WOMAN, THE MANAGER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 200, 21 February 1914, Page 4

WOMAN, THE MANAGER.

There are indications that women aro inclined to revolt against trade-union-ism, with its "syndicalist" development and its general strike without adequate cause, which involves .the workers'wives and their children in needless suffering, The trade-unionists, too, are jealous of women's growing influence, and are hostile to their competition in the industrial sphere. This mutual antagonism may make for peace, and it may make for war—that is, it may conduce to better relations between employer and employed, and at the same time it may produce open hostility between the sexes. The drama, "Woman on Her Own," translated for the Women's Theatre in London, from the French of Brieux, gives some hard knocks to the male trade-unionist, Brieux shows the working-man as selfish, foul-mouthed, illbehaved and violent, objecting far more to the woman's capacity, orderliness and industry than to'her weaknesses; jealous of her attempts to do without him, and afraid of being dominated by, her industry, where he cannot resortto his fists, as he often does in his home. And Mr. (!. Bernard Shaw, the translator of the play, traces the working man's jealousy of woman to her superior capacity for management. He remarks that in our industrial system the manager has tyrannical powers and is deeply dreaded by the workers, and he proceeds:—"Xow women, as it happens, have always had to manage households, however great, whereas workingmen have never had to manage anything. Working-men feel that women manage them at home, interfere with them, curb their expenditure, lecture them on their conduct, and never relax any advantage they are allowed or can take by moral force. This is bearable at home, where the interests of the man and woman are so far identical that poverty for one means poverty for both; but in dustry, where there is the sharpest conflict of interests and the manager is the ally of the employer and the bloodsucker of tho employee, it opens up a terrifying and' humiliating prospect." It would seem, therefore, that the biggest task before trade unionists is not the elimination of the male '"scab," but .the continued subjection of women and the prevention of their competition with men in the industrial sphere.