NASA SUBJECT FILE Parkhurst, Emmeline VOTES FOR WOMEN. The Women's Social and Political Union. OFFICES: LINCOLN'S INN HOUSE, KINGSWAY, W.C. Mrs. PANKHURST, Hon, Treasurer. Mrs. MABEL TUKE, Hon. Sec. All Communications, unless marked "private" will be opened by the Hon. Secretary. Auditors: Messrs. EDWARD MOORE & SONS, Chartered Accountants, 3 Crosby Square, E.C Telegraphic Address - WOSPOLU, LONDON Telephone - 2724 Holborn (three lines). 21st May 1914. Dear Friend, On the eve of the W.S.P.U. deputation to the King I am writing to ask you to do all in your power to make this year's self denial collection larger than it has ever been before. As we near the end of our struggle for the vote the need for stronger effort and greater sacrifice increases. It is, therefore, of vital importance that every member of the Union should feel it her duty to share with me the task of raising the money necessary to carry on our work. Many suggestions for systematic effort during self-denial week will reach you and I am sure that in addition to your personal contribution which should be as large as possible you will take an active part in securing financial support - 2 - from the general public, large numbers of whom will gladly give to our movement if invited to do so. We are engaged in a splendid fight for the freedom of women. We have also undertaken a great crusade against a hateful and degrading moral system, the fruits of which are prostitution, disease and death. To raise the funds to carry on our holy war against evil is the duty of all of us all and I am sure that you will do your part. Sincerely yours, E. Pankhurst THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1914. TERRORISM LEGISLATION. (From the New York Sun.) Earl Lytton says the only thing that can check the "deplorable movement" of destructive militancy is the introduction of a woman suffrage bill by the Government. Mr. Redmond says that the only thing that will keep the peace in Ireland is home rule. Sir Edward Carson says the only thing that will prevent bloodshed in Ulster is exemption from home rule. Mr. Sam Gompers intimates that the only thing that will save members of Congress from political annihilation is to grant labor unionists exemption for criminal acts for which other citizens would be punished. President Wilson urges upon Congress his group of Anti-Trust bills, which the entire business community condemns, under the menace that the democracy will be overwhelmed next fall if they are not passed. Is this the year of legislation by terrorism? Must every measure have some sort of threat behind it? In England the The British Crisis XXXVIII. Will Women Get the Vote By FREDERIC J. HASKIN London.—As to the practical effect of the suffrage campaign there is much dispute. Making allowance for individual likes and dislikes, and endeavoring to separate assertions from truths and denunciations from falsehoods, the disinterested observer is forced to the conclusion that at the present time the women are losing ground. For the first year or two of active militancy it is undoubtedly true that the women gained sympathy and political support. These gains were attributable to two reasons: One was that a great many men who theretofore had been indifferent believed that the women were badly treated by the Government, and, therefore, ranged themselves actively on the suffragettes' side. Another reason was that many persons who had always been opposed to woman suffrage now advanced to a moderate ground, and, while denouncing militancy, affirmed that they were willing to give the women the vote if only the women would behave. In the last six months, however, the excesses committed by the women have been of such outrageous character that they have made few, if any, converts; and, on the other hand, they have lost a great many of their former allies. Bear in mind now that we are thinking about voters—men. There is nothing whatever to indicate that the militant movement has met with stern disapproval among other women, and it is doubtful if one woman in a hundred in England can be found who does not more or less sympathize with Mrs. Pankhurst and her lieutenants. Some women, it is true, have taken a very active stand against suffragettes on account of the outrages against the church. Devout churchwomen were scandalized by the frequent interruptions in the church services, and they were shocked beyond words when the historic churches one by one disappeared in flames kindled by the "arsonettes." It is difficult, of course, to predict any outcome of so unusual a campaign, but from the suffragettes' point of view there is a grave danger that they will bring against them a much more effective weapon than the courts of law and the jailor's keys. That is the mob. Dangerous as it may be for King or Cabinet Minister to appear in public without a guard of soldiers and police, it is just now infinitely more dangerous for the suffragettes themselves to attempt to harangue a crowd. The same men and boys who formerly laughed and even applauded are now worked up to a frenzy that is dangerous in the extreme. The London police are charged with the paradoxical duty of first protecting the wild women from the mob that would tear them to pieces, and