The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1892.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 25, 18 June 1892, Page 617

The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1892.

Perhaps the argument most ofien used against allowing women to vote is that it will lead mothers to neglect their homes. ‘ A woman’s proper place is her home ’ say the enemy, ‘and her duties are in looking after the comforts of her husband and the morals and up-bringing of her children.’ Before attacking this reasoning, which is utterly false, it is agreeable to be able to demolish the foundations on which it is founded. In order to neglect a home it stands to reason there must be a home to neglect, and most unfortunately there are a vast number of women with no homes either to care for or neglect—women who work their own way in the world, earn their own wage, pay their own share of the taxes, and who bitterly resent the denial of their undoubted right to say how those taxes shall be spent and supplied. But for an instant let us suppose that all women have homes. Would the privilege of having a vote lead them to neglect those homes ? Assuredly not. Does a man because he has a voice in the election of membersof Parliament neglect his business, starve his family, and behave in a manner at variance with every instinct of his nature ? Certainly not ; nor is there the remotest likelihood of a woman ever neglecting a home or domestic duties simply because she is allowed to vote.

There are women—many of them—who leave home to take care of itself in order that they may discuss the latest scandal with some kindred spirit, and there are men who let their affairs go to ruin while they recount rather spicier stories in the club or public house, but because these worthless creatures, male and female, do evil, it is not to be supposed that the discussion of sensible topics will lead sensible people to forget the responsibilities laid upon them by married or domestic life. The man who takes an interest in politics is no less steady than he who finds his whole amusement in racing, football, and kindred things. The woman who takes an interest in politics is not likely to be less agreeable or less staid than the lady whose whole interest settles in bonnets, dances, and the latest theory in babies. There are useless and utterly brainless women as there are utterly inane and unintellectual men, but because some women might use their vote with as little sense of responsibility and with as much immorality as a section of men do now, there is no reason why the majority of conscientious and thinking women should not use that vote as sensibly and usefully and well as any man that ever went to the poll.

Looking further into this objection we see more clearly its strange inconsistencies. It would be supposed from the volume of the indignant cackling on woman’s domestic duties—the neglect of home and the rest —that there was at least an election for every day in the calendar. What are the facts’ General elections take place in New Zealand once every three years. The ‘ byes ’ are not so frequent as to necessitate our taking them into account. Now, is it rational or reasonable to suppose for one moment that the privilege of recording her vote once in three years will lead woman to neglect her other duties for the intervening thirty-six-months? Such a point as this needs not argument to disprove ; it is self killed by its own absurdity.

It will doubtless be objected—actual voting is the least of all the evils—it is the meetings, etc., that will play havoc with the hearths and homes of the country. Now, except at election time, meetings are few and far between, and moreover these meetings nearly always take place at night when even poor woman’s work for the day may be supposed to be over. Having fed her husband and put the younger children to bed there is surely nothing to prevent her going to a political meeting with advantage to herself and be it said the meeting. It is not to be supposed that her poor dwarfed ami stunted intellect will understand or appreciate the full delights of * barracking ’ and shouting down an unpopular speaker. The subtle

joys of ‘ rotten egging ’ an inoffensive citizen whose only fault is standing for Parliament may’ not appeal to her as it does to the superior creature man ; she will not perhaps aspire to the display of small wit by the asking of clever (?) or impertinent questions, but perhaps as a calm, self-con-tained reasoning listener she will act a part not without advantage to herself and the country at large. It is not, however, easy to silence the enemy. They suppose elder children—what families they do supply '.— and indignantly declare that these are to be ‘ all over the streets,’ while mothers attend the meeting. If we are seriously to take this as an objection we are prepared to see our opponents raise their voice in indignant howl over every woman who attends a concert, theatre, or evening entertainment of any sort. This is surely not logical. If it be wrong to attend political meetings after seven, so it must be evil to patronize any of the pleasures we have mentioned. Political candidates are, moreover, wise in their generation. At least, in some minor respects they are —and when women get a vote they will fix times for meeting which shall be convenient to women. The most rabid defender of the faith that all women are domestic drudges cannot surely decree that there are no hours which a woman may not call her own. Men, anxious to secure the vote of women, will make women’s time theirs so that they may haply convince them by speechifying that they are the right men to represent them. There is another argument occasionally used, and which certainly does not merit being deferred for lengthier discussion another week. It is stated, contemptuously, that women will vote for the prettiest man, the handsomest fellow. The best answer to this would be, to take, at random, some dozen of the most rabid opponents of women’s franchise, and place them on a platform where it could be clearly seen, and decided, whether they had been chosen as husbands, because they were pretty men. Next week some further objections to the women’s franchise will be dealt with.

