_ CHAPTER IX
'I will now call upon the last speaker. Yes, I will answer any general questions
after Miss Ernestine Blunt has spoken.'
'Oh, I sy!'
''Ere's Miss Blunt.'
'Not that little one?'
'Yes. This is the one I was tellin' you about.'
People pushed and craned their necks, the crowd swayed as the other one of the two youngest 'Suffragettes' came forward. She had been sitting very quietly in her corner of the cart, looking the least concerned person in Hyde Park. Almost dull the round rather pouting face with the vivid scarlet lips; almost sleepy the heavy-lidded eyes. But when she had taken the speaker's post above the crowd, the onlooker wondered why he had not noticed her before.
It seemed probable that all save those quite new to the scene had been keeping an eye on this person, who, despite her childish look, was plainly no new recruit. Her self-possession demonstrated that as abundantly as the reception she got--the vigorous hoots and hoorays in the midst of clapping and cries--
'Does your mother know you're out?'
'Go 'ome and darn your stockens.'
'Hurrah!'
'You're a disgryce!'
'I bet on little Blunt!'
'Boo!'
Even in that portion of the crowd that did not relieve its feelings by either talking or shouting, there was observable the indefinable something that says, 'Now the real fun's going to begin.' You see the same sort of manifestation in the playhouse when the favourite comedian makes his entrance. He may have come on quite soberly only to say, 'Tea is ready,' but the grin on the face of the public is as ready as the tea. The people sit forward on the edge of their seats, and the whole atmosphere of the theatre undergoes some subtle change. So it was here.
And yet in this young woman was the most complete lack of any dependence upon 'wiles' that platform ever saw. Her little off-hand manner seemed to say, 'Don't expect me to encourage you in any nonsense, and, above all, don't dare to presume upon my youth.'
She began by calling on the Government to save the need of further demonstration by giving the women of the country some speedy measure of justice. 'They'll have to give it to us in the end. They might just as well do it gracefully and at once as do it grudgingly and after more "scenes."' Whereupon loud booing testified to the audience's horror of anything approaching unruly behaviour. 'Oh, yes, you are scandalized at the trouble we make. But--I'll tell you a secret'--she paused and collected every eye and ear--'
we've only just begun! You'd be simply
staggered if you knew what the Government still has to expect from us, if they don't give us what we're asking for.'
'Oh, ain't she just
awful!' sniggered a girl with dyed hair and gorgeous jewelry.
The men laughed and shook their heads. She just was! They crowded nearer.
'You'd better take care! There's a policeman with 'is eye on you.'
'It's on you, my friends, he's got his eye. You saw a little while ago how they had to take away somebody for disturbing our meeting. It wasn't a woman.'
'Hear, hear!'
'The police are our friends, when the Government allows them to be. The other day when there was that scene in the House, one of the policemen who was sent up to clear the gallery said he wished the members would come and do their own dirty work. They hate molesting us. We don't blame the police. We put the blame where it belongs--on the Liberal Government.'
'Pore old Gov'mint--gettin' it 'ot.'
'Hooray fur the Gov'mint!'
'We see at last--it's taken us a long time, but we see at last--women get nothing even from their professed political friends, they've nothing whatever to expect by waiting and being what's called "ladylike."'
'Shame!'
'We don't want to depreciate the work of preparation the older, the "ladylike," Suffrage women did, but we came at last to see that all that was possible to accomplish that way had been done. The Cause hadn't moved an inch for years. It was even doing the other thing. Yes, it was going backward. Even the miserable little pettifogging share women had had in Urban and Borough Councils--even that they were deprived of. And they were tamely submitting! Women who had been splendid workers ten years ago, women with the best capacities for public service, had fallen into a kind of apathy. They were utterly disheartened. Many had given up the struggle. That was the state of affairs with regard to Woman's Suffrage only a few short months ago. We looked at the Suffragists who had grown grey in petitioning Parliament and being constitutional and "ladylike," and we said, "
That's no good."'
Through roars of laughter and indistinguishable denunciation certain fragments rose clear--
'So you tried being a public nuisance!'
'A laughing-stock!'
