As We Are and As We May Be - Walter Besant (most recommended books txt) 📗

upon any who would endow her with 13s. 6d. a week? Why, there are Homes where she could live in comfort on 12s., and have a solid 1s. 6d. to spare. She would even be able to give alms to others not so rich.

Take, then, a thousand pounds--L35 a year--as a minimum. Take the case of a professional man who cannot save much, but who is resolved on endowing his daughters with an annuity of at least L35 a year. There are ways and means of doing this which are advertised freely and placed in everybody's hands. Yet they seem to fail in impressing the public. One does not hear among one's professional friends of the endowment of girls. Yet one does hear, constantly, that someone is dead and has left his daughters without a penny.

First of all, the rules and regulations of the Post Office, which are published every quarter, provide what seems the most simple of these ways.

I take one table only, that of the cost of an annuity deferred for twenty-five years. If the child is five years of age, and under six, an annuity of L1, beginning after twenty-five years, can be purchased for a yearly premium of 12s. 7d., or for a payment of L12 3s. 8d., the money to be returned in case of the child's death. An annuity of L35, therefore, would cost a yearly premium of L22 0s. 5d., or a lump sum of L426 8s. 4d.

One or two of the insurance companies have also prepared tables for the endowment of children. I find, for instance, in the tables issued by the North British and Mercantile that an annual payment of L3 11s. begun at infancy will insure the sum of L100 at twenty-one years of age, with the return of the premium should the child die, or that L35 10s. paid annually will insure the sum of L1,000. There is also in these tables a method of payment by which, should the father die and the premiums be therefore discontinued, the money will be paid just the same. No doubt, if the practice were to spread, every insurance company would take up this kind of business.

It is not every young married man who could afford to pay so large a sum of money as L426 in one lump; on the contrary, very few indeed could do so. But suppose, which is quite possible, that he were to purchase, with the first L12 he could save, a deferred annuity of L1 for his child, and so with the next L12, and so with the next, until he had placed her beyond the reach of actual destitution; and suppose, again, that his conscience was so much awakened to the duty of thus providing for her that amusement and pleasure would be postponed or curtailed until this duty was performed, just as amusement is not thought of until the rent and taxes and housekeeping are first defrayed: in that case there would be few young married people indeed who would not speedily be able to purchase this small annuity of L35 a year. And with every successive payment the sense of the value of the thing, its importance, its necessity, would grow more and more in the mind; and with every payment would increase the satisfaction of feeling that the child was removed from destitution by one pound a year more. It took a very long time to create in men's minds the duty of life insurance. That has now taken so firm a hold on people that, although the English bride brings no dot, the bridegroom is not permitted to marry her until he settles a life insurance upon her. When once the mother thoroughly understands that by the exercise of a little more self-denial her daughter can be rendered independent for life, that self-denial will certainly not be wanting. Think of the vast sums of money which are squandered by the middle classes of this country, even though they are more provident than the working classes. The money is not spent in any kind of riot: not at all; the middle classes are, on the whole, most decorous and sober: it is spent in living just a little more luxuriously than the many changes and chances of mortal life should permit. It is by lowering the standard of living that the money must be saved for the endowment of the daughters; and since the children cost less in infancy than when they grow older, it is then that the saving must be made. Everyone knows that there are thousands of young married people who can only by dint of the strictest economy make both ends meet. It is not for them that I speak. Another voice, far more powerful than mine, should thunder into their hearts the selfishness and the wickedness of bringing into the world children for whom they can make no provision whatever, and who are destined to be thrown into the battle-field of labour provided with no other weapons than the knowledge of reading and writing. It is bad enough for the boys; but as for the girls--they had better have been thrown as soon as born to the lions. I speak rather to those who are in better plight, who live comfortably upon the year's income, which is not too much, and who look forward to putting their boys in the way of an ambitious career, and to marrying their daughters. But as for the endowment of the girls, they have not even begun to think about it. Their conscience has not been yet awakened, their fears not yet aroused; they look abroad and see their friends struck down by death or disaster, but they never think it may be their turn next. And yet the happiness to reflect, if death or disaster does come, that your girls are safe!