then of arresting the woman they have saved and taking her off to jail. It is no easy job. Many a policeman has gone home at night with two sets of paradoxical wounds—one an assortment of abrasions caused by sticks and stones cast by the mob at a suffragette, and the other scratches and bites later inflicted by the lady herself as he bore her off to prison. It is affirmed, and upon good authority, that the policemen are gradually going over to the side of the women. A policeman's business is the law, but his weapon is force. He respects force and knows it when he sees it. It required 1600 policemen to keep 200 women from breaking down the gates of Buckingham Palace and perhaps seizing the King himself. And when the battle was over there were as many battered policemen as women. Politically speaking, the question of votes for women cuts athwart the party lines. Conservatives and Liberals are not agreed among themselves. Mr. Asquith, the Premier, is opposed to woman suffrage, while Mr. Lloyd-George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is in favor of it. There is similar disagreement on the Opposition benches. But the women are not content with passive support. Mr. Lloyd-George says he believes in their cause, but as he continues to hold office in Asquith's Cabinet, the suffragettes say they prefer an honest opponent to a hypocritical support. For that reason Mr. Lloyd-George is in as great danger from the suffragettes as Mr. Asquith himself. The women are determined, if possible, to defeat the Liberal party, not because they have any delusions of united Tory support, but because they say that under the British Constitution the party in power is responsible for making the laws and administering them; that the Liberal party has not only refused to do justice to women, but it has tortured them in its prisons. They would, therefore, turn out the Radicals and have the Tories in. What they would do to a Tory government depends on what the Tory government would do for them. It is well within the bounds of possibility that a Conservative majority in Parliament might now grant limited woman suffrage just to avoid the increased trouble that would be in store for them should they follow the example of the present administration. When one attempts to assess the situation in all its phases he is forced to the conclusion that the women will eventually win. The growth of the popularity of their cause rises and falls. But after a rise it never again drops to so low a level as it once marked. In the event of civil war in Ireland "The Cause" will have to be considered. What either side in a civil war would do in view of the presence of some hundreds of thousands of ingenious feminine traitors challenges powers of imagination that are not possessed my military men. There is no doubt whatsoever he who has lately been in England will hardly hazard a doubt as to the ultimate outcome. The women will win. they have made few, if any, converts; and, on the other hand, they have lost a great many of their former allies. Bear in mind now that we are thinking about voters--men. There is nothing whatever to indicate that the militant movement has met with stern disapproval among other women, and it is doubtful if one woman in a hundred in England can be found who does not more or less sympathize with Mrs. Pankhurst and her lieutenants. Some women, it is true, have taken a very active stand against suffragettes on account of the outrages against the church. Devout churchwomen were scandalized by the frequent interruptions in the church services, and they were shocked beyond words when the historic churches one by one disappeared in flames kindled by the "arsonettes." It is difficult, of course, to predict any outcome of so unusual a campaign, but from the suffragettes' point of view there is grave danger that they will bring against them a much more effective weapon than the courts of law and the jailor's keys. That is the mob. Dangerous as it may be for King or Cabinet Minister to appear in public without a guard of soldiers and police, it is just now infinitely more dangerous for the suffragettes themselves to attempt to harangue a crowd. The same men and boys who formerly laughed and even applauded are now worked up to a frenzy that is dangerous in the extreme. The London police are charged with the paradoxical duty of first protecting the wild women from the mob that would tear them to pieces, and then of arresting the woman they have saved and taking her off to jail. It is affirmed, and upon good authority, that the policemen are gradually going over to the side of the women. A policeman's business is the law, but his weapon is force, He respects force and knows it when he sees it. It required 1600 policeman to keep 200 women from breaking down the gates of Buckingham Palace and perhaps seizing the King himself. And when the battle was over there were as many battered policemen as women. Politically speaking, the question of votes for women cuts athwart the party lines. Conservatives and Liberals are not agreed among themselves. Mr. Asquith, the Premier, is opposed to woman suffrage, while Mr. Lloyd-George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is in favor of it. There is