'When we got to the place where we were a public laughing-stock we knew we were getting on.' The audience screamed. '
We began to feel encouraged!' A very hurricane swept the crowd. Perhaps it was chiefly at the gleam of eye and funny little wag of the head with the big floppity hat that made the people roar with delight. 'Yes; when things got to that point even the worst old fogey in the Cabinet----'
'Name! Name!'
'No, we are merciful. We withhold the name!' She smiled significantly, while the crowd yelled. 'Even the very fogeyest of them all you'd think might have rubbed his eyes and said, "Everybody's laughing at them--why, there must be something serious at the bottom of this!" But no; the members of the present Government
never rub their eyes.'
'If you mean the Prime Minister----'
'Hooray for the----'
Through the cheering you heard Ernestine saying, 'No, I
didn't mean the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, between you and me, is as good a Suffragist as any of us. Only he----well, he likes his comfort, does the Prime Minister!'
When Ernestine looked like that the crowd roared with laughter. Yet it was impossible not to feel that when she herself smiled it was because she couldn't help it, and not, singularly enough, because of any dependence she placed upon the value of dimples as an asset of persuasion. What she seemed to be after was to stir these people up. It could not be denied that she knew how to do it, any more than it could be doubted that she was ignorant of how large a part in her success was played by a peculiarly amusing and provocative personality. Always she was the first to be grave again.
'Now if you noisy young men can manage to keep quiet for a minute, I'll tell you a little about our tactics,' she said obligingly.
'We know! Breakin' up meetings!'
'
Rotten tactics!'
'That only shows you don't understand them yet. Now I'll explain to you.'
A little wind had sprung up and ruffled her hair. It blew open her long plain coat. It even threatened to carry away her foolish flapping hat. She held it on at critical moments, and tilted her delicate little Greuze-like face at a bewitching angle, and all the while that she was looking so fetching, she was briskly trouncing by turns the Liberal party and the delighted crowd. The man of the long moustachios, who had been swept to the other side of the monument, returned to his old inquiry with mounting cheer--
'Are we down'earted?
Oh, no!'
'Pore man! 'Ave a little pity on us, miss!'
There were others who edged nearer, narrowing their eyes and squaring their shoulders as much as to say, 'Now we'll just trip her up at the first opportunity.'
'That's a very black cloud, miss,' Gorringe had whispered several minutes before a big raindrop had fallen on the lady's upturned face.
As Gorringe seemed to be the only one who had observed the overclouding of the sky, so she seemed to be the only one to think it mattered much. But one by one, like some species of enormous black 'four-o-clocks,' umbrellas blossomed above the undergrowth at the foot of the monument. The lady of the purple plumes had long vanished. A few others moved off, head turned over shoulder, as if doubtful of the policy of leaving while Ernestine was explaining things. The great majority turned up their coat collars and stood their ground. The maid hurriedly produced an umbrella and held it over the lady.
''Igher up, please, miss! Caun't see,' said a youth behind.
Nothing cloudy about Ernestine's policy: Independence of all parties, and organized opposition to whatever Government was in power, until something was done to prove it that friend to women it pretended to be.
'We are tired of being lied to and cheated. There isn't a man in the world whose promise at election time I would trust!'
It struck some common chord in the gathering. They roared with appreciation, partly to hear that baby saying it.
'No, not one!' she repeated stoutly, taking the raindrops in her face, while the risen wind tugged at her wide hat. 'They'll promise us heaven, and earth, and the moon, and the stars, just to get our help. Oh, we are old hands at it now, and we can see through the game!'
'Old 'and
she is! Ha! ha! Old 'and!'
'Do they let you sit up for supper?'
'We are going to every contested election from this on.'
'Lord, yes! Rain or shine
they don't mind!'
'They'll find they'll always have us to reckon with. And we aren't
the least bit impressed any more, when a candidate tells us he's in favour of Woman's Suffrage. We say, "Oh, we've got four hundred and twenty of your kind already!"'
'Oh! oh!'
'Haw! haw!'
'Oo did you say that to?'
By name she held up to scorn the candidates who had given every reason for the general belief that they were indifferent, if not opposed, to Woman's Suffrage till the moment came for contesting a seat.
