Before our typical woman lie two paths. Into the usual one of marriage the vast majority of industrial women are carried. The marriage state still involves support, but also involves a change in economic relationship which more and more galls. Curious partnerships result where both are self-supporting, one or the other being predominant partner. In middle-class life still, conventions largely rule; but in industrial centres the marriage bond itself is much less binding than of old. Separations become more and more common. The amount of support that can be claimed by a wife is so insufficient that often they come together again perhaps only to part. Both are often young. Before the man lies a long celibate life, he is under no vow--self-restraint is normally not attained. The large numbers of imperfectly-mated men leading a life divorced from home ties constitute a grave social peril. In every town a great number of middle-class and many working men live free from social responsibility to support women, yet do partially support some at any rate, either as lovers, as betrothed sweethearts, or in less sacred relationships. Destitute and deserted wives are common, cast-off sweethearts not a few; women derelicts abound; they are the "unemployed," alas not unemployed in sin, but a source of moral contagion in their easy life.
For the other career of womanhood is hard, and as yet a path not for the many, and therefore all the harder. A woman may attain economic independence; but she is sadly handicapped. Her wage is low, often lowered by dress expense; and her woman nature, especially under modern pressure of sentimental literature, demands satisfaction in husband and child. What wonder if she gives up the hard struggle and strays from this path. Society owes much to the women who toil on, cutting by degrees the stairs of progress. If they succeed in self-support, how often age overtakes them as toilers; women's physical disabilities (created or complicated by a false civilisation) leave them stranded. The middle-aged unemployed female is a most serious national problem at present. It calls loudly for universal sisterhood. Drink too often claims the unloved and unlovable spinster. She can no longer spin; she must work under conditions in which she ages fast. Independence is hardly to be won. Our workhouses are full of derelict womanhood. Nor is the married woman always more fortunate. Industries often kill husbands when still young. Widows abound. It is extremely difficult to make a woman self-supporting with more than one, or at most with two children, in such a way as to secure sufficient food and clothes for these children. Into married destitution, if the husband lives, I need not enter; it is part of the unemployed problem, and a serious one.