Canon Scott Holland on the Home

The tradition of the English home, dear to all hearts, said Canon Scott Holland, in a sermon at St. Paul’s, yesterday, to a congregation of the delegates of the International Women’s Suffrage Conference, was crumbling and perishing all about us.

At both ends of society alike disaster was being enacted. At the one extreme wealth and luxury were dissolving and corrupting the discipline that knitted the family together in a mutual interchange of serviceable functions; there were no functions left for anybody, and the services were all hired or farmed out; there was only one intelligible desire, and that was to have a good time.

Then at the other extremity the terrible pressure of competitve industry was more and more laying women under the dire necessity of becoming the bread-winners of the household. They could do it cheaper than the men they displaced, therefore every year we found heavier burdens on the backs of women.

If we desired to alter this we had got to reconsider the entire method of our industry.

Morning Leader, 3.5.09.