'Then when they find us there (we hear it keeps them awake at night, thinking we always
will be there in future!)--when they find us there, they hold up their little white flags. Yes. And they say, "Oh, but I'm in favour of Votes for Women!" We just smile.'
The damp gathering in front of her hallooed.
'Yes. And when they protest what splendid friends of the Suffrage they are, we say, "You don't care twopence about it. You are like the humbugs who are there in the House of Commons already."'
'Humbugs!'
'Calls 'em 'umbugs to their fyces! Haw! haw!'
Roars and booing filled the air.
'We know, for many of us helped to put them there. But that was before we knew any better.
Never again!'
Once more that wise little wag of the head, while the people shrieked with laughter. It was highly refreshing to think those Government blokes couldn't take in Ernestine.
'It's only the very young or the very foolish who will ever be caught that way again,' she assured them.
''Ow old are you?'
'Much too old to----'
'Just the right age to think about gettin' married,' shouted a pasty-faced youth.
'Haw! haw!'
Then a very penetrating voice screamed, 'Will you be mine?' and that started off several others. Though the interruptions did not anger nor in the least discompose this surprising young person in the cart--so far at least as could be seen--the audience looked in vain for her to give the notice to these that she had to other interruptions. It began to be plain that, ready as she was to take 'a straight ball' from anybody in the crowd, she discouraged impertinence by dint of an invincible deafness. If you wanted to get a rise out of Ernestine you had to talk about her 'bloomin' policy.' No hint in her of the cheap smartness that had wrecked the other speaker. In that highly original place for such manifestation, Ernestine offered all unconsciously a new lesson of the moral value that may lie in good-breeding. She won the loutish crowd to listen to her on her own terms.
'Both parties,' she was saying, 'have been glad enough to use women's help to get candidates elected. We've been quite intelligent enough to canvass for them; we were intelligent enough to explain to the ignorant men----' She acknowledged the groans by saying, 'Of course there are none of that sort here, but elsewhere there are such things as ignorant men, and women by dozens and by scores are sent about to explain to them why they should vote this way or that. But as the chairman told you, any woman who does that kind of thing in the future is a very poor creature. She deserves no sympathy when her candidate forgets his pledge and sneers at Womanhood in the House. If we put ourselves under men's feet we must
expect to be trodden on. We've come to think it's time women should give up the door-mat attitude. That's why we've determined on a policy of independence. We see how well independence has worked for the Irish party--we see what a power in the House even the little Labour party is, with only thirty members. Some say those thirty Labour members lead the great Liberal majority by the nose----'
'Hear! hear!'
'Rot!'
They began to cheer Lothian Scott. Some one tossed Mr. Chamberlain's name into the air. Like a paper balloon it was kept afloat by vigorous puffings of the human breath. ''Ray fur Joe!' 'Three cheers for Joe!'--and it looked as if Ernestine had lost them.
'Listen!' She held out her hands for silence, but the tumult only grew. 'Just a moment. I want to tell you men--here's a friend of yours--he's a new-comer, but he looks just your kind! Give him a hearing.' She strained her voice to overtop the din. 'He's a
Liberal.'
'Hooray!'
'Yes, I thought you'd listen to a Liberal. He's asking that old question, Why did we wait till the Liberals came in? Why didn't we worry the Conservatives when they were in power? The answer to that is that the Woman's Suffrage cause was then still in the stage of mild constitutional propaganda. Women were still occupied in being ladylike and trying to get justice by deserving it. Now wait a moment.' She stemmed another torrent. 'Be quiet, while I tell you something. You men have taught us that women can get a great deal by coaxing, often far more than we deserve! But justice isn't one of the things that's ever got that way. Justice has to be fought for. Justice has to be won.'
Howls and uproar.
'You men----' (it began to be apparent that whenever the roaring got so loud that it threatened to drown her, she said, 'You men--' very loud, and then gave her voice a rest while the din died down that they might hear what else the irrepressible Ernestine had to say upon that absorbing topic). 'You men discovered years ago that you weren't going to get justice just by deserving it, or even by being men, so when you got tired of asking politely for the franchise, you took to smashing windows and burning down Custom Houses, and overturning Bishops' carriages; while
we, why, we haven't so much as upset a curate off a bicycle!'