similar disagreement on the Opposition benches. But the women are not content with passive support. Mr. Lloyd-George says he believes in their cause, but as he continues to hold office in Asquith's Cabinet, the suffragettes say they prefer an honest opponent to a hypocritical support. For that reason Mr. Lloyd-George is in as great danger from the suffragettes as Mr. Asquith himself. The women are determined, if possible, to defeat the Liberal party, not because they have any delusions of united Tory support, but because they say that under the British Constitution the party in power is responsible for making the laws and administering them; that the Liberal party has not only refused to do justice to women, but it has tortured them in its prisons. They would, therefore, turn out the Radicals and have the Tories in. What they would do to a Tory government would do for them. It is well within the bounds of possibility that a Conservative majority in Parliament might now grant limited woman suffrage just to avoid the increased trouble that would be in store for them should they follow the example of the present administration. When one attempts to assess the situation in all its phases he is forced to the conclusion that the women will eventually win, The growth of the popularity of their cause rises and falls. But after a rise it never again drops to so low a level as it once marked. In the event of civil war in Ireland "The Cause" will have to be considered. What either side in a civil war would do in view of the presence of some hundreds of thousands of ingenious feminine traitors challenges powers of imagination that are not possessed my military men. There is no doubt whatsoever that should hostilities break out in Ireland, whether or not they spread to England, the women will have a hand in the quarrel. It will then be up to the Government to decide whether they will array the women all on their side by granting suffrage at once, or whether they will take their chances and stand out against the suffrage traitors. Here again comes in the complex British political situation, for if the Liberal House of Commons, supporting the South of Ireland, should try to get rid of the women by enfranchising them, what would the Conservative House of Lords, supporting the North of Ireland, do with the bill? And it takes two years to pass a bill over the veto of the Lords. On the other hand, should a compromise be reached with the Irish question and the danger of civil war thereby be averted, there is every reason to believe that the fury of the militant suffragettes would only be increased. On one side of this fight will range determined, earnest women, who are fighting as never women fought before, wholly oblivious of self and ready to accept martyrdom without a murmur. On the other side are men, stubborn perhaps, unconvinced perhaps, but who still cannot see anything in the question of woman suffrage except a matter of political expediency. They have no desire to die to prevent votes for women, and as yet they have not got their consent to put the women rebels to death. It will be a long flight and a bitter one, but WOMEN'S WAR [?] IN ENGLAND Mrs. Pankhurst Reviews Educational and Patriotic Campaigns (Correspondence of the Sunday Journal.) WASHINGTON, March 24. WHEN the war broke out in Europe, among the first of the organized bodies of British women to realize that women could be of actual and immediate use to the nation was the Women's Social and Political Union whose leader is Mrs. Emmeline Pankurst. As is well known, this organization immediately upon the proclamation of war set aside its own activities and interests and gave its services to the state in every direction in which it saw need. Since then its work has become recognized as one of the strongest feminine supports upon which Britain has had to rely. Mrs. Pankhurst, who is soon to visit Providence, has recently come to the United States, wholly in the interest of aid in Serbia, and only in private interviews and in answer to direct questions does she refer to the situation in England. At the outbreak of war she was in France, and the policy which she subsequently followed was greatly influenced by seeing the entire French nation transformed in two days from a land at peace into a nation prepared for war. Upon her return to England she found the contrast painfully striking. In France as soon as the order for mobilization was published the whole country was put upon a war footing, the women automatically taking the places at home vacated by the men. In England there was no such preparedness evident. Everything was in confusion; the machinery of transition was more antiquated; the position more ponderous. Mrs. Pankhurst immediately realized that the women of England formed a great reserve force for national service, and immediately threw herself into the work of advocating national service for men and women. [Section break] She worked unceasingly to stimulate patriotism; held recruiting meetings urging men to enlist as volunteers, and meetings stimulating women to prepare to meet the exigencies of war. She was frequently invited to recruiting rallies to present the cause to the men, and in one case at least, the Mayor of a