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if he shall find that the same are not repugnant to law, give a certificate to that effect; and thereupon the following sections of this Act, that is to say, the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second, fortieth, forty-first, fortysecond, and forty-third, shall extend and be applicable to the said institution and Society, as fully as if the same were a Society established under this Act.

The sections enumerated in clause XI. may be thus briefly stated. XVII. Friendly Societies under the Act to appoint Trustees, and give notice of their appointment to the Registrar.

XVIII. The property of the Society to be vested in such Trustees. XIX. Actions to be brought by or against them.

XX. Limitations of their responsibility provided nevertheless, that no Trustee or Trustees of any such Society shall be liable to make good any deficiency which may arise or happen in the funds of such Society, but shall be liable only for the moneys which shall be actually received by him on account of such Society.

XXI. Treasurer to give security.

XXII. To render just account of the moneys.

XL. Disputes decided by the rules of the Society, which are made binding, and without appeal.

XLI. In cases where no arbitrators have been appointed, if no decision shall be made by the said arbitrators within forty days after application has been made by the member or person claiming through or under a member or under the rules of the Society, it shall be made to the County Court of the district within which the usual or principal place of business of the Society shall be situate; and such Court shall, upon the application of any person interested in the matter, entertain such application, and give such relief, and make such orders and directions in relation to the matter of such application, as hereinafter mentioned, or as may now be given or made by the Court of Chancery in respect either of its ordinary or its special or statutory jurisdiction; and the decision of such County Court upon and in relation to such application as aforesaid shall not be subject to any appeal; provided always, that in Scotland the sheriff within his county, and in Ireland the assistant barrister within his district, shall have the same jurisdiction as is hereby given to the Judge of a County Court.

XLII. In all cases where the order of such County Court shall be for the payment of money, the same may be enforced in the same manner as the ordinary judgments of such Court are enforced; but where the order of the said Court shall be for the doing of some act, not being for the payment of money, it shall be lawful for the Judge of such County Court in his said order to order the party to do such act, or that in default of his doing it he shall pay a certain sum of money; and in case he refuse or neglect to do the act required, upon demand in that behalf, the sum of money or penalty in the said order may then be recovered in the same manner as a judgment for debt or damages in such Court.

We have thus given our readers a statement of the legal form under which all Friendly Societies must be created. Although they may prove two pages of very dry reading, they will nevertheless assist those who are interested in such Societies, and anxious to establish them, in estimating the necessary precautions and preliminary steps. The framing of Friendly Societies in such a manner as that women can be participators in their benefits requires special consideration, which must be deferred to a future number. The reason of this is evident from the following anecdote. In the month of June last, we happened to be staying in a factory town where women were largely employed. Hearing some talk of a new Friendly Society for men, about which a grocer in the town was taking much interest, we went to his shop to inquire details. We found that he had just received the printed provisions of the Act from London, and was carefully drawing up the regulations in accordance with them. We asked him why he did not include women among the members, since, in a town whose staple industry was conducted almost entirely by them, they must be considered as independent members of the working class, and it was very desirable that they should be able to appropriate part of their earnings to a provision for sickness. 'Oh,' said the grocer, we cannot have women in our Friendly Societies under the same rules as the men; why, they are so different-they would be always on our list of payments. A man does not stay away from his work unless he has a fever or a broken leg; but if a mother is knocked up with sitting up all night with a sick baby, she can't go to the factory, and so she gets 'thrown out of work.'

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The grocer thus pointed out in vernacular the distinctions which exist between men and women as subjects for assurance. We will add that the balance does not invariably turn against the latter. Women live rather longer, on the average, than men, though they are more liable to be "thrown out of work." We shall return to this subject, and endeavor to suggest the practical rules deducible from these facts.

(To be continued.)

XVII-A YEAR'S EXPERIENCE IN WOMAN'S

WORK.

A PAPER READ AT THE MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROMOTION OF SOCIAL SCIENCE, GLASGOW, 1860.

NEARLY a year has now passed since, through the means of the last meeting of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science, public attention in England was largely drawn to the subject of female industry. Nor was it in England alone that this vexed question came under discussion; France also contributed her thoughts; and two elaborate articles in the Révue des deux Mondes,

and other papers in less important periodicals, testified that our difficulties are also felt, although under somewhat modified conditions, on the other side of the Channel.

My title to again introduce this topic to the notice of the Association is simple and direct-that of having experience to communicate in regard to remedial measures undertaken against the evils which were deplored last year-experiments limited, it is true, to one circle of people, and in the main, to one centre of action; yet none the less valuable, because they afford us certain definite lessons which a less concentrated sphere might less clearly bestow.

In November, 1859, the ENGLISH WOMAN'S JOURNAL had already been dealing with the various questions of woman's industry for not quite two years. The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women was as yet inchoate, but maturing its plans, and asking for affiliation to this Association. A Reading-room for ladies, and a Register for noting applications for the more intellectual and responsible departments of female labor, had just been brought into existence. Such was the beginning of our present organization, a year ago. Last winter every department received a great accession of funds and of activity. The Journal greatly increased in circulation; the Society was absorbed into one created by and dependent on this Association, with a committee of twelve ladies and twelve gentlemen, which immediately began to consider the formation of model industrial classes; the Reading-room was removed to large and excellent premises in a central situation; and, as a natural consequence of these improvements, to which a wide publicity was given by the press, the Register was literally deluged with applicants. It is not my province here to give an account of these separate departments of exertion towards bettering the condition of women. The report of the Society will be read in due time and place, and details regarding the successful establishment of a lawcopying business will be given therein; the Victoria Press will tell its own story of the introduction of women into the printing trade. That of which I desire to speak to you here is the action of the Register, to which I alluded above, not so much of the little it has been able to effect, as of the much it has taught us regarding the real supply of educated labor in England.

