and always increasingly important army of male labourers. Where once an
isolated bard supplied a nation with its literatures, or where later a few

thousand priests and men of letters wrote and transcribed for the few to
read, today literature gives labour to a multitude almost as countless as a

swarm of locusts. From the penny-a-liner to the artist and thinker, the
demand for their labour continually increases. Where one town-crier with

stout legs and lusty lungs was once all-sufficient to spread the town and
country news, a score of men now sit daily pen in hand, preparing the

columns of the morning's paper, and far into the night a hundred
compositors are engaged in a labour which requires a higher culture of

brain and finger than most ancient kings and rulers possessed. Even in the
labours of war, the most brutal and primitive of the occupations lingering

on into civilised life from the savage state, the new demand for labour of
an intellectual kind is enormous. The invention, construction, and working

of one Krupp gun, though its mere discharge hardly demands more crude
muscularexertion than a savage expends in throwing his boomerang, yet

represents an infinitude of intellectual care and thought, far greater than
that which went to the shaping of all the weapons of a primitive army.

Above all, in the domain of politics and government, where once a king or
queen, aided by a handful of councillors, was alone practically concerned

in the labours of national guidance or legislation; today, owing to the
rapid means of intercommunication, printing, and the consequent diffusion

of political and social information throughout a territory, it has become
possible, for the first time, for all adults in a large community to keep

themselves closely informed on all national affairs; and in every highly-
civilised state the ordinary male has been almost compelled to take his

share, however small, in the duties and labours of legislation and
government. Thus there has opened before the mass of men a vast new sphere

of labour undreamed of by their ancestors. In every direction the change
which material civilisation has wrought, while it has militated against

that comparatively small section of males who have nothing to offer society
but the expenditure of their untrained muscularenergy (inflicting much and

often completely unmerited suffering upon them), has immeasurably extended
the field of male labour as a whole. Never before in the history of the

earth has the man's field of remunerative toil been so wide, so
interesting, so complex, and in its results so all-important to society;

never before has the male sex, taken as a whole, been so fully and
strenuously employed.

So much is this the case, that, exactly as in the earlier conditions of
society an excessive and almost crushing amount of the most important

physical labour generally devolved upon the female, so under modern
civilised conditions among the wealthier and fully civilised classes, an

unduly excessive share of labour tends to devolve upon the male. That
almost entirely modern, morbid condition, affecting brain and nervous

system, and shortening the lives of thousands in modern civilised
societies, which is vulgarly known as "overwork" or "nervous breakdown," is

but one evidence of the even excessive share of mental toil devolving upon
the modern male of the cultured classes, who, in addition to maintaining

himself, has frequently dependent upon him a larger or smaller number of
entirely parasitic females. But, whatever the result of the changes of

modern civilisation may be with regard to the male, he certainly cannot
complain that they have as a whole robbed him of his fields of labour,

diminished his share in the conduct of life, or reduced him to a condition
of morbid inactivity.

In our woman's field of labour, matters have tended to shape themselves
wholly otherwise! The changes which have taken place during the last

centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term "modern
civilisation," have tended to rob woman, not merely in part but almost

wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and social
labour; and, where there has not been a determined and conscious resistance

on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to her new and
compensatory fields.

It is this fact which constitutes our modern "Woman's Labour Problem."
Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings steam-

driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often those of
men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no longer say,

proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our peoples.
Our hoes and our grindstones passed from us long ago, when the ploughman

and the miller took our place; but for a time we kept fast possession of
the kneading-trough and the brewing-vat. Today, steam often shapes our

bread, and the loaves are set down at our very door--it may be by a man-
driven motor-car! The history of our household drinks we know no longer;

we merely see them set before us at our tables. Day by day machine-
prepared and factory-produced viands take a larger and larger place in the

dietary of rich and poor, till the working man's wife places before her
household little that is of her own preparation; while among the wealthier

classes, so far has domestic change gone that men are not unfrequently
found labouring in our houses and kitchens, and even standing behind our

chairs ready to do all but actually place the morsels of food between our
feminine lips. The army of rosy milkmaids has passed away for ever, to

give place to the cream-separator and the, largely, male-and-machinery
manipulated butter pat. In every direction the ancient saw, that it was

exclusively the woman's sphere to prepare the viands for her household, has
become, in portion" target="_blank" title="n.比率 vt.使成比例">proportion as civilisation has perfected itself, an antiquated

lie.
Even the minor domestic operations are tending to pass out of the circle of

woman's labour. In modern cities our carpets are beaten, our windows
cleaned, our floors polished, by machinery, or extra domestic, and often

male labour. Change has gone much farther than to the mere taking from us
of the preparation of the materials from which the clothing is formed.

Already the domestic sewing-machine, which has supplanted almost entirely
the ancient needle, begins to become antiquated, and a thousand machines

driven in factories by central engines are supplying not only the husband
and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of clothing from

vest to jacket; while among the wealthy" target="_blank" title="a.富有的；丰富的">wealthy classes, the male dress-designer
with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers is helping finally to

explode the ancient myth, that it is woman's exclusivesphere, and a part
of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the garments she or her household

wear.
Year by year, day by day, there is a silentlyworking but determined

tendency for the sphere of woman's domestic labours to contract itself; and
the contraction is marked exactly in portion" target="_blank" title="n.比率 vt.使成比例">proportion as that complex condition

which we term "modern civilisation" is advanced.
It manifests itself more in England and America than in Italy and Spain,

more in great cities than in country places, more among the wealthier
classes than the poorer, and is an unfailing indication of advancing modern

civilisation. (There is, indeed, often something pathetic in the attitude
of many a good old mother of the race, who having survived, here and there,

into the heart of our modern civilisation, is sorely puzzled by the change
in woman's duties and obligations. She may be found looking into the eyes

of some ancient crone, who, like herself, has survived from a previous
state of civilisation, seeking there a confirmation of a view of life of

which a troublous doubt has crept even into her own soul. "I," she cries,
"always cured my own hams, and knitted my own socks, and made up all the

linen by hand. We always did it when we were girls--but now my daughters
object!" And her old crone answers her? "Yes, we did it; it's the right

thing; but it's so expensive. It's so much cheaper to buy things ready
made!" And they shake their heads and go their ways, feeling that the

world is strangely out of joint when duty seems no more duty. Such women
are, in truth, like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her

ducklings to the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is
left but baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to

it, and walks about with flapping wings and anxious quack, trying to induce
them to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far

off the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up
to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that is

growing up beside it; and absolutely" target="_blank" title="ad.绝对地；确实">absolutely refuse to disport themselves on the
baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And they

leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to seek for
new pastures--perhaps to lose themselves upon the way?--perhaps to find

them? To the old mother one is inclined to say, "Ah, good old mother duck,
can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the water back

into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was
there, but it has gone for ever; and, would you and yours swim again, it

must be in other waters." New machinery, new duties.)
But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women's material