town-- that of Hackney--gathered together all the soldiers' wives and dependents and had her talk to them of England's need for their joint services. All along she was urging women to take the place of the men, in banks, as clerks of every sort, as omnibus drivers, as car conductors, as chauffeurs, as special police, as workers in agriculture, and in the munition factories, as well as in other branches of industry. She established agencies for furthering this work. and to-day the streets of London are filled with women in uniforms doing the outdoor work of the men, and the offices have an even greater proportion of women clerks. There was some prejudice in connection with giving women positions in munition factories, and Mrs. Pankhurst interviewed Mr. Lloyd George, Minister of Munitions, who practically gave her the promise that women should be employed. The agriculturists, too, said that women could not plow. A prominent [[ end of column]] [[top of column]] member of the W.S.P.U., Mrs. Drummond (known as the "General") to convince the doubting members of Parliament, said to them: "Come down and I will show you a hundred of them plowing." Now the British Government is asking for women to volunteer for agricultural service. Mrs. Pankhurst also used her influence during the labor strikes and other economic difficulties which have prevailed since the war. She was especially successful in south Wales, where the strikes all through the great mining sections made the situation critical. She had a remarkable reception from the miners and did much to restore peace and order and to instill patriotism. [Section break] Mrs. Pankhurst has now left the work in Britain in the hands of her representatives, and has come to America to do what she can in aid of Serbia. She feels that the integrity of the Serbian Government is of vital importance to the permanent peace of the world, and that in doing what she can for Serbia she is helping to pay a debt of gratitude that England and all others allied with her owe to Serbia for the brave fight she has made. In an interview which she granted while in Washington Mrs. Pankhurst answered a number of questions regarding [[end of column]] [[top of column]] some of the conditions in England which have been influenced by the war. The leader in the cause of equal rights is rather a fragile-looking woman. In conversation she is low-voiced, fluent and clear, with a way of looking very steadily into the eyes of her listener, her countenance reflecting at times the intense feeling she has in a subject in which she is interested [lost]. Two very small hands are occasionally brought into play in graceful emphasis of some statement. Asked what the war was bringing to England in an economic way, Mrs. Pankhurst said: "I have long realized that we in England have needed better organization of both men and women for national service, and the war has brought this need very forcibly before the nation. It has taught us that we have a mass of valuable material which could be of enormous value to the country if it were trained. "There are, as you know, a large number of young people just out of school, with no technical training of any kind. They are allowed to drift; the leisure class to do nothing, the middle class to employ themselves somewhat aimlessly, and the young people of the poorer class to pass their time upon the streets, the boys to become the slackers and the girls, turned loose at a most impressionable and dangerous period, exposed to all the dangers that a street life holds." [[end of column]] [[top of column]] "What method of preparation for national service would you the advocate?" "For all, rich and poor alike, I advocate compulsory training in some form of national service, which, in a time like this or in time of peace, could be turned to immediate account. At our national service meetings we advocate State compulsory training for everybody--a system under which the young persons of both sexes should receive training in some useful trade or profession adapted to national use. This training should be compulsory and should apply to all classes." "I believe that if the State would take up organizations like the Boy and Girl Scouts and give them a thorough training for real national service our streets would not be crowded with idle young people exposed to every form of evil and danger to which they may become the prey, and the country would have a mass of trained material to call upon in case of need. If these young people got this training, which would be valuable in time of peace as well as in time offer, it would go very far toward making the intelligent democracy we must have if we are going to make democracy a success. "I would teach young people that they owe their trained service to their country. In pleasing for recruits for the war we frequently hear the young people say, 'What has the country done for me that I should give my service to the country?' What we are now trying to impress upon them is that they are the nation, and the nation is actually their nation. "One cause of industrial disturbances and disputes is that people are not trained to realize that the national problem is theirs. You get men blaming other people when things go wrong; they