As We Are and As We May Be | Page 6

steps which may be applied--not for those who are now in
this hell, but for those innocent children whose lot it may be to join the
hapless band. The subject concerns all of us who have to work, all who
have to provide for our families; it concerns every woman who has
daughters: it concerns the girls themselves to such a degree that, if they
knew or suspected the dangers before them they would cry aloud for
prevention, they would rebel, they would strike the Fifth
Commandment out of the Tables. So great, so terrible, are the dangers
before them.
The absolute duty of teaching girls who may at some future time have
to depend upon themselves some trade, calling or profession, seems a
mere axiom, a thing which cannot be disputed or denied. Yet it has not
even begun to be practised. If any thought is taken at all of this
contingency, 'general intelligence' is still relied upon. There are,
however, other ways of facing the future.
In France, as everybody knows, no girl born of respectable parents is
unprovided with a dot; there is no family, however poor, which does
not strive and save in order to find their daughter some kind of dot. If
she has no dot, she remains unmarried. The amount of the dot is
determined by the social position of the parents. No marriage is
arranged without the dot forming an important part of the business. No
bride goes empty-handed out of her father's house. And since families
in France are much smaller than in this country, a much smaller
proportion of girls go unmarried.

In this country no girls of the lower class, and few of the middle class,
ever have any dot at all. They go to their husbands empty-handed,
unless, as sometimes happens, the father makes an allowance to the
daughter. All they have is their expectation of what may come to them
after the father's death, when there will be insurances and savings to be
divided. The daughter who marries has no dot. The daughter who
remains unmarried has no fortune until her father dies: very often she
has none after that event.
In Germany, where the custom of the dot is not, I believe, so prevalent,
there are companies or societies founded for the express purpose of
providing for unmarried women. They work, I am told, with a kind of
tontine--it is, in fact, a lottery. On the birth of a girl the father inscribes
her name on the books of the company, and pays a certain small sum
every year on her account. At the age of twenty-five, if she is still
unmarried, she receives the right of living rent free in two rooms, and
becomes entitled to a certain small annuity. If she marries she has
nothing. Those who marry, therefore, pay for those who do not marry.
It is the same principle as with life insurances: those who live long pay
for those who die young. If we assume, for instance, that four girls out
of five marry, which seems a fair proportion, the fifth girl receives five
times her own premium. Suppose that her father has paid £5 a year for
her for twenty-one years, she would receive the amount, at compound
interest, of £25 a year for twenty-one years--namely, about a thousand
pounds.
Only consider what a thousand pounds may mean to a girl. It may be
invested to produce £35 a year--that is to say, 13s. 6d. a week. Such an
income, paltry as it seems, may be invaluable; it may supplement her
scanty earnings: it may enable her to take a holiday: it may give her
time to look about her: it may keep her out of the sweater's hands: it
may help her to develop her powers and to step into the front rank.
What gratitude would not the necessitous gentlewoman bestow 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--£35 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 £35 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