As We Are and As We May Be | Page 6

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 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 ��1, beginning after twenty-five years, can be purchased for a yearly premium of 12s. 7d., or for a payment of ��12 3s. 8d., the money to be returned in case of the child's death. An annuity of ��35, therefore, would cost a yearly premium of ��22 0s. 5d., or a lump sum of ��426 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