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The Reality versus the Ideal: J. S. Mill's Treatment of Women, Workers, and Private Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Patricia Hughes
Affiliation:
Osgoode Hall

Abstract

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Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1979

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References

2 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, in Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. 10, ed. by Robson, J. M. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 231Google Scholar.

3 Mill, J. S., Principles of Political Economy, Book III in Collected Works, Vol. 3, ed. by Robson, J. M. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 766–67Google Scholar (hereinafter Principles III).

4 ibid., 767.

5 Mill, Utilitarianism, 231; Subjection, 81.

6 On this point, see Burns, J. H., “J. S. Mill and Democracy, 1829–1861,” Political Studies 5 (1957), 284Google Scholar.

7 Mill, Subjection, 147 and 71–73.

8 Mill, J. S., On Liberty, in Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government (London: Dent, 1968), 75, 117Google Scholar.

9 Mill, Subjection, 94–95 and 34.

10 Mill, Principles III, 767; “The Claims of Labour,” in Essays on Economics and Society, in Collected Works, Vol. 4, ed. by Robson, J. M. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 373–74Google Scholar.

11 Mill, Principles III, 775.

12 Mill, J. S., “Thornton on Labour and Its Claims,” in Essays on Economics and Society, in Collected Works, Vol. 5, ed. by Robson, J. M. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 667Google Scholar. Cooperatives merely represent Mill's general approach to the various methods he suggested to remedy the distress of the workers; an analysis of his treatment of socialism generally would result in the same conclusion.

13 Mill, J. S., “Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform,” in Essays on Politics and Culture: John Stuart Mill, ed. by Himmelfarb, Gertrude (Garden City: Doubleday, 1962), 314–35Google Scholar; see also J. S. Mill, Representative Government, in Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, 209.

14 Hansard 187: 829 (May 20, 1867). It is possible that Mill's strong feelings about women's suffrage stemmed from his contact with the American woman suffrage movement. It has been argued that the real significance of that movement was that “as citizens and voters, women would participate directly in society as individuals, not indirectly through their subordinate positions as wives and mothers”; it “revealed the possibility of an alternate sexual order.” Thus the suffragists did not believe it necessary to fight for access to occupations; similarly, Mill downplayed the need for women to practice an occupation outside the home. The American and British movements had a major difference, however; the American demand for the vote applied universally to all women; the British demand would not have applied to married women because they could not own property. (See DuBois, Ellen, “The Radicalism of the Woman Suffrage Movement: Notes Toward the Reconstruction of Nineteenth Century Feminism,” Feminist Studies [1975]. 63–71Google Scholar, especially 65–66.)

15 Mill, Subjection, passim.

16 See, for example Stephen, Leslie, The English Utilitarians, Vol. 3 (London: Duckworth and Co., 1900), 285Google Scholar; and Millett, Kate, Sexual Politics (New York: Avon, 1971), 91Google Scholar and 108.

17 Mill, Utilitarianism, 257–58.

18 Ibid., 409–10.

19 Mill, “The Savings of the Middle and Working Classes,” in Collected Works, Vol. 5, 415.

20 Mill, Principles II, 108–09.

21 Mill, , Autobiography (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), 218Google Scholar.

22 Mill, Representative Government, 255; The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill: 1849–1873, in Collected Works, Vol. 16, ed. by Mineka, Francis E. and Lindley, Dwight N. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 1014Google Scholar (hereinafter Later Letters 16).

23 Mill, “Reorganization of the Reform Party,” in Essays on Politics and Culture, ed. by G. Himmelfarb, 294–95.

24 Mill was less reluctant to make property a criterion at the local level, however, because “the honest and frugal dispensation of money” was more important at that level than at the national level (Representative Government, 349). The aim was to prevent “the labouring class from becoming preponderant in Parliament”; this end was more important than the means (plural voting) and Mill would have been satisfied if it would have been achieved by other means (Later Letters 16, 1209; The Later Letter of John Stuart Mill: 1849–1873, in Collected Works, Vol. 15, ed. by Mineka, Francis E. and Lindley, Dwight N. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 596Google Scholar.

