[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.1 Sit,—As the remarks
of your correspondent " F." on " Wife- Beating " may serve to mislead some whose knowledge of the condition of women in our lower-class homes is as slight as his own appears to be, permit me to ask if women, as he insists, are to be prohibited by law from " labouring in factories or else- where," what is to become of those with idle, sickly, or drinking husbands, thousands of whom must see their children starve, or go out themselves to earn their bread by factory or field work, charing, washing, or the like ? I would ask " F." also to solve the problem how, in a single close and dingy room, in which cooking, washing, and all domestic operations must needs be carried on, a woman with three or four young children, and a * As was recently observed by one of the ablest advocates of women's Suffrage at the Social Science Congress, if it should ever occur that a fashion of husband- poisoning were adopted by English wives to half the extent to which wite-murder now prevails, we should see leaders in the Times every morning denouncing the abominable Danaides of the age, or a Husbands' Protection Bill" would be hurried through both Houses of Parliament in a week.
sickly infant in her arms, herself perhaps feeble and sickly too, shall make his " home " at all times so attractive to a tired, a selfish, or a brutal husband as to compete successfully with the warmth and glitter and garish comfort of the gin-palace or public- house. It is difficult, also to see with " F.," how the fact of Members of Parliament finding themselves committed to defend and promote the interests of women—as would be the case, did the latter possess the suffrage—could place either in the position of " rivals and competitors," or involve women in " hopeless struggle and inevitable defeat."
" F." may rest assured that even the possession of the suffrage will not prevent woman from being the " mother of the race ;" nature will take care of that. But she is certainly more likely to be the true " helpmate " of man, if encouraged to supplement his comparative indifference and ignorance by her own larger know- ledge of the wrongs and keener concern for the welfare of her suffering sisters. "F." himself has to confess that even the pub- licity of the Times failed to draw his attention to the most fright- ful outrages on women, until a woman's hand pointed them out to him.
Lastly, may I say, from personal knowledge of many of these wretched " homes," that it is not the lazy or unfaithful wife, not the termagant or virago, who is the moat frequent victim in such cases? The drunken or brutal coward vents his rage where he can do it with impunity. We have it on the authority of the Birming- ham Daily Post that in the colliery districts it is an increasing custom for men to maltreat and attack their wives when they are about to become " the mothers of the race." Has " F.'s" chivalrous helpfulness made him acquainted yet with this mode of wife- torture, as practised on " our women " in these degraded homes, by the brutes who claim to own them ?
The true and only remedy for this state of things is to raise the relative status of women in every class, to give to the weak and poor that social strength which is the result of union, and to bring the cultivated and industrious among them into collective alliance with able and manly helpers, who will see to it that the affairs and interests of women receive their due share of Parlia- mentary attention. What the franchise has done already for the oppressed and down-trodden of the working-classes, what we may trust it will presently do for the agricultural labourer, that we may equally hope it would accomplish in promoting the welfare and elevation of women, and through them, of the entire com-
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