WHY SUFFRAGIST ?

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIV, Issue 4, 6 January 1910, Page 3

WHY SUFFRAGIST ?

(Elizabeth Robins, in Everybody's Magazine.)

It is significant that the modern representatives of the women whose -distinctive work was first removed from home to factory form the largest and most powerful group of organised women to-day demanding the vote. These are the textile workers, who, as a result of organisation, have higher wages, better environment in labour, a higher standard of home comfort, and;more generous provision for their children and their own old age, than any other group of working-women. Yet what of their security,' their hope for the future?

Thousands of women outside the textile trades are working, without let or hindrance, for a starvation wage; sweated labour is not only permitted jbut is even encouraged by the Government; and thousands of women workers are forced into the ranks of the unemployed. Yet, with all the difficulty women encounter iri getting decently ..pa id work, when they have got it, the Government, in the person of Mr John Burns, now advocates taking this well-paid textile work away from them and giving it to men. It is proposed that mar.ried women (a great proportion are married) be compelled to stay at home.. No question of asking the women, what they think about this proposal. But what they think about it may be inferred from the fact that the threat of interference with the right to.work has given us 96,000 Suffragists. The manifesto of the .Lancashire Textile Workers says: . - .

"The- position of the unenfranchised working women, who are by their voteless condition shut out from all political influence, is daily becoming more. precarious. >■ They cannot hope to hold their own in industrial matters where their interests may clash with those, of the enfranchised fellow-order or employers. The one all-absorbing and vital political question for labouring women, is^to force an entrance into the ranks of responsible citizens^ in whose, hands lies the, solution of the problems which are at present convulsing the industrial world."

A friend of mine fell into talk with a tidy, contented-looking mill-woman of thirty odd in a tram-car the other day.. The woman spoke of her home with pride. "It doesn't suffer, then, by your being so much away?" "Oh, no. I have a housekeeper." At my friend's evident surprise she explained: "A. ; nice oldish. body who isn't" up to.mill'wol-k, biit\keeps the house and children as neat'as a pin." "Children?-You think' it's good for them ■to have their mother so much away?" ■

"They're away themselves a good bit. They go to school. But it is good for them that my thirty shillings a week makes us able to feed and clothe them decent. And it's.good for the housekeeper-body who hasn't a house of her own, to have mine to work in and earn her bread honest." It would have done some of the legislators good to hear that woman's views on the proposed restriction of woman's work.

i •"w ih^- £^ ll T y?u £°>" asked my triend, "if Mr John Burns carries out his scheme?"

"Eh," said the woman. "If he does that, I suppose we'll have to clem (starve)." Those who would like to believe that the law, or at all events its administrators, can be trusted to show special "favouritism" to women, should! take counsel also with Mrs A— of Chelsea. She is the wife of a mechanic, who ill-treats her so that she goes in fear of her life. She took her little boys the other day to the police court and applied for a separation order. The magistrate, told her to "go. home and do the best she could." The children, who had seen the indignities and the physical danger to which 'their mother was subjected by their father, received in the police court a further lesson in the duties of man toward woman. They heard this symbol of justice and of ultimate power—the awe-inspiring magistrate—tell their mother that she had not yet suffered sufficient injury at tho hands of her husband to have earned the right to live away from him. The learned opinion was that "a man was entitled to knock his wife about a bit." Whether the magistrate was shameless enough to use those very words—as reported by the woman—or whether he ■ merely

showed her that was his view of the husbandly prerogative, the effect upon his audience was the same. The law allowed men this privilege. Indeed, that ihe law should do so excited little surprise in the minds of persons familiar with the petty fines imposed upon \ notorious wife-beaters, and the fre-quemly-.proyed fact that it is legally ( a more, reprehensible act to steal a loaf to feed yo.ur starving- family, --than to givG the mother of that , family a pair of black ey«s.

But to be beaten without redress, without even hope of future legal protection—that is not the worst that may come to this "go home and do your best," which is all the law has to offer. Of the women who have sorry cause to know that is the wife of a day labourer living not two miles from Westminster. Mrs B was another applicant for a separation order (since . divorce is too dear a luxury for any of this class). The ground of Mrs B——'s plea is the infidelity of her husband. "You cau't get a separation order for that."

•"Well, but he brings the woman home—he keeps her in the house.". "That is no ground." Then the magistrate is given the heart of the grievance. The husband, insists on having the interloper in his wife's bedroom. No redress. Because the husband has not turned the wife out, because he professes himself willing to support her, the supplanted wife is refused a separation order. She is coerced into accepting the degrading conditions laid down by the man inside her home because all the men outside (represented by the magistrate) say these degrading conditions are just and legal. Those legislators who propose to make it illegal for married women to work outside their homes do not even begin by doing away with the old-age legal abuses which any day make a woman's home the worst place for her on the face of the earth.

If a woman of the kind whose story I have just told is still young enough and strong enough, just one way of -escape is opened to her this side of death. \ For that woman (and many another) there is no salvation from moral degradation except the chance to earn her own living. If this woman has a daughter or the ear of any young woman, is it' to vbe .supposed she will riot urge the girl to get some meaii's of "livelihood other than, or in addition to, the profession of wife? It is a proof of .the moral need women feel^ of economic independence that, against natural inclinations and iron-bound traditions, more and more women leave their homes in search of work, in spite of the stumbling blocks placed in their way, and in spite of the_ unfair discrimination made against women's work, merely because it is done by practically a slaveclass.