Unearned incomes often the best used
Abuse of wealth that most endangers society
Inconsistency of Rousseau about women’s rights
His estimate of the position of women
Effect of the destruction of domestic industries and growth of factories
Separate female interests in factory legislation
Causes of the lower wages of women
Restrictions in their work partly due to trade jealousy
Present position of female labour—Case for a voice in legislation
Women under the factory system much affected by politics
In some respects unfavourable to women—New female employments
Woman’s part in nursing and medicine
The teaching profession—Opening of British universities to women
Continental universities opened
Change of manners in the upper class
How far it is likely to influence character
Growing female influence in political life
Legal position of mothers—Acts of 1839, 1873, 1886
Protection of married women’s earnings
Continental laws on married women’s earnings and property
The law unduly favoured the rich
Disparities of property—Religious education
Austrian law on mixed marriages
Obstacles to opening professions in England—Laws favouring women
Mill’s advocacy of female suffrage
Large number of suffrages conceded to British women
Arguments against Female Suffrage
Part played by women in public life
Other fields of female administration
Argument from deficiency of physical force
The alleged danger to female character
Women already prominent in politics
Effects of the ballot on the question
Anomaly of the exclusion of women from the franchise
Early history of female suffrage
Countries in which it has been adopted
Its probable good and evil effects in England
INTRODUCTION by William Murchison
The veil of sentimentality long ago settled snugly over the 1890s, which have come to be regarded as dear, dead days of innocence, of straw boaters and bicycles built for two—a time so utterly unlike the depraved present as to horrify sensitive consciences.
Yet, to not a few of the sensitive consciences which inhabited them, the ′90s were themselves an alarming decade. For a fact, industrial civilization seemed triumphant. Prosperity was widespread and the world in general at peace. But even in this blazing noonday, dark shadows seemed to be creeping 'round.
The underpinnings of 19th century civilization were, in the century's last decade, coming loose. Property was threatened.