When first this Register was opened, it was merely intended to act in a limited way among the ladies at that time subscribing to the ENGLISH WOMAN'S JOURNAL, who, in those days of its infancy, numbered a few hundreds. Many of these ladies were actively concerned in charity; and had founded, or supported, or visited, industrial schools, and small hospitals, homes for invalids, and refuges of different kinds-institutions, in fact, requiring female officers. We thought that by opening a register which should act merely among our subscribers, we might occasionally find opportunities of putting the right woman into the right place; that Mrs. A. might recommend an excellent matron or school teacher, and Mrs. B.

hear of her through our simple plan, combining an entry in a register book and an advertisement in the Journal for the current month. If in this way we get two really good and well-trained officials placed in a month, it would compensate for the little extra trouble. Being thus, as it were, a plan private to the circulation of the Journal, it was not otherwise advertised, nor was any publicity then sought for it. But when the whole question started into life, the advertisements put forth by the Society appear to have aroused the attention of women in all parts of the country; and as the Society and the Journal now had contiguous offices in the same house, no practical distinction could be made, and the secretaries of either were literally deluged with applications for employment. We had no sooner explained to the ladies who came on Thursday that the formation by the Society of model classes or businesses for a select number did not imply an ability on our part to find remunerative work for indiscriminate applicants, than the same task had to be gone over again on Friday. Indeed, I remember one Friday, in the month of March, when twenty women applied at our counter for work whereby they could gain a livelihood—all of them more or less educated- -all of them with some claim to the title of a lady.

Although not professing personally to enter into these applications, the replies to which devolved on the secretaries, I was very constantly in the office of the Journal when they were made, and entered into conversation with the ladies; in many cases, indeed, they came with notes of introduction to me or to my co-editor, and I had to ask them what kind of work they wanted, and, indeed, a more important question, for what kind of work they were fitted. In this way we may certainly lay claim to have heard more of women's wants during the last year than any other people in the kingdom; and that, just because the demands were so indefinite—the ladies did not want to be governesses, they wanted to be something else, and we were to advise them. In this way I have conversed with ladies of all ages and conditions: with young girls of seventeen finding it necessary to start in life; with single women who found teaching unendurable as life advanced; with married ladies whose husbands were invalided or not forthcoming; with widows who had children to support; with tradesmen's daughters, and with people of condition fallen into low estate.

To find them work through the Journal Register was a sheer impossibility. Not only were they far more numerous than one had ever contemplated; but they were of a different class. I had hoped to hear of and to supply a few well-trained picked women to places of trust among our subscribers; but here were literally hundreds of women neither well-trained nor picked; outnumbering any demand by ninety-nine per cent. The Victoria Press and the Law-Copying Class got into work, and employed from ten to twenty girls and women each; but it stands to reason that more could not be drafted into either establishment during the first year of its existence, with

out ruining the enterprise; while some time must be allowed to elapse before the idea involved in these model experiments could be expected to be seized by the commercial public, and an entrance be effected by women into either trade at large.

Since, therefore, we possessed but small power to aid numbers through the medium of our own organization, it remained to be seen whether we could form a link between our Register and, 1stly, the semi-mechanical occupations to which women have acquired, or might acquire, a title; and, 2ndly, the benevolent institutions of the country; so as to supply workers to the one, and matrons and female officials to the other.

To this end we adopted an idea struck out by a friend, and printed long slips for distribution, containing, besides the addresses of the Victoria Press and Law-Copying Class (in case any vacancy might occur, or more hands be wanted), the addresses of the two chief offices of the Electric Telegraph in London, in both of which women are largely employed; and also the addresses of the two chief institutions for training and employing nurses; also of Mrs. Lushington's cooking school, &c., intending to add to the list whenever we heard of any new institutions which would be regarded as centres of women's work. At the bottom of this list we notified that we ourselves kept a limited register for really competent matrons, clerks, and secretaries.

Now, in regard to what I have termed semi-mechanical occupations, I will dismiss them with a few remarks, to which I earnestly request your consideration. I am in this paper considering the needs of educated women ;- of women who have been born and bred ladies; it is a real distinction from which, even in America, the most earnest democrats cannot escape, and which in England, however much the strict edges of the lines of demarcation between class and class may be rubbing off, still exists in full force. Looking at it from one point of view, we are sometimes tempted to regret the false notions of gentility which prevent women working bravely at whatever comes nearest to hand; but, in considering a whole class at large, an honest observer must feel that there is something noble-something beyond a mere effort after "gentility," in the struggle to preserve the habits, the dress, and the countless moral and material associations of the rank to which they were born. A good and a refined education is a very valuable thing; and if educated women are to work at all for money, and I see no escape for a certain number being obliged in our country to do so, that education ought to secure them something more than a mere pittance.

Now the semi-mechanical occupation of the telegraph, and I believe it will be found to be the same with all semi-mechanical occupations, does not (except in the department of overseers) supply the needs of an educated woman, unless she be quite alone in the world, having neither parent nor child to support; and even then the wages

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