MASS MEETING FOR WOMEN.

White Ribbon, Volume 20, Issue 233, 18 November 1914, Page 10

MASS MEETING FOR WOMEN.

ADDRKSSKD BY MRS SNOWDEN. A woman’s meeting was held in the Town Hall on the afternoon of Monda}, October 19th, and was attended by about jock). Lady Stout occupied the chair, and on the platform were also Mrs J. P. Luke, the Mayoress, Mrs A. R. Atkinson, and many other members of the various Women’s S< - cieties. Mr Bernaid Page, the city organist, presided at the organ, and played the Marseillaise, the National Anthem, and Handel’s “Harmonious Blacksmith.” Mrs Snowden, remarking that w hen .1 stranger comes claiming to be heard, it was only fair she should give her credentials, explained what first led her to take part in the Temperance movement. When studying in Liverpool for the teaching profession, she came under the influence o f a prominent clergyman, who not merely taught the- truths of Christ*anitv, but also urged their practical application to life. On one occasion he gave an address before 3000 people on “Can a man be a Christian on £1 a week?” a question which he* answered in the affirmative, but showed that it was not easy, and declared that tho>e who were comfortably off ought not to rest so long a> there were hundreds of thousand> who had not even as much as £ 1, in many cases not more than 12s a week. Preaching of thi> kind fired many with the 1 desire for social service, and Mr-> Snowden began work in the slums of Liverpool, having for scholars little children with the faces of criminals, and with scarcely a decent stitch of clothing. Here she found women untidy, dirty, almost naked, criminal-looking, men in similar misery and degradation, with 5,6, 10, 13 people living in one room; and naturally she wished to know w hy >u< h things were so. She a>ked wi>e men and good women the c au>e of this criminality and degradation. Varied were the answers she received. Some said drunkenness was the cause, others laziness, others weakmindedness, but when she went into the question for herself, she found th.it some were there amid those wretched conditions who had never touched liquor; others who would have been glad to work if only they could have obtained it; and the weak-minded were born so as the re-

suit of crime. The solution of the problem was therefore not so easy as might seem, but she* was soon convinced that the drinking habit, although not the sole cause of the misery, seriously aggravated it. She met one woman who cheerfully offered to sign the pledge, hut, it appeared, she had already signed ’t twenty times. Asked why she could not keep it, she said she had to pass twenty-one public-houses going home from her work. She might get past the first and the second, and even the third temptation, hut with such an awful mass of temptation, she* was bound to succumb. Continuing her study of the problem, Mrs Snowden soon discovered that to deal with the liquor traffic it was necessary to have political power; and for the last ten years she had worked for political emancipation. She would never forget the* shock of surprise that came upon her when, at 20 years of age, she realised that her mother had no vote. Every organisation in Britain, she said, was now working for t cause, and every other cause would receive little or no support until this was gained. The National Union of Women Suffrage Societies, of whic h she was the VicePresident, dated hack to John Stuart Mill, who had such deep conviction' on the emancipation of woman that he refused to marry his wife until her property was secured to her. The Union now had 500 branches, with a membership of 55,cmk>, and an associate membership twice as large. Its methods were constitutional, and on this point she w ished to say that in this Dominion there was a great deal of misunderstanding. The idea of many here probably was that the militant suffragettes in (ireat Britain constituted a great army of women anarchists. The newspapers knew that people generally like sensationalism, and so they give it, and many untruths have been cabled out. Men and boys, in mischief, often committed deeds of violenc e and spread Suffragette papers around to fasten the guilt on the Suffragettes. For instance. a large house in Scotland was burnt down, and the blame laid upon the Militants. A few days after it was discovered that a number of boys had done it. Unfortunately, the papers that give publicity to the damaging rumours are not always so ready to contradict them when the truth is established. As a matter of