do not individually realize that since they hold political power the wrong is theirs, as well as is the responsibility to do their part in righting it." [Section break] "Then does the English workman lack patriotism?" "Anything but that!" replied Mrs. Pankhurst. "Every Englishman is patriotic at heart, and is capable of making great sacrifices for his country, but they have not all been trained to an actual realization that each and every man is part of the nation. This lack of patriotic training accounts for the industrial disputes which have so seriously disturbed the country since the war began. "Part of our war work has been to have a great educational campaign, or rather a series of campaigns in individual centres. We went among the Welsh miners after the great coal strikes. We had meetings there, and were well received by the men. We explained to them the war, and tried to imbue them with a sense of their responsibility in it. They were unanimous in their desire to support their country, but failed to see the connection between their work and that end. "We pointed out to them how vital their services were. They were supplying the coal for the navy, and we tried to impress upon them the fact that their work was as important as that of the sailors on the battleships or the soldiers in the trenches. We demonstrated to them that this was a case of national existence, not a matter of day's wages, and told them that they must do their part. They seemed to awaken to their duty." "Are your members now engaged in any industrial work?" "Yes," was the reply. "Our members [[end of column]] [[top of column]] are at present conducting a campaign on the Clyde, the great Scottish shipbuilding centre. They are explaining matters there to the men. They are holding recruiting meeting, urging the men to prepare themselves for service and the women to take volunteer training courses, asking the boys and girls to join the Boy and Girl Scouts for active service." "What measures of preparedness do you advocate for England?" "The number of soldiers in a country is a very small part of preparedness. My idea of preparedness is to have a nation prepared for peace as well as for war--in fact, what we are doing now is all a preparation for real democratic government, a literal fulfillment of the dictum, 'Government of the people, for the people, by the people,' and 'people' includes women as well as men." "How have the women of England met the exigencies of the war?" "Mrs. Pankhurst glowed. "This war came to thousands of women of England as a revelation. For the first time in their lives may of them have known what it is to be useful human beings. And it has done more to break down class distinctions than anything else has ever done. It has shown the leisure class how the laboring class has to work. It has also shown the value of training as it could have been revealed in no other way. [Section break] "Young girls who were never taught to do anything in their lives are now cheerfully scrubbing floors and washing dishes, and performing other work of this kind. They want to do their part and, being untrained for any work requiring skill or experience, they must take what are termed the menial positions. They will stand for long hours day after day at railroad stations handing out canteens of hot tes and coffee to soldiers passing through the various towns. "Needless to say, our hospitals are filled with women performing every duty from that of surgeon to orderly. As opportunity offers untrained women are taking short Red Cross course, so that if circumstances present, they may have some experienced assistance to offer. It has been a wonderful education for all classes in England, and an admirable practical lesson in democracy. "What has applied to the women of leisure doing the rough work of the inexperienced applies to men as well. Thousands of young Englishmen who never trained as soldiers are not waiting for commissions, but are applying for place in the ranks. In many cases training masters of recruits are veterans too old for the front, but well qualified for various forms of service at home. "This has brought about some queer reversals of condition. It is now quite a common thing to see an old soldier giving orders to a young men whose social position formerly demanded that his present superior touch his cap to him. Now the saluting is done by the former master. But they all see the right of it, and take it good naturedly, even enoying the humor of the altered relation. "By thousands the young [??] of England have thrown up posit[??] and put aside their professions to just the awkward squads, and they are [???]eless at drill and at lectures. People trained intelligence learn readily, [???] emotion is proportionally rapid." THE SUNDAY TRIBUNE, PROVIDENCE, R. I., JUNE 7, 1914. [?S] FROM THE WORLD'S Mrs. Pankhurst Seized in Raid on Buckingham Palace In the raid on Buckingham Palace, the residence of King George, the militant suffragettes at one time controlled the situation to such an extent that the police had their hands practically full. The photographs shows Mrs. Pankhurst, the militant leader, being seized by a police officer at the very gate of the palace. [???ier As??????? mi?????] catalogue