Others might laugh, not Ernestine.
'You men,' she went on, 'got up riots in the streets--
real riots where people lost their lives. It may have to come to that with us. But the Government may as well know that if women's political freedom has to be bought with blood, we can pay that price, too.'
Above a volley of boos and groans she went on, 'But we are opposed to violence, and it will be our last resort. We are leaving none of the more civilized ways untried. We publish a great amount of literature--I hope you are all buying some of it--you can't understand our movement unless you do! We organize branch unions and we hire halls--we've got the Somerset Hall to-night, and we hope you'll all come and bring your friends. We have very interesting debates, and
we answer questions, politely!' she made her point to laughter. 'We don't leave any stone unturned. Because there are people who don't buy our literature, and who don't realize how interesting the Somerset Hall debates are, we go into the public places where the idle and the foolish,
like that man just over there!--where they may point and laugh and make their poor little jokes. But let me tell you we never hold a meeting where we don't win friends to our cause. A lot of you who are jeering and interrupting now are going to be among our best friends.
All the intelligent ones are going to be on our side.'
Above the laughter, a rich groggy voice was heard, 'Them that's against yer are all drunk, miss' (hiccup). 'D--don't mind 'em!'
Ernestine just gave them time to appreciate that, and then went on--
'Men and women were never meant to fight except side by side. You've been told by one of the other speakers how the men suffer by the women more and more underselling them in the Labour market----'
'Don't need no tellin'.'
'Bloody black-legs!'
'Do you know how that has come about? I'll tell you. It's come about through your keeping the women out of your Unions. You never would have done that if they'd had votes. You saw the important people ignored them. You thought it was safe for you to do the same. But I tell you it
isn't ever safe to ignore the women!'
High over the groans and laughter the voice went on, 'You men have got to realize that if our battle against the common enemy is to be won, you've got to bring the women into line.'
'What's to become of chivalry?'
'What
has become of chivalry?' she retorted; and no one seemed to have an answer ready, but the crowd fell silent, like people determined to puzzle out a conundrum.
'Don't you know that there are girls and women in this very city who are working early and late for rich men, and who are expected by those same employers to live on six shillings a week? Perhaps I'm wrong in saying the men expect the women to live on that. It may be they
know that no girl can--it may be the men know how that struggle ends. But do they care? Do
they bother about chivalry? Yet they and all of you are dreadfully exercised for fear having a vote would unsex women. We are too delicate--women are such fragile flowers.' The little face was ablaze with scorn. 'I saw some of those fragile flowers last week--and I'll tell you where. Not a very good place for gardening. It was a back street in Liverpool. The "flowers"' (oh, the contempt with which she loaded the innocent word!)--'the flowers looked pretty dusty--but they weren't quite dead. I stood and looked at them! hundreds of worn women coming down steep stairs and pouring out into the street. What had they all been doing there in that--garden, I was going to say!--that big grimy building? They had been making cigars!--spending the best years of their lives, spending all their youth in that grim dirty street making cigars for men. Whose chivalry prevents that? Why were they coming out at that hour of the day? Because their poor little wages were going to be lowered, and with the courage of despair they were going on strike. No chivalry prevents men from getting women at the very lowest possible wage--(I want you to notice the low wage is the main consideration in all this)--men get these women, that they say are so tender and delicate, to undertake the almost intolerable toil of the rope-walk. They get women to make bricks. Girls are driven--when they are not driven to worse--they are driven to being lodging-house slaveys or over-worked scullions.
That's all right! Women are graciously permitted to sweat over other people's washing, when they should be caring for their own babies. In Birmingham'--she raised the clear voice and bent her flushed face over the crowd--'in Birmingham those same "fragile flowers" make bicycles to keep alive! At Cradley Heath we make chains. At the pit brows we sort coal. But a vote would soil our hands! You may wear out women's lives in factories, you may sweat them in the slums, you may drive them to the streets. You
do. But a vote would unsex them.'
Her full throat choked. She pressed her clenched fist against her chest and seemed to admonish herself that emotion wasn't her line.
