supposing this to be true, still it is the faithful ones who work the hardest now. They would work no harder, to say the least, in a co-operative association than they do at home to-day. The difference would be that the whole community would join in paying them a just price for their skill and effort, instead of its being a chance, as at present, whether their husbands can or will do so.
Thus co-operative housekeeping, not only by "accumulating capital for each member," but also by paying each officer a salary, would necessarily make women partially independent of men in money matters, and in so far would shelter them from the misfortunes and cruel reverses to which they are now so helplessly exposed by the financial mistakes or ruin of their masculine protectors, and which form certainly one of the hardest features of the feminine lot. For they would then have two sources of support,—one, the natural maintenance accorded to every woman by her husband or father, and which often expresses more and often less than her value to him; the other, the estimate put upon her services to the co-operative association by its members, the value of which must depend wholly on her own efforts and qualifications. Then, if some selfish or shiftless man—or, more pitiful still, some faithful and half-starved minister of Christ—is able to give his bright, enterprising wife no more than six hundred or a thousand dollars a year for household expenses, she will not as now have to degrade herself into a maid-of-all-work, and toil from fourteen to sixteen hours a day in order to live on it; but, besides the third saved to the family by co-operation, she might receive, as one of the able and energetic officers of the association, from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars a year.[1] If here is not a stimulus to feminine industry and ambition, I know not where one is to be found. Its consequences are incalculable.
- ↑ I heard, the other day, that the "cutter" in a large clothing establishment in Boston receives a salary of three thousand dollars. I doubt if there is a woman in the country, in any capacity, who receives such a salary.