and the canvasses on exhibition, completely allaying any suspicions the attendants may have had. After a time, the woman entered Chamber No. 7, where old master pieces of the French school are on exhibition. This room was poorly guarded and afforded the suffragette her best chance. She drew a weapon from beneath her jacket and began smashing at the glass cases of the paintings. The clatter of glass aroused persons in the main gallery, but before they reached the woman's side she had ruined five of the pictures, all of which from the standpoint of the collector, were priceless. Guards pounced upon the woman none too gently, but were met with blows from a pair of muscular arms. After a struggle in which other art works were in danger of being smashed, the woman finally was overpowered. She kept shouting that she "sought retribution," and all the way to the police station she continued to scream. Immediately after the picture smashing incident, all the visitors were ejected and the gallery was closed. AT ROYAL AMADEMY, TOO. While the exciting scene was being enacted at the National Galery, another suffragette was raiding the Royal Academy. Armed with a small axe, she attempted to slash several canvasses, but succeeded in ruining only one before she was subbed and arrested. The academy was closed to the public. The Royal Academy was filled with a fashionable crowd when the picture slashing incident took place there. The woman used a butcher's clever. She was standing before a landscape entitled "Primavera," painted by George Clausen, an American, when she suddenly began to slash. Detectives had to fight to protect the woman from fashionably-gowned women and men who attempted to wreak immediately punishment upon the intruder. An attache of the Royal Academy said the value of the ruined painting was $1,000. After the destruction of the paintings and the arrest of the slashers, the scene of action shifted to the Bow Street Police Court, when the cases of the suffragettes and their male escorts, who took part in yesterday's riot were called. A mighty crowd of men and women, most of them suffragettes and their sympathizers, moved upon the court before the hour for the hearing to begin. There also were many who came as sight-seers. Just as the presiding magistrate was getting ready to call the cases, the notes of a bugle were heard. Then the notes of the "Marseillaise," came through the open windows. A male supporter of the cause, with a bugle concealed beneath his coat had climbed to the roof of the court house and, at a signal from the street, began trumpeting the song which for a century has been a revolutionary anthem. Detectives hastily were despatched to silence the daring bugler and thematic suddenly stopped. But the spirit of the gym has bestirred the battle instinct in the fighting women and they set up a cheer and began shouting: "Votes for Women." It was decided to go ahead with the cases without trying to clear the court room, for it was feared that any demonstration of force would result in hand-to-hand fighting in which some of the women might be killed. Just as the first suffragette was called to the dock to answer charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, some one threw a "bomb" made of a paper bag filled with flour. It missed the magistrate's head and struck the wall, where it burst, sending a cloud of white over the court and every one else in his vicinity. This woman was ordered to deposit $25 bond to keep the peace for six months. "I will go to jail; I will never furnish any bond to any English court," cried the militant. As this prisoner was being led form the room, one of the suffragettes among the prisoners tried to escape/ she leaped clear over the railing around the prisoners' dock and managed to reach friends among the spectators. When detectives tried to recover her, suffragettes among the spectators rallied to her rescue and a fierce fight ensued, which filled the court room with clamor. MAGISTRATE HIT BY "BOMB." While the fight was at its height, spectators began bombarding all the officials with bags filled with flour. One struck the magistrate on the head, nearly knocking him to the floor. He emerged from a shower flour, sputtering with anger. He was powdered white from head to foot. Order was at last restored, and the magistrate after wiping the flour form his eyes, ears and mouth, ordered the proceedings to go on. Just as the next defendant was being arraigned, she drew a shoe from her foot and hurled it with unerring accuracy at the judges who caught it just in time to prevent being hit on the nose. "Fine work," shrieked the woman. The spectators broke into wild cheers as the now thoroughly angered judge passed the shoe to an attache of the court. The first male supporter to be arraigned was sentenced to two weeks in jail. "Treat us all alike, for we are equals," screamed the women, as the man was arraigned. A majority of the women were ordered to post bail of $25 to keep the peace for six months, but all refused. In addition to the suffragettes arrested near Buckingham Palace, a number of others were arraigned, the total number of cases heard being sixty-four. Pandemonium reigned throughout, the women hurling missiles at the