WOMAN’S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

White Ribbon, Volume 12, Issue 135, 15 August 1906, Page 1

WOMAN’S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

Many strokes, though with a little axe, Hew <h*wn and fell the hardest timltered oak. —Sh Ak RH’KAKF. l lte long Hti.l weary war waged by British women suffragists lias, within the past few months, been marked by several striking episodes. And the events themselves are significant of the fact that a new force has appeared, l lte last decade has seen large additions to the ranks of the suffragists from the WOMEN OF THE INDUSTRIAL GLASSES —women who, taking their place side by side with men in the work-inlay world, realize that they need the protection and help of a vote fully as much as do men, and. moreover, recognise their own capacity for the exercise of such vote. First there was the imprisonment, in Manchester, of Miss Paukhurst and Miss Kenney, as an outcome of their persistent request to have a question relating to the welfare of one half of the nation answered from a professedly Liberal platform. Neither would pay, or allow to be paid for them, the alternative fine, but in the interests of the Cause went cheerfully to gaol. Then came the great procession of working Women and their sympathisers from all parts of the country, assembling on the Embankment and inarching round the West End, while a small

section—,MOO women —went direct to the Foreign Office, there to memorialise the Prime Minister. Sir (Mias. McLaren, nephew of the late John Plight, introduced the petitioners, and the case was opened bv Miss Emily

Davies, LL.L)., who said she was one of the two women who handed the first petition f< r women to John Stuart Mill in 1804. Almost all sections of society were represented in this deputation, and among the names mentioned in tlie American papers by Lloyd

Garrison and other eye witnesses, are those of Mrs Eva Mrs Rainey of Scotland, Miss Eva Gore Booth — daughter of an Irish baronet, who made an impassioned speech Mrs Pankliurst, Lady Trevelyan, Mrs Cobdcn Fnwin —daughter of Richard C obdcn — Mrs Woistenholme Elmv, Lady Frances Balfour, and Miss Beatrice Harraden. THE DOCTRINE oF PATIENCE which was preached by the Premier (while in the same breath lie acknowledged the justice of the claim) was opposed by Mr Walter McLaren, M.P., at a meeting held, later in the day, at Exeter Hall. Impatience, he boldly asserted, was needed. A manifestation of this desirable impatience was not long in and in no other place than the House of Commons. The determination to prevent a division on Mr Keir Hardies motion, asserting the justice of the women’s claim, called forth a free expression of disgust from a small knot of working women behind the grille. The police were called in and the women made a forced and hurried exit. Loud was the murmur of shocked disapproval evoked by this free outburst; but as Mr Stead, writing in the Rovieu of Reviews, remarked, “ Pray what else can women do but make a row V They have pleaded, canvassed, petitioned, agitated. They have succeeded in getting returned 400 men, in a House

of f>7o members, pledged to their cause, and they find this huge majority so inert, apathetic, indifferent and feckless that a single creature like .Mr Evans can prevent the passing of an abstract re*< >1 lit ion.’ “Surely it. was very unwomanly?' “Pshaw ! It was not anything like so unwomanly as it was unmanly to allow a cause admittedly just to be stilled without a single indignant protest. Mrs Frances Swiuey, in a private Letter, say.', regarding the House of Commons episode, “What h ive women gained by all the promises and pledges given at election time by candidates who won their seats through women's untiring efforts? Nothing but ridicule, slander, misrepresentation and gross exaggeration of \( TS THAI WKKE FI I.LY JUSTIFIED bv the exigencies of the situation and the insolent attitude of men towards the womanhood of the nation and their just claims. Miss Kenney In glowing terms does Mr Stead, in the August number of the Review of Reviews, write of Miss Annie Kenney, whom he describes as the *lcanned Arc and Josephine Butler of the suffrage cause. “Not since Mrs Josephine Butler, amid a storm of denunciation, sprang into the arena and com pel led a reluctant Parliament to repeal the laws by which our ruling men had taken prostitution under the patronage of the State, has any woman emerged of equal promise as a driving and inspiring force. There is a great contrast lie* ween the cultured daughter of John Grey, of Dilstoii, and the Lancashire Mill girl. But all deficiencies of station and culture are forgotten in the blaze of passionate enthusiasm for the weak and oppressed of their own "ex which animates them both. The story which I hoard from the lips of the younger woman last month of her struggle with her natural timidity when first she ventured to stand up on a chair, in a Lancashire Fair, to plead for her disinherited sisters, reproduced in almost every detail the story Mrs Butler told of her first meeting in New ark Market Place, when standing in a cart she declared war against the C.L). Acts. And the more you listen to Annie Kenney, the more you hear of her simple fervent pleading for justice, the more you begin to realize that here is a new

Josephine Butler, from the lower social stratum indeed, but one of the elect souls, who from time to lime are sent into the world for the salvation of the cause. The times have need of her, and she lias been raised up, one of the sacred baud who, in the hour of sore need of our fainting, dispirited race, appear.

"Like Mrs Butler, Annie Kenney is a member of the ('hurcli of England ; she was educated in a National School, confirmed by the Bishop of Manchester, and for some years she was a teachei in a Church Sunday-school. She ha*j been acquainted with poverty from her youth up. < hie of twelve children, she was sent to the mills to earn money when but ten years of age, and lias been in the mill ever since. Vet she is a woman of refinement and of delicacy of manner and of speech. Her physique is slender, and she is intensely nervous and high strung. She took up the mission to which she has dedicated her lift* as a legacy from her dead mother. On her death-bed that Lancashire woman addressed her daughters, adjuring them always to fight for the weak and see to it that they Miemselves refused to submit to the injustice to which sin* had perforce submitted all her life.

In childhood end in her own home Miss Kenney had seen the injustice of things. Both father and mother worked in tin* mill. The father spent his evenings in reading or at the club or public meetings, amusing or educating himself. The mother spent hers in doing the housework, and in sewing till after midnight for tin* twelve children. When the boys and girls went to work in the millstheir earnings went into the family purse, but as I k>eket money tin* boys received a far larger share than did the girls. “ Why was that? Our needs were the same;

but the girls were stinted while the boys had plenty. And m> it seems to me it is everywhere \nd there is no sense of justice in dealing with women.”