'If you are intelligent you know as well as I do that women are exploited the length and the breadth of the land. And yet you come talking about chivalry! Now, I'll just tell you men something for your future guidance.' She leaned far out over the crowd and won a watchful silence. '
That talk about chivalry makes women sick.' In the midst of the roar, she cried, 'Yes, they mayn't always show it, for women have had to learn to conceal their deepest feelings, but depend on it that's how they feel.'
Then, apparently thinking she'd been serious enough, 'There might be some sense in talking to us about chivalry if you paid our taxes for us,' she said; while the people recovered their spirits in roaring with delight at the coolness of that suggestion.
'If you forgave us our crimes because we are women! If you gave annuities to the eighty-two women out of every hundred in this country who are slaving to earn their bread--many of them having to provide for their children; some of them having to feed sick husbands or old parents. But chivalry doesn't carry you men as far as that! No! No further than the door! You'll hold that open for a lady and then expect her to grovel before such an exhibition of
chivalry! We don't need it, thank you! We can open doors for ourselves.'
She had quite recovered her self-possession, and it looked, as she faced the wind and the raindrops, as if she were going to wind up in first-class fighting form. The umbrellas went down before a gleam of returning sun. An aged woman in rusty black, who late in the proceedings had timidly adventured a little way into the crowd, stood there lost and wondering. She had peered about during the last part of Miss Blunt's speech with faded incredulous eyes, listened to a sentence or two, and then, turning with a pathetic little nervous laugh of apology, consulted the faces of the Lords of Creation. When the speaker was warned that a policeman had his eye on her, the little old woman's instant solicitude showed that the dauntless Suffragist had both touched and frightened her. She craned forward with a fluttering anxiety till she could see for herself. Yes! A stern-looking policeman coming slow and majestic through the crowd. Was he going to hale the girl off to Holloway? No; he came to a standstill near some rowdy boys, and he stared straight before him--herculean, impassive, the very image of conscious authority. Whenever Ernestine said anything particularly dreadful, the old lady craned her neck to see how the policeman was taking it. When Ernestine fell to drubbing the Government, the old lady, in her agitation greatly daring, squeezed up a little nearer as if half of a mind to try to placate that august image of the Power that was being flouted. But it ended only in trembling and furtive watching, till Ernestine's reckless scorn at the idea of chivalry moved the ancient dame faintly to admonish the girl, as a nurse might speak to a wilful child. 'Dear!
Dear!'--and then furtively trying to soothe the great policeman she twittered at his elbow, 'No! No! she don't mean it!'
When Ernestine declared that women could open doors for themselves, some one called out--
'When do you expect to be a K.C.?'
'Oh, quite soon,' she answered cheerfully, with her wind-blown hat rakishly over one ear, while the boys jeered.
'Well,' said the policeman, 'she's pawsed 'er law examination!' As some of the rowdiest boys, naturally surprised at this interjection, looked round, he rubbed it in. 'Did better than the men,' he assured them.
Was it possible that this dread myrmidon of the law was vaunting the prowess of the small rebel?
Miss Levering moved nearer. 'Is that so? Did I understand you----'
With a surly face he glanced round at her. Not for this lady's benefit had the admission been made.
'So they say!' he observed, with an assumption of indifference, quite other than the tone in which he had betrayed where his sympathies, in spite of himself, really were. Well, well, there were all kinds, even of people who looked so much alike as policemen.
Now the crowd, with him and Miss Levering as sole exceptions, were dissolved again in laughter. What had that girl been saying?
'Yes, we're spectres at the Liberal feast; and we're becoming inconveniently numerous. We've got friends everywhere. Up and down the country we go organizing----'
''Ow do you go--in a pram?' At which the crowd rocked with delight.
The only person who hadn't heard the sally, you would say, was the orator. On she went--
'Organizing branches and carrying forward the work of propaganda. You people in London stroll about with your hands in your pockets and your hats on the back of your heads, and with never a
notion of what's going on in the world that thinks and works. That's the world that's making the future. Some of you understand it so little you think all that we tell you is a joke--just as the governing class used to laugh at the idea of a Labour Party in conservative England. While those people were laughing, the Labour men were at work. They talked and wrote; they lectured, and printed, and distributed, and organized, and one fine day there was a General Election! To everybody's astonishment, thirty Labour men were returned to Parliament! Just that same sort of thing is going on now among women. We have our people at work everywhere. And let me tell you, the most wonderful part of it all is to discover how little teaching we have to do. How
ready the women are, all over the three kingdoms.'