The cable columns of our daily press, never particularly inspiriting or enlivening, have recently contained items of a particularly gruesome and depressing character. The execution of that unmentionable scoundrel Deeming pales before the realism of the horror that 20,000 persons are actually starving in Yorkshire in consequence of the recent coal strike. Twenty thousand is, of course, a mere handful amongst colliers. Four times that number might vanish into thin air and create but an hour or so’s wonder. But when even a handful of people commence to die slowly of starvation, it is bound to create talk, and bound to cause a number of people (exclusive of the starved) to feel very uncomfortable. People who die of hunger are apt to be noisy. They have no consideration for the feelings of the agitators, who have brought them to strike and so to this pitch, and still less for the employers, whose disregard of their grievances predisposed them to lend a ready ear to the self-sacrificing gentlemen who organised them (at a salary), bullied the newspapers on their behalf, and helped them to see how much worse they were treated than they ever imagined. Starving men with starving wives and children will not be quiet. They have no sense of decency. They don’t appear to see that their hoarse shout for bread makes people feel most unpleasantly against the hard hearted employer, and inclines the public to say all sorts of unkind things about the wire-pullers and paid agitators who make cat’s paws of the ‘ pore workin’ man.’ No amount of fine talk will convince the starving man. He fails to see how the misery of his wife and family will benefit 'the cause.' His savagery extends equally to the men against whom he has risen, only to be crushed, and against the man who so strongly advised him to rebel.

It is most sincerely to be hoped that both sides have now learned the bitter lesson that strikes may mean the crippling of capital, but the suicide of labour. Surely this last proof is convincing. The Australian strike, the absurd New Zealand fiasco, the bootmakers in Auckland, the tramway men in Wellington. What good, what shade of good has been done by these and similar strikes during the last year or eighteen months’ The misery spread in New South Wales and Victoria speaks for itself. Every mail some new particulars arrive. In New Zealand, thanks to the natural advantages, but little harm has been done, comparatively speaking, but at Home—Well, we can but feel thankful that we have not, cannot have the vaguest conception of the hopeless misery caused by ill-advised strikes rluring the last few months. The most rabid agitator, the hardest-fisted employer, will surely feel for the future the

magnitude of their responsibility in causing a strike or a lockout.

The question of whose is the blame is not one into which we intend to go. In the first place because this is not a political journal of pronounced opinions, and in the second because it is really a question whether anyone is to be blamed. It is impossible that after centuries of absolutism capital should find itself defied without makingsome attempt at retaliation, and on the other hand, when the ministers of Demos begin to realise the stupendous powers which they have become |>ossessed of, it is but the natural sequence of events when they are tempted to misuse that power. • King Demos,' says General Booth in the Contemporary, ‘must, like any other king, learn wisdom by experience, and experience is worth nothing until it has been dearly bought.’ Looking at it from an outside point of view, the English are particularly slow in learning their lesson, the leaders on both sides being indeed, almost criminally so. With regard to the coal strike it collapsed almost as soon as it began simply because there should never have been a strike at all. The strike is, in fact, absolutely useless. It can never finally settle any question. A sense of injury, of bitterness, will always rankle,and there is always a vigilant look-out on both sides for any opportunity for the renewal of hostility. ‘ The law of life cannot be fulfilled in its entirety but by the united labour of all.’ For every step taken in progress, for every new discovery of a portion of that law, history shows a corresponding extension of human association, a more extended contact between peoples and peoples.

United labour means, of course, co operation, and there is no possible doubt but this is what must be the end of it all. Co-operation is the only true business basis. When all share the profits, the drones and the wind bags will haveashort and unhappy life of it. Every man will do his own work as diligently, cheerfully, and competently as lies in his power, and he will see that his fellow-men do the same. The interests will be common, and there will, therefore, be no need for argument over hours and the minor questions which must occasionally crop up in every trade. <lf course as yet there is and will be a difficulty over the proper arrangement of a basis for profit-sharing, but these difficulties exist more in the conservative imagination than in reality. No radical change is utterly unattended with difficulty. The emancipation of the slaves was not, but there is surely no person who would say that the slave trade should never have been abolished.

Fortunately, however, the system of co-operation, if introduced, would disorganise no section of the community. It would, moreover, make a great deal less change from a monetary point of view than is generally imagined, but it would, on the other hand, once and for all put a stop to the disastrous struggles between labour and capital which have so seriously occupied the attention of the world for the last decade, but more especially for the last three years. Into the arguments against co-operation we do not intend to enter, for to enumerate them categorically would mean combatively to answer them, and that would absorb more of our space than can be afforded. As has been said, this journal is not one of pronounced political opinions, but from an independent view of the question and knowledge of what has been done, and done with such signal success, in other countries, it must appear to unprejudiced minds that co-operation is the destiny of the world, and especially of New Zealand. Being so happy a destiny, it is the duty of all good colonials to work with all strength for its fulfilment. The question is, of course, what big employer will set the example ?

When society shall recognise no other distinction save the distinction between producers and consumers, or rather when every man shall be alike producer and consumer ; when the profits of labour instead of being parcelled out amongst that series of intermedium, which, frequently increases the price of production 50 per cent—shall belong to those who perform the labour, all permanent cause of poverty will be removed. So says the great Italian democrat. He further adds.—Wherever you find capital and labour in the same hands wherever the profits of labour are divided among the workmen in proportion to the increase of those profits, and to the amount of aid given by the workmen to the collective work—there you will find both decrease of poverty and an increase of morality.