court o[?] shouting. The spectators, disregarding the admonitions of the court attendants joined in the clamor. While the hearings were in progress, word was received that the charge of obstructing traffic, which had been lodged against Mrs. ("General") Flora Drummond had been withdrawn. This was the signal for a wild outburst of applause, as Mrs. Drummond is one of the most militant of the militants. Five women accused of window smashing were arraigned at the Marlborough Street police Court later this afternoon, where there was a repetition of the riotous scenes that had marked the Bow Street hearings. The defendants yelled and struggled with the police, interrupting the proceedings. One woman removed her shoes, and threw one at the judge, but she was overpowered before she could hurl the second one. All were remanded. // MARRIAGE LICENSES ——————— James L. Hoyle, Abington, Pa., and Helen M. Smith. 1543 N. 621 st. George F. Dettra, 1210 Marston st., and Mary R. Welsh, 2824 Poplar st John Watson, Chester, Pa., and Sarah Ackroyd. 619 Clearfield st. Arthur D. Showell, 223 S. Deihl st., and Sarah J. Brown. 1820 Federal st. William S. Weber, 1625 S. Taylor st., and Effie H. Mann. 2717 Federal st. Joseph Conan, 1803 Francis st., and Bridget Maloney, 3002 Susquehanna ave. Stephen A. Goralczyk, 4459 Livingston st., and Elenora Wulk, 4531 Allen st. Charles A. M. Cypress, Atlantic City, N. J., and Ethel Cooper, 809 S. 18th st. Eugene P. Fougeray, Jr., 5841 Master st., and Agnes C. Burger, 344 N. 42d st. William M. Laylock, 5630 N. 3d st., and Mabel Snyder, 2021 E. Dauphin st. Sidney S. Brown, 3119 Euclid ave., and Goldie Betchon, 1541 N. 20th st. Robert L. Allen, 1720 N. Woodstock st., and Sarah H. Warrick, 1852 N. Woodstock st. Lynford G. Castor, 4914 Mulberry st., and Edith E. Bath, 1731 Foulkrod st. James P. Willard, 2536 S. Reese st., and Frances M. Schwakoff, 2504 S. 5th st. Jacob M. Silbert, 1423 Germantown ave., and Celie Heitzer, 33 Kauffman st. James Winters, 761 S. 20th st., and Mae M. Dugan, 936 Grays Ferry road. John H. Brumbaugh, Williamsburg, Pa., and Emma A. Welker, Belleville, Pa. Harry E. Hampshire, 2037 N. Carlisle st., and A. Corinne Frost, 611 N. 11st st. Albert Klais, 2020 E. Elkhart st., and Mary E. Woodside, 1920 E York st. Raymond L. Baillot, 1442 N. 6th st., and Florence A. Belmont, 6116 Jackson st. John W. Brooks, 2103 E. Wishart st., and Emma Butler, 4328 Peach st. Albert C. Kratzer, 1031 York st., and Bianche M. Schnitzel, 2618 N. 11th st. Vincent R. Zarfus, 1305 S. 8th st, and Margaret McNasby, 21 Reed st. William R. Langdon, Jr., 1613 Erie ave., and [??? B. Rice, 5110 Lena st. [??] William Biggerstaff, 934 Lehigh ave., and [???] Bolton, 726 N. 20th st. [??] Disston, Chestnut Hill, and Jessie [???] Chestnut Hill. [???] Brookyn, N.Y. and Emily [???] // ——————— SUFFRAGE RIOTING DEPLORED ——————— Suffragists and Antis Here Unite in Condemning Action of London Militants and Police Suffragists and anti-suffragists here found a common ground to-day in deploring the militant riots in London to-day and yesterday with its accompanying police brutality, as well as the misdirected attacks of certain militants on more works of art in the National Gallery. The only differences of opinion is that the suffragists seek to excuse the acts of the women by the manner in which they are treated by the British Government, while the antis assert they are affected less by the actions of the police because the militants brought it on themselves. "I am sorry to hear they have destroyed any Bellini paintings," said John Hamilton Lewis, president of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, to-day, "as those are valuable works. But I do not think these acts of violence against famous paintings can be construed as an attack on the principles of art. They are simply an attempt to create a sensation, and advertise the claims of the suffragists." Miss Lida Stokes Adams, prominent suffragist, deplored the riots and other militant acts of violence, including the attacks on the paintings. "These things are regrettable," said she, "but the causes behind them are more regrettable. If the British Government would remove the injustices toward women and treat them fairly, the outbreaks would cease. The riots are bad but the wrongs wrough on women are worse." Mrs. William W. Birdsall, an anti-suffragist, deplored the riots, saying they were simply another evidence of the mistakes of militant suffrage. "Woman has an inalienable right to protection from man," said she, "and instead of participating in riots her duty is to go to cover when riotous proceedings begin. Strife is no place for her. I was sorry to hear about the police brutality; that should not have been, but neither should the riots. I regret to hear of the attacks on the paintings also." ——————— Suffragetes Fire Mansion Leicester, Eng., May 22.—An attempt early to-day by militant suffragettes to burn Stoughton Hall, a picturesque mansion here, was frustrated by the watchfulness of a passing game keeper. He awakened the caretakers, who extinguished the flames. A quantity of kerosene and inflammables was found and there was suffrage literature scattered about the grounds. ——————— Militants Plant Bomb in Church Edinburgh, Scotland, May 23.