than do the housework themselves. No doubt this is partly because a woman's earnings, however small, do more to make her feel that she has preserved her independence than the unrecognized work of housewife and mother; while it is not only the uneducated mind which is apt to feel that a shilling earned is a greater gain than a shilling saved. But the main reason is still that the life at the mill, amongst fellow workers, is more attractive than the life at home.

The evils of married women's work are deeply-rooted, and of a nature to affect the whole community. The wastefulness of the housekeeping and the discomfort of the home are perhaps matters which chiefly affect the husband; and if he is made uncomfortable enough he will doubtless use his influence to bring about a change in this respect. But the injury done to the rising generation is far-reaching in its consequences. The law has done something to make the neglect of infants more difficult, by the prohibition of work during the four weeks after childbirth; but children need a mother's care for much longer than that, and are likely to suffer both in their affections and in their health from being left to the care of strangers.

But it is in "home work," the representative of the older "domestic industry," that we must look for the worst effects of married women's work; including here all the women who are "heads of families." If a woman leaves home to go to work, she does generally make some attempt to provide a substitute; if no servant can be kept, the children are sent to school or a "crêche," or a neighbor undertakes to look in and give them their meals, or the eldest girl is kept at home to look after the little ones. Occasionally it may happen that they are locked in and left alone, but there are few mothers who can bring themselves to this, and public opinion would be strong against those who did. At any rate the home, such as it is, is reserved for the purposes of family life. But when once the work has invaded the home, it brings with it innumerable evils. The inexperienced may picture to themselves the mother seated quietly sewing by the fireside, watching over the children who are playing about

her feet, and preparing a cheerful welcome for the returning husband; and they will ask whether this is not a thousand times better than that the mother should go out to work. Yes; but the picture is not drawn from real life. Here is one that is, and which, moreover, is fairly typical of the home industry as carried on in London. A small upstairs room, black with the dirt of many weeks' standing, and a thin, worn woman working at a table set in the window to catch the light; she is making match-boxes at 234d. the gross, and the room is sickening with the smell of the sour paste which she is using. The remnants of a meal are strewn on the table and bed, all tainted with the sour paste. One of the sheets, hardly recognizable as white, is used to tie up a great bundle of the boxes, ready to be taken to the shop; another pile of boxes lies on the floor of the room drying. The woman, as she talks, never looks up from her work nor checks her fingers in their busy manipulation of card and paste; for toil as she may, she can never earn more than a few shillings a week. The children, pale and dirty, hang listlessly about the room; one, prematurely old, stands at the table and adds her little help towards increasing the family income. The work will go on till late at night, with hardly an interval to snatch a meal, and no time to pay any attention to the claims of cleanliness. And it is nearly always so with these home industries, when there is any serious attempt to earn a subsistence wage by them; they are so badly paid that there can be no question of dividing the time between them and the children; they mean the absolute neglect of everything else. The case is different, of course, when the men of the family are in good work, and the women only work now and again for "pocket money"; and it is partly because of their competition that the labor of women is so badly paid.

This question of how far the work of married women injures the position of women in the labor market is a complicated one; it seems fairly certain that where they do poor work, and are content to take poor wages, they are distinctly injuring those who must depend for their living upon what they can earn at the

same kind of labor.

We may quote at this point from a Board

of Trade Report already referred to:

"The effects on married women's labor in the South and in the North are by no means similar, the causes of such employment being different. In the North there has been a large trade demand for female labor that could not be satisfied even by the absorption of all the girls and unmarried women. Married women have hitherto been attracted by the high wages obtainable in the textile trades, more especially in the cotton trade. The women in the North, therefore, have not been inclined to regard industrial employment merely as a means of livelihood for the short period preceding marriage; they have regarded it as their occupation in life far more than domestic management. They work, not merely for a minimum standard wage, but aim at a considerable margin for saving or for greater comfort in living. All these causes tend to make them better workers and to develop industrial ambition. In the South of England, where factory industries are of but small magnitude and the demand for domestic servants is much greater, the attitude of working girls is entirely different. As a rule they look forward to marriage as releasing them from industry. In the upper industrial grades this generally proves the case for a time; the girl rarely aims at becoming a very efficient worker, and when, in later life, she finds herself left to support herself through the death or breakdown of her husband, she finds herself unable to do more than to compete for the odd jobs to be obtained in residential districts. In the lower industrial grades, it frequently happens that girls remain at work after marriage, owing to the small earnings or irregular employment of their husbands. In both cases the effect on industry is the reverse of advantageous, the married labor being of a poor kind.” 1

We began by saying that the twofold relation of women to the family life and to the industrial world tended to make them ineffectual in both relations. The result of our survey would seem to be that this is chiefly the case when the industrial work in question is of a low order, requiring little skill. When, on the contrary, the work is skilled, and consequently well paid, not only does the training and discipline react favorably upon the woman's power of managing her home, but she is also less likely by reckless marriage to place herself in a position where she will have to carry on her work to the detriment of the family life. Before leaving the subject, we must note that the contrast we

(1) Statistics of Employment of Women and Girls, pp. 28, 29, 1894.

have drawn between the domestic work of the wife and mother and that which is more strictly industrial, should not make us lose sight of the true economic nature and value of the former. A woman is none the less earning her living, and in the noblest sense, because she is working without a money wage; but the fact that she does not compete for her work in the labor market, nor measure her exertions by what she can get for them, makes it difficult to apply ordinary economic considerations to her position. And, of course, it is fairly open to question how far even married women, who are presumably fulfilling the most appropriate duties, are always earning a true subsistence in the sense we have defined. The wife who wastes her husband's earnings, or the mother who lets her children grow up undisciplined or feeble, is on a level with the unskilled worker in other industries, and, like them, is apt to fail of independence in her old age. On the other hand, when her duties have been well and skilfully performed, it is seldom that husband and children do not recognize their debt to her and provide for her whole life.

In conclusion, a woman will always suffer under the economic disadvantage of having to change her occupation when she undertakes the duties of family life; but the change, though disadvantageous from an economic point of view, should be a great gain to her life as a whole. What we have to aim at in educating our girls is, that the loss should be as little as possible; and this is best attained when the industrial training develops qualities which can be afterwards turned to good account in the home life.

FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM AND ITS INFLUENCE

IN EUROPE'

CAMILLE MAUCLAIR, Paris.

The movement begun in French painting, in 1860, may be considered now as terminated, or rather as having entered upon the stage of criticism. For every movement in art has endless repercussions, and cannot be limited; we may say that it is finished only when its essential developments have all been manifested, and when its secondary applications begin. For the purposes of study, criticism is obliged to survey a movement of art from its dawn to its zenith. Impressionism is still a living force in France and in Europe. Its combative, creative period, however, is ended. It may be already looked at from a distance that permits impartial criticism; the results of it may be stated, and its further extensions foreseen. From the present it belongs to the tradition of French painting; and one of the objects of this essay will be to show wherein, precisely, impressionism is by its technique and its ideas "traditional" in France, despite the fact that it has been violently contested, and that an unmerited ridicule has been heaped upon it which even today has hardly ceased.

Impressionism is the outcome of the efforts and the ideas of a group of artists who, about 1855, gathered around Edouard Manet. The name itself of their school, however, is due to Claude

(1) Translated by Professor H. A. P. Torrey, University of Vermont.

Copyright, 1902, by Frederick A. Richardson.