MR. HUGHES ON FEMALE LABOUR.
Ere THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR.] you allow me to ask Mr. Hughes how he expects his proposed law prohibiting married women from earning more than half-wages in all our factory districts will operate in combination with the following laws or legal facts?—(l), In combination with the fact that the law is practically powerless to prevent husbands deserting these married mothers ; (2), in combination with the fact that our law gives to wives not a shadow of a legal right to maintenance by their husbands ; (3), in combination with the fact that unmarried mothers, and women living in concubinage, can now obtain legal support for their children from the fathers ; and are and must be left free to work for their own living, and to enjoy their own earnings ; (4), in combination with the new law, which we hoped had once for all removed this disadvantage of marriage, by securing to married women the exclusive possession of their own earnings.
Because married women most be under physical marital control, Mr. Hughes would destroy their moral power, by making them legal infants ; would bind them legally hand and foot, and leave them dependent on the kindness of "the vicious and idle hus- bands"—for whose sake he proposes this law—for their daily food and clothing. There is a dishonest labour which this law may easily drive these women to seek which it can never forbid their obtaining, and which will wholly incapacitate them for those "higher duties " which Mr. Hughes thinks they ought to be legally tied up to perform, even at the heroic cost of semi-starvation to themselves and their children.—I am, Sir, &c., L. F. M.
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