The poor working conditions she suffers under, and the uncertainty of her position, reduce many a woman’s share in the married partnership to that of an employe in a sweated trade.  This kind of marriage, therefore, like all other sweated trades tends to lower the general market value of women’s work.  This is casting no reflection upon the hundreds of thousands of husbands who do their part fairly, who share and share alike whatever they have or earn with their wives.  How many a workingman regularly hands over to his wife for the support of the home the whole of his earnings with perhaps the barest deduction, a dollar or two, or sometimes only a few cents, for small personal expenditures.  Many wives enjoy complete power over the family purse.  Or the married pair decide together as to how much they can afford to spend on rent and food and clothing, and when sickness or want of work face them, they meet the difficulty together.  The decisions made, it is the wife who has the whole responsibility for the actual spending.

But though so often a man does fulfill in spirit as in letter his promise to support, as well as to love and honor the girl he has married, there is very little in the laws of any country to compel him.  And because the man can slip the collar more easily than the woman can, the woman’s position is rendered still more uncertain.  If she were an ordinary wage-worker, we should say of her that her occupation was an unstandardized one, and that individually she was too dependent upon the personal goodwill of another.  Therefore, like all other unstandardized callings, marriage, considered as an occupation, tends to lower the general market value of woman’s work.  Conversely, Cicely Hamilton in “Marriage as a Trade,” points out that the improvements in the economic position of the married woman, which have come about in recent years, are partly at least due to the successful efforts of single women to make themselves independent and self-supporting.

But during the process of transition, and while single women are forging farther and farther ahead, many a married woman is finding herself between the upper and the nether millstone.  And unfortunately precisely in the degree that the paid domestic worker is able to make better arrangements in return for her services, whether as resident or as visiting employe, many housemothers are likely for a time to find conditions press yet more severely upon themselves.  They will soon have no one left upon whom they can shift their own burdens of overwork, as they have so frequently done in the past.  Sooner or later they will be driven to take counsel with their fellows, and will then assuredly plan some method of organizing housewives for mutual help and cooeperation, and for securing from society some fairer recognition of the true value of the contribution of the domestic woman to the wealth of the community.