'Rot!'
'The women are against it.'
'Read the letters in the papers.'
'Why don't more women come to hear you if they're so in favour?'
'The converted don't need to come. It's you who need to come!' Above roars of derision: 'You felt that or, of course, you wouldn't be here. Men are so reasonable! As to the women who write letters to the papers to say they're against the Suffrage, they are very ignorant, those ladies, or else it may be they write their foolish letters to please their menfolk. Some of them, I know, think the end and aim of woman is to please. I don't blame them; it's the penalty of belonging to the parasite class. But those women are a poor little handful. They write letters to prove that they "don't count," and they
prove it.' She waved them away with one slim hand. 'That's one reason we don't bother much with holding drawing-room meetings. The older Suffragists have been holding drawing-room meetings
for forty years!' She brought it out to shouts. 'But we go to the mill gates! That's where we hold our meetings! We hold them at the pit-brow; we hold them everywhere that men and women are working and suffering and hoping for a better time.'
With that Miss Ernestine sat down. They applauded her lustily; they revelled in laughing praise, yielding to a glow that they imagined to be pure magnanimity.
'Are there any questions?' Miss Claxton, with her eyes still screwed up to meet the returning sun and the volley of interrogatory, appeared at the side of the cart. 'Now, one at a time, please. What? I can't hear when you all talk together. Write it down and hand it to me. Now, you people who are nearer--what? Very well! Here's a man who wants to know whether if women had the vote wouldn't it make dissension in the house, when husband and wife held different views?' She had smiled and nodded, as though in this question she welcomed an old friend, but instead of answering it she turned to the opposite side and looked out over the clamourers on the left. They were engaged for the most part in inquiring about her matrimonial prospects, and why she had carried that dog-whip. Something in her face made them fall silent, for it was both good-humoured and expectant, even intent. 'I'm waiting,' she said, after a little pause. 'At every meeting we hold there's usually another question put at the same time as that first one about the quarrels that will come of husbands and wives holding different opinions. As though the quarrelsome ones had been waiting for women's suffrage before they fell out! When the man on my right asks, "Wouldn't they quarrel?" there's almost always another man on my left who says, "If women were enfranchised we wouldn't be an inch forrader, because the wife would vote as her husband told her to. The man's vote would simply be duplicated, and things would be exactly as they were." Neither objector seems to see that the one scruple cancels the other. But to the question put this afternoon, I'll just say this.' She bent forward, and she held up her hand. 'To the end of time there'll be people who won't rest till they've found something to quarrel about. And to the end of time there'll be wives who follow blindly where their husbands lead. And to the end of time there'll be husbands who are influenced by their wives. What's more, all this has gone on ever since there were husbands, and it will go on as long as there are any left, and it's got no more to do with women's voting than it has with their making cream tarts. No, not half as much!' she laughed. 'Now, where's that question that you were going to write?'
Some one handed up a wisp of white paper. Miss Claxton opened it, and upon the subject presented she embarked with the promising beginning, 'Your economics are pretty wobbly, my friend,' and proceeded to clear the matter up and incidentally to flatten out the man. One wondered that under such auspices 'Question Time' was as popular as it obviously was. There is no doubt a fearful joy in adventuring yourself in certain danger before the public eye. Besides the excitement of taking a personal share in the game, there is always the hope that it may have been reserved to you to stump the speaker and to shine before the multitude.
A gentleman who had vainly been trying to get her to hear him, again asked something in a hesitating way, stumbling and going back to recast the form of his question.
He was evidently quite in earnest, but either unaccustomed to the sound of his own voice or unnerved to find himself bandying words in Hyde Park with a Suffragette. So when he stuck fast in the act of fashioning his phrases, Miss Claxton bent in the direction whence the voice issued, and said, briskly obliging--
'You needn't go on. I know the rest. What this gentleman is trying to ask is----'
And although no denial on his part reached the public ear, it was not hard to imagine him seething with indignation, down there helpless in his crowded corner, while the facile speaker propounded as well as demolished his objection to her and all her works.