25 Mill, “Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform,” 315.

26 Mill, Representative Government, 281–82.

27 Rose, Michael, The Relief of Poverty, 1834–1914 (London: Macmillan, 1972), 17Google Scholar: “in the early 1840s between 16 and 20 percent of adult able-bodied persons in receipt of poor relief were being aided because of ‘insufficient wages.’”

28 For Mill's views of female nature, see The Subjection of Women, 36, 104–06, 109, 111–14, 117–18, 123–24; he believed abstract thinking to be on a higher level than practical thinking (Autobiography, 131).

29 Mill, The Subjection of Women, 48–49.

30 Mill, J. S., The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill: 1812–1848, in Collected Works, Vol. 12, ed. by Mineka, Francis E. and Lindley, Dwight N. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963), 123–24Google Scholar.

31 Mill, J. S., The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill: 1849–1873, in Collected Works, Vol. 17, ed. by Mineka, Francis E. and Lindley, Dwight N. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 1693Google Scholar.

32 Mill, The Subjection of Women, 87–88; Later Utters 17, 1742.

33 Thompson, William, Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, against the Pretensions of the Other half, men, to retain them in political and thence in civil and domestic slavery; in reply to a paragraph of Mr. Mill's celebrated “Article on Government” (New York: Burt Franklin, 1970 [1825]), 179Google Scholar. The Mr. Mill referred to is, of course, James Mill, John's father. Thompson's book generally provides an interesting radical contrast to The Subjection of Women.

34 Mill, The Subjection of Women, 182–83 and 89.

35 Mill, , “Early Essay on Marriage and Divorce,” in Rossi, Alice S. (ed.), Essays on Sex Equality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 7475Google Scholar.

36 The effect of industrialization on women, see Pinchbeck, Ivy, Women, Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969 [1930]), 1Google Scholar and passim; Boulding, Elise, Women in the Twentieth Century World (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977), 64Google Scholar; and Neff, Wanda F., Victorian Working Women: An Historical and Literary Study of Women in British Industries and Professions, 1832–1850 (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1966), 37Google Scholar and passim.

37 Mill, The Subjection of Women, 89. When Mill did talk about the kind of work women could do outside the home, he suggested that “the only difference between the employments of women and those of men will be, that those which partake most of the beautiful, or which require delicacy and task rather than muscular exertion, will naturally fall to the share of women….” “Early Essay on Marriage and Divorce,” 77.

38 Mill, The Subjection of Women, 161, 166.

39 Mill, Later Letters 17, 1614–15.

40 Mill, The Subjection of Women, 66–67.

41 Mill, The Later Letters 17, 1642.

42 Mill, “Early Essay on Marriage and Divorce,” 76.

43 Mill, Principles II, 208.

44 Ibid., 215.

45 Ibid., 208.

46 Ibid., 201.

47 Ibid., 217.

48 Mill, Later Letters 18, 1739–40.

49 Mill, “Tocqueville on Democracy in America, vol. II” in Essays on Politics and Culture, ed. by G. Himmelfarb, 329; “Thornton on Labour and Its Claims.” 655.

50 Mill, “The Savings of the Middle and the Working Classes,” 415–16 (author's emphasis).

51 Ibid., 429.

52 Ibid., 419.

53 Hansard 184: 997 (July 17, 1866). This motion was for an “Address for ‘Return of the number of Freeholders, Householders and others in England and Wales who, fulfilling the conditions of property or entail prescribed by law as the qualification for the Electoral Franchise, are excluded from the Franchise by reason of their sex.’”

54 Mill, Principles II, 225; Principles III, 887.

55 Mill, Principles II, 225–26. This recommendation appeared in the 1865 edition.

56 Mill, , “The Right of Property in Land,” Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. 4 (2nd ed.; London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1875), 290Google Scholar.

57 Mill, Principles II, 394–96.

58 The analysis of workers' status is based on Marx's discussion of the question in Wage-Labour and Capital (New York: International Publishers, 1969), especially 1719, 31 and 32Google Scholar.