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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
The employment of girls in offices where men used to be employed is naturally one of the causes that swell the numbers of the unemployed. And yet unmarried girls must exist somehow, and earn their living. The solution is again to be found in the simplification of life ; for if the standard of life is too high for them the poorer section of the people cannot but find it difficult to marry. I cannot help thinking that the proper place for a girl is the home which she should decorate and sweeten with her influence. The money that is earned in an office may bring some sort of independence, but it is altogether inadequate to take the place of the happiness that a married womnan enjoys and has a right to enjoy in life. And, not to mince matters, sexual laxity, and with it hypocrisy, and what is worse, crimes (like abortion and infanticide) become things of daily occurrence. If any one will dwell upon the state of the mind of an unmarried girl wlio expects to become a mother, he will not fail to realize that it is simply impossible to picture to oneself fully the harrowing thoughts of horror and shame which she experiences and with which she is tormented for months running, without respite or relief. Those who understand the nature of the Spiritual Laws know how terrible will be the suffering to be endured in consequence of such thoughts, in the future re-incarnations of the soul. Surely, all this is avoidable; if the society be founded upon a proper basis. In any case, the earning of a small pittance as a typist, or clerk, in an office, is no adequate compensation for such suffering. The point is this that a girl that pushes a man out of an office and takes his place, deliberately reduces the number of eligible men for marriage, and very likely will herself be denied the prospect and joy of the connubial state. And since human nature will have its own way, it is idle to expect that all the marriageable unmarried will find it easy to practise celibacy, with the result that hypocrisy and crime, as described above, must become of frequent occurrence. In the culture of ahimsa it is
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