One sees here, besides, a splendid opening for the rich uncle, the benevolent godfather, the affectionate grandfather, the kindly aunt, the successful brother. They will come bearing gifts--not the silver cup, if you please, but the Deferred Annuity. 'I bring you, my dear, in honour of your little Molly's birthday, an increase of five pounds to her Deferred Annuity. This makes it up to twenty pounds, and the money-box getting on, you say, to another pound. Capital! we shall have her thirty-five pounds in no time now.' What a noble field for the uncle!

The endowment of the daughter is essentially a woman's question. The bride, or at least her mother for her, ought to consider that, though every family quiver varies in capacity with the income, her own lot may be to have a quiver full. Heaven forbid, as Montaigne said, that we should interfere with the feminine methods, but common prudence seems to dictate the duty of this forecast. Let, therefore, the demand for endowment come from the bride's mother. All that she would be justified in asking of a man whose means are as yet narrow, would be such an endowment, gradually purchased, as would keep the girls from starvation.

For my own part, I think that no woman should be forced to work at all, except at such things as please her. When a woman marries, for instance, she voluntarily engages herself to do a vast quantity of work. To look after the house and to bring up the children involves daily, unremitting labour and thought. If she has a vocation for any kind of work, as for Art, or Letters, or Teaching, let her obey the call and find her happiness. Generally she has none. The average woman--I make this statement with complete confidence--hates compulsory work: she hates and loathes it. There are, it is true, some kinds of work which must be done by women. Well, there will always be enough for those occupations among women who prefer work to idleness.

There is another very serious consideration. There is only so much work--a limited quantity--in the world: so many hands for whom occupation can be found--and the number of hands wanted does not very greatly exceed that of the male hands ready for it. Now, by giving this work to women, we take it from the men. If we open the Civil Service to women, we take so many posts from the men, which we give to the women, _at a lower salary_; if they become cashiers, accountants, clerks, they take these places from the men, _at a lower salary_. Always they take lower pay, and turn the men out. Well, the men must either go elsewhere, or they must take the lower pay. In either case the happiest lot of all--that of marriage--is rendered more difficult, because the men are made poorer; the position of the toiler becomes harder, because he gets worse pay; then man's sense of responsibility for the women of his family is destroyed. Nay, in some cases the men actually live, and live contentedly, upon the labour of their wives. But when all is said about women, and their rights and wrongs, and their work and place, and their equality and their superiority, we fall back at last upon nature. There is still, and will always remain with us, the sense in man that it is his duty to work for his wife, and the sense in woman that nothing is better for her than to receive the fruits of her husband's labour.

Let us endow the Daughters: those who are not clever, in order to save them from the struggles of the Incompetent and the hopelessness of the Dependent; those who are clever, so as to give them time for work and training. The Bread-winner may die: his powers may cease: he may lose his clients, his reputation, his popularity, his business; in a thousand forms misfortune and poverty may fall upon him. Think of the happiness with which he would then contemplate that endowment of a Deferred Annuity. And the endowment will not prevent or interfere with any work the girls may wish to do. It will even help them in their work. My brothers, let our girls work if they wish; perhaps they will be happier if they work let them work at whatever kind of work they may desire; but not--oh not--because they must.

[1888.]



FROM THIRTEEN TO SEVENTEEN

In the history of every measure designed for the amelioration of the people there may be observed four distinct and clearly marked stages. First, there is the original project, fresh from the brain of the dreamer, glowing with the colours of his imagination, a figure fair and strong as the newly born Athene. By its single-handed power mankind are to be regenerated, and the millennium is to be at once taken in hand. There are no difficulties which it will not at once clear away; there are no obstacles which will not vanish at its approach as the morning mist is burned up by the newly risen sun. The dreamer creates a school, and presently among his disciples there arises one who is practical enough to reduce the dream to a possible and working scheme. The advocates of the Cause are still, however, a good way from getting the scheme established. The battle with the opposition follows, in which one has to contend--first with those who cannot be touched by any generous aims, always a pretty large body; next with those who are afraid of the people; and lastly with those who have private interests of their own to defend. The triumph which presently arrives by no means concludes the history of the agitation, because there is certain to follow at no distant day the discovery that the measure has somehow failed to achieve those glorious results which were so freely promised. It has, in fact, gone to swell the pages of