fact, in answer to a question put to Mr McKenna, it was stated in the House of Commons that the number of Suffragettes that had been imprisoned in (ircat Britain for positive • crime did not exceed bo or 70. There were about 2000 others, guilty of slight misdemeanours, e.g., refusing to leave the Houses of Parliament when they had come there for the purpose of interviewing some member or Minister, such actions a>, if committed by men, would have been taken very little notice of. The lecturer disclaimed any desire to defend the methods even of these few, but she could at least admire their courage and sincerity; they believed their action to be right and necessary. She herself did not believe so, and after all, this small number formed a minute fraction of the 15 millions of women that were entitled to enfranchisement. Women had been working for Temperance for from 50 to 100 years, and had made comparatively little progress; but the woman’s cau*c in general had gone forward by leaps and bounds. The professions were opened to women ; they could be doctors and lawyers, though in the case of the latter they were as yet unable to practise. As to the nursing profession, contrast the present time with that when Florence Nightingale first wished to go out nursing the soldiers, and th“ finger of scorn was pointed at her and her companions, and they were made the subject of coarse jokes and cartoons in “Punch.” The women of 50 years ago had little opportunity of education; now almost every advantage was theirs; they could vote for every public body except Parliament, and they could be members too. There had been several women Mayors; a Royal Commission was now hardly ever appointed without women sitting on it; they (Mitered the Civil Service as clerks and typistes, and many were in sole charge in their special departments. Less than 50 years ago married women could not hold property. Kvery achievement women had won for themselves had been won without having recourse to crime, through persuasion brought to bear on public opinion or on Parliament; a political enfranchisement would conm too b\ the steady growth of public opinion. Let no one say the end justifies the means; that only opens the door to every kind of crime. But she re-

prated that she was not reflecting on the sincerity of those from whom she differed. Public opinion was with those who desired the enfranchisement of women, but the difficulty was with the political parties. The Liberals feared lest the woman’s vote might go largely with with the Conservatives; the Conservatives, to a great extent identified with the Brewers’ party, feared it would go against the brewers, so their plan was to introduce Labour candidates, in order to split the votes, for the British politician was afraid of nothing so mu' h as of losing his seat in Parliament. They had been hopeful of achieving something in the near future, then the war broke out, and all other questions had to be pushed into the background. She had s.iid nothing as to the suffering of little children -the National Society for the Protection of Children had dealt witli two million cases since its foundation. Kvery year hundred* of drunken mothers lay on their babes and suffocate them. Then there was the social problem with the thousands of our unhappy sisters—“fallen” she would not call them until the men were called by the same name—most of the>e women were brought to shame through the drinkinghabit. So necessary was it to get the vote, for the sake of men and women alike! "You have not to work as we have,” continued Mrs Snowden, "You do not need to go and lock the door on yourselves lest you should go out and do the* thing you don’t believe in, and meet evil with evil. The things that our wo men have 1 ad to suffer are indescribable ; but we can destroy evil only with good. You have not this struggle*, You are not in danger of forcible feeding and of starving. In a little while you arc to declare whether this traffic shall be stopped. You will be told about the revenue from the drink traffic, and You will have to pay to make it up. You have to pay now by keeping up the gaols and asylums, and all the cost of dealing with the crime and misery produced by the Traffic . But l do not why you should have to pay. Four millions are now spent on drink to get one million in taxe*. Spend this four millions on furniture and clothes, etc., from abroad and you will get extra customs duties for the revenue; spend it at home, and you will be so much stronger and better off that your men folks will earn more. This talk about

the revenue is simply a brewer’s argument. The revenue can take care of itself.” “Or some one may say, ‘The time is not ripe.’ When will it be* ripe? When all the evils that we have in Britain have got hold of vmi? The time is ripe now, before the evil i> done. Now i* the time to put your belief into practice. We in (treat Britain want a spiritual stimulant from the example of what can be done by good men and women. You have one great advantage over us in this, that here men come more to your meetings. In temperance work in Britain 9 out of every 10 are women, in the Churches 6 out of every 7 ; but here the proportion of men and women is more even.” “The woman’s cause is man’s, they ri*e and sink Together, dwarf’d or godlike, bond or free. * * * * For woman is not undeveloped man, But diverse, could we make her as the man, Sweet love were slain; his dearest bond is this Not like to like, but like in differ ence. Yet in the long years liker must they grow The man be more of woman, she of man, He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; She* mental breadth, nor fail in Childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind. # * # « And so these twain ... sit side by side. * * # # Self-reverent each and reverencing each, Distinct in individualities. But like each other even as those who love !” “I pray that my efforts for my own land may lx* even more strenuous in the future, and that your efforts here may be such that thi* state of things shall speedily be realised in this your Dominion.” In answer to questions, Mrs Snowden said that the suffrage movement began to grow rapidly from 1906, because for more than 20 years an in-

dependent Labour Party had been working'* The militant tacMcs were ; i Jop ted, but not .it fi r>t with cr»me, only by novel methods to arouse the public from indifference. The effect of the policy of crime and violence, that was afterward:* adopted, had been to neutralise to a great extent the good already done, but the Non-Militants could not suppress militancy except by becoming Militants themselves.