—Mili- [???] ——————————————————————————————————— SCORES ARE HURT WHEN MILITANTS RIOT IN LONDON ——————— Suffragettes Storm Buckingham Palace—Forty Taken Prisoner by Police, Whose Horses Trample Women Felled by Clubs—Mrs. Pankhurst and Daughter Seized—Used "Bombs" Filled with Paint ——————— INCREDIBLE BRUTALITY MARKS CONFLICT; MANY IN HOSPITALS ——————— LONDON, May 21. The worst suffragete riot London has known occured to-day when hundreds of militants gave battle to the police in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. The fight was marked by incredible brutality. Scores of women were beaten by the King's guards, when, Amazon-like, they engaged in hand-to-hand conflict with the authorities. Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, militant leader, and several of her aides, including her daughter, Sylvia, were arrested during the fighting, and, when they reached the police station, they broke away from their captors and wrecked the place. Chairs and ink wells were thrown by them, and valuable court records were destroyed. King George and Queen Mary returned to-day from Aldershot, where they had spent five days inspecting the camp there. The militants expected them to go to Buckingham Palace and earlier in the week had notified the authorities that they would call there and present their grievances. Home Secretary McKenna informed the women that they would not be permitted to invade the palace grounds, and they replied that they would go there despite the objection of the authorities. Their majesties stole a march on the militants and proceeded directly to Marlborough House, residence of Dowager Queen Alexandra. The militans were not aware of this more and proceeded to march, hundreds strong, to Buckingham Palace. As the army of women was moving along Constitution Hill, two policemen suddenly seized Mrs. Pankhurst and hurried her off to the police station. Mrs. Paknhurst's bodyguard of women, chosen for their courage and strength, gave an angry shout, and attacked the policemen, but were dispersed with dishevelled hair and torn dresses. The palace grounds were carefully searched for the fear prevailed that fanatics among the woman might attempt to do the King bodily harm. POLICE USE THEIR CLUBS. Following the arrest of Mrs. Pankhurst, a riot broke out on Constitution Hill. Mounted police tried to clear the streets, but the women formed themselves into a compact mob and fought savagely. The police charged the mass, smashing at the heads of the leaders with their heavy batons. The yells of the enraged women drowned out thuds of the truncheons as they fell with crushing force upon the heads and shoulders of the women. Many women were knocked down and trampled. Some lay unconscious, while the battle raged above their prostrate bodies. Others were tramped by horses and carried unconscious to the hospitals. Snorting, rearing horses, maddened by the tumult, dashed into the fringes of the mob, scattering women right and left. The policemen, both mounted and foot, fought silently and stubbornly, while the women shouted threats and imprecations as they volleyed missiles at the officers. One of the eyes witnesses, in describing the way the police used their clubs, said: "It was like killing rabbits. The mounted men forced their horses into the ranks of the women, paying no heed to those who were knocked to the street by the hoofs of the mounts. At some points I counted a dozen unconscious women in the streets, lying in huddled heaps, where they had been felled by the policemen's clubs or knocked down by the hoofs of the horses. One policeman became detached and was knocked to the street, where the women poured green paint all over him. When he was rescued he behaved like a maniac. Grasping his baton with both hands, he knocked down every woman within range of his club. It is a wonder that many were not killed." Some of the women had their clothing almost wholly torn from their bodies. Others, with flying hair and blood-stained faces, fought like furies. The weapons of the mob were broken bottles, stones, rotten eggs, bombs filled with paint and clubs. Ambulances and police reserves were rushed to the scene and the injured were cared for outside the battle zone. The most strenuous of the women had to be strapped to their cots, as they insisted upon going back into the fight. ROYALTY WATCHES BATTLE. While the battle raged on Constitution Hill and around the palace grounds, members of the royal household mounted the towers of Buckingham Palace and watched the fray. Spread out beneath them like a panorama lay the scene of tumult in the streets. They saw the police charge time and again, and the yells of the maddened (Continued on the Second Page.) ——————————————————————————————————— SCORES ARE HURT WHEN MILITANTS RIOT IN LONDON ——————— (Continued from the First Page.) ——————— women rose clear and strong to their ears. Above the tossing sea of waving arms and heads, the watchers could make cut the forms of the policemen, whose arms were rising and falling as they brought down their clubs upon the heads of the suffragettes. Within half an hour, forty women were placed under arrest, charged with assaulting policemen, rioting, inciting to riot, impairing traffic, