Page:Women Wanted.djvu/211

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THE NEW WAGE ENVELOPE
195

could at home. She can't make plum pudding in the home, as they can at the canteen for 2d. a portion. The chef who is buying for 1500 people gets rates that she never could for seven from the huckster and the fish-monger and the rest. Besides, Mrs. Black never had any special training for cooking, as she now has for engineering. In the shop she has learned to do one thing very well indeed. In her home there wasn't any one thing she ever had learned to do very well. And she worked ineffectually and inefficiently at several highly skilled occupations: child rearing and sewing and cooking and baking and laundry work and, occasionally, nursing. Isn't it remarkable at any stage of the world's evolution, that woman should have been expected to carry a schedule like that? You never found Mr. Black attempting to be a carpenter and a tailor and a plumber and a gardener and a whole lot of other useful trades all in one. No, Mr. Black's rule always was, stick to one trade. Jack-of-all-trades! Why, everybody knows that he could have been master of none!

And Mrs. Black wasn't. Now, if after the war, she prefers to stay in engineering or some other trade, why should Mr. Black worry? The lady will pay for her own dinner and other things besides. She can send the wash to the laundry, and the baby will be at the crèche for the day, and the children will have dinner at school. And at night, the family will have supper together, which Mr. and Mrs. Black on their way home from the factory can bring from