'Yes; one last question. Let us have it.'
'How can you pretend that women want the vote? Why, there are hardly any here.'
'More women would join us openly but for fear of their fellow-cowards. Thousands upon thousands of women feel a sympathy with this movement they dare not show.'
'Lots of women don't want the vote.'
'What women don't want it? Are you worrying about a handful who think because they have been trained to like subservience everybody else ought to like subservience, too? The very existence of a movement like this is a thorn in their sleek sides. We are a reproach and a menace to such women. But this isn't a movement to compel anybody to vote. It is to give the right to those who
do want it--to those signatories of the second largest petition ever laid on the table of the House of Commons--to the 96,000 textile workers--to the women who went last month in deputation to the Prime Minister, and who represented over half a million belonging to Trades Unions and organized societies. To--perhaps more than all, to the unorganized women, those whose voices are never heard in public.
They, as Mrs. Bewley told you--they are beginning to want it. The women who are made to work over hours--
they want the vote. To compel them to work over hours is illegal. But who troubles to see that laws are fairly interpreted for the unrepresented? I know a factory where a notice went up yesterday to say that the women employed there will be required to work twelve hours a day for the next few weeks. Instead of starting at eight, they must begin at six, and work till seven. The hours in this particular case are illegal--as the employer will find out!' she threw in with a flash, and one saw by that illumination the avenue through which his enlightenment would come. 'But in many shops where women work, twelve hours a day is legal. Much of women's employment is absolutely unrestricted, except that they may not be worked on Sunday. And while all that is going on, comfortable gentlemen sit in armchairs and write alarmist articles about the falling birth-rate and the horrible amount of infant mortality. A Government calling itself Liberal goes pettifogging on about side issues, while women are debased and babies die. Here and there we find a man who realizes that the main concern of the State should be its children, and that you can't get worthy citizens where the mothers are sickly and enslaved. The question of statecraft, rightly considered, always reaches back to the mother. That State is most prosperous that most considers her. No State that forgets her can survive. The future is rooted in the well-being of women. If you rob the women, your children and your children's children pay. Men haven't realized it--your boasted logic has never yet reached so far. Of all the community, the women who give the next generation birth, and who form its character during the most impressionable years of its life--of all the community, these mothers now or mothers to be ought to be set free from the monstrous burden that lies on the shoulders of millions of women. Those of you who want to see women free, hold up your hands.'
A strange, orchid-like growth sprang up in the air. Hands gloved and ungloved, hands of many shades and sizes, hands grimy and hands ringed.
Something curious to the unaccustomed eye, these curling, clutching, digitated members raised above their usual range and common avocations, suddenly endowed with speech, and holding forth there in the silent upper air for the whole human economy.
'Now, down.' The pallid growth vanished. 'Those against the freedom of women.' Again hands, hands. Far too many to suit the promoters of the meeting. But Miss Claxton announced, 'The ayes are in the majority. The meeting is with us.'
'She can't even count!' The air was full of the taunting phrase--'Can't count!'
'Yes,' said Miss Claxton, wheeling round again upon the people, as some of her companions began to get down out of the cart. 'Yes, she can count, and she can see when men don't play fair. Each one in that group held up
two hands when the last vote was taken.' She made a great deal of this incident, and elevated it into a principle. 'It is entirely characteristic of the means men will stoop to use in opposing the Women's Cause.'
To hoots and groans and laughter the tam-o'-shanter disappeared.
'Rank Socialists every one of 'em!' was one of the verdicts that flew about.
'They ought
all to be locked up.'
'A danger to the public peace.'
A man circulating about on the edge of the crowd was calling out, ''Andsome souvenir. Scented paper 'andkerchief! With full programme of Great Suffragette Meeting in 'Yde Park!'
As the crowd thinned, some of the roughs pressing forward were trying to 'rush' the speakers. The police hastened to the rescue. It looked as if there would be trouble. Vida and her maid escaped towards the Marble Arch.
''Andsome scented 'andkerchief! Suffragette Programme!' The raucous voice followed them, and not the voice alone. Through the air was wafted the cheap and stifling scent of patchouli. _