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Page 42
[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 the school is at the present moment so improperly
performed that our existing civilisation is such a hot-bed of physical
degeneracy, pauperism, and crime. One thing at least is certain, that
crime will never permanently decrease till the material conditions of
existence are such that women will not be called upon to fight the
battle of life as men are, but will be able to concentrate their
influence on the nurture and education of the young, after having
themselves been educated mainly with a view to that great end.
European society at the present moment is moving away from this ideal
of woman's functions in the world; she is getting to be regarded in
the light of a mere intellectual or industrial unit; and the flower of
womankind is being more and more drafted into commercial and other
enterprises. Some affect to look upon this condition, of things as
being in the line of progress; it may be, and to all appearance is, in
the line of material necessity, but it is unquestionably opposed to
the moral interests of the community. These interests demand that
women should not be debased, as criminal statistics prove that they
are by active participation in modern industrialism; they demand that
the all-important duties of motherhood should be in the hands of
persons capable of fulfilling them worthily, and not in the hands of
persons whose previous occupations have often rendered them unfit for
being a centre of grace and purity in the home. It cannot be too
emphatically insisted on that the home is the great school for the
formation of character among the young, and it is on character that
conduct depends. In proportion as this school of character is
improved, in the same proportion will crime decrease. But how is it to
be improved when the tendencies of industrialism are to degrade the
women who stand by nature at the head of it? Indifferent mothers
cannot make children good citizens; and the present course of things
industrial is slowly but surely tending to debase the fountain head of
the race. At the International Conference concerning the regulation of
labour held recently at Berlin, M. Jules Simon, at the close of an
excellent speech to the delegates, pointed out the remedy for the
present condition of things. "You will pardon me," he said, "for
concluding my observations with a personal remark, which is perhaps
authorised by a past entirely consecrated to a defence of the cause
which brings us here. The object we are aiming at is moral as well as
material; it is not only in the physical interests of the human race
that we are endeavouring to rescue children, youths, and women from
excessive toil; we are also labouring to restore woman to the home,
the child to its mother, for it is from her only that those lessons of
affection and respect which make the good citizen can be learned. We
wish to call a halt in the path of demoralisation down which the
loosening of the family tie is leading the human mind."
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