle-Saxon independence are ready to join with the mother country in strenuous defence of freedom, and share the horrors and the heroisms of the South African war. The war and the large issues that may develop thence fill the minds of the public and will fill those of our legislators when presently they assemble at St. Stephen’s. Still, even in face of these large issues it is not right to neglect the dangers that threaten our toilers at home from over faith in the potency of law to do for people the things they ought to do for themselves.

Grown up men and women, fathers and mothers of families, ought not to look to law to tell them when they may work or when they must play; when it is good for them to send their children to school and when to set them to learn a trade; whether it is best for themselves to work in their own homes or in factories. Every trade, every locality, every family, every individual have diversities of needs, customs, habits and desires beyond the power of law to determine. How comes it that such portions of the British working men as carry resolutions at Trades Congresses, are growing so eager to weave the mesh of legal restriction round their lives, notwithstanding that love of independence and of controlling their own affairs which they probably share with the majority of their countrymen?¹ Surely it must be due to confusion of ideas as to what comes within the province of law. The working man has seen the potent effects of the great enabling Statutes which marked the early years of the reformed Parliaments; the greater freedom resulting thence has given him an inordinate idea of what law can do. Now that he possesses the franchise himself he expects this potent force to obtain for him all that he requires, while the fact that women are excluded from the franchise gives fresh colour to the already too favourite notion that they are irresponsible beings, to be arranged for and ordered about like children. He forgets that law can act as a disabling, as well as an enabling force, and that its very virtues become destructive if applied without discrimination.

Moreover, our philanthropists in their eager desire to remedy some evil which looms large on the horizon of their particular scene of work, lose their sense of the proportion of things, until people, so much in earnest so diligent in pursuit of a good ideal as the members of the Women’s Industrial Council, support such Bills as those which have called the Freedom of Labour Defence into existence, as recorded at page 33. These Bills were referred to in our last issue, and a statement of their provisions is appended to this article.

After the manner of all great subjects, this question of the proper limitation of legislation might fill volumes, and yet its essential points may be described in a few words. Law should keep the great highways of action clear and open for all. It should press with evenhanded pressure on all, should so enforce the obligations of man to man that all shall feel secure. As the finger of the policeman at Charing Cross or Parliament Street rules the ceaseless flow of London traffic so that none shall collide, and metes out the same measure of regulation to the four-in-hand of the millionaire and the donkey-cart of the costermonger, so should law act with universal, uniform action. As the kingdom becomes more populous and the occupations, needs and desires of the people become more complicated, regulation becomes more essential, but also interference becomes more mischievous. It is only by having one uniform standard of weights and measures that buyers and sellers all the land over can regulate the quantity of their exchange with accuracy. It is only by having one uniform coinage that employer and employed can estimate the value of work done. If every country and city in these days had its own standards of measurement, its own mint, there could be no reliance or uniformity of exchange; therefore it adds to the power of the many that the State regulate all vehicles of exchange. Similarly, no private enterprise could permeate to every corner of the British Empire with the same precision as the State. Therefore, though the postal arrangements of any given city or county might conceivably be as well, or possibly more rapidly carried put by private enterprise than by the General Post Office, it is for the benefit of the British race as a whole that their postal communication be under the universal uniform administration of the State.

Or, again—taking the standpoint of individual conduct—if a man build houses or streets, the law commands that he respect the ancient lights and boundaries and rights of way of his neighbours, that he build his houses with party walls of sufficient thickness to protect from fire. Such regulations are necessary for the security of the community. If the law ordered him to build his house with windows of fixed dimensions, to make his rooms of fixed size and number, that would be interference with his own private needs. If the law forbids me to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• No. CCXLIV.—January 15th, 1900
• No. CCXLV.—April 17th, 1900
• No. CCXLVI.—July 16th, 1900
• No. CCXLVII.—October 15th, 1900