[27] According to prison statistics of the Greek Government for 1889, out of a total prison population of 5,023 only 50 were women.  See Revista de Discipline Carcerarie, Nov. 30th, 1890, page 667.

It hardly admits of doubt that the high ratio of female crime in Scotland is to be attributed to the social status of women.  In no other country of Europe do women perform so much heavy manual work; working in the fields and factories along with men; depending little upon men for their subsistence; in all economic matters leading what is called a more emancipated life than women do elsewhere; in short, resembling man in their social activities, they also resemble him in criminal proclivities.  Scotch criminal statistics are thus a striking confirmation of the general law revealed by the study of criminal statistics as a whole; namely, that the more women are driven to enter upon the economic struggle for life the more criminal they will become.  This is not a very consoling outlook for the future of society.  It is not consoling, for the simple reason that the whole drift of opinion at the present time is in the direction of opening out industrial and public life to women to the utmost extent possible.  In so far as public opinion is favouring the growth of female political leagues and other female organisations of a distinctly militant character, it is undoubtedly tending on the whole to lower the moral nature of women.  The combative attitude required to be maintained by all members of such organisations is injurious to the higher instincts of women, and in numbers of cases must affect their moral tone.  The amount of mischief done by these public organisations for purposes of political combat is not confined to women alone.  The overwhelming influence exercised by mothers on the minds of children is notorious; and that influence is not so likely to be for good where the mother’s mind is contaminated by a knowledge of, and sometimes by practising, the shady tricks of electioneering.

The present tendency to create a greater number of openings in trade and industry for women is not to be dismissed as pernicious because of its evil effect in multiplying female crime.  After all, an enlarged industrial career for women may be the lesser of two evils.  According to the present industrial constitution of society a very large number of females must earn a living in the sweat of their brow, and until some higher social development supersedes the existing order of things it is only right that as wide a career as possible should be opened out for the activities of women who must work to live.  At the same time it would be an infinitely superior state of things if society did not require women’s work beyond the confines of the home and the primary school.  In these two spheres there is ample occupation of the very highest character for the energies of women; in them their work is immeasurably superior to men’s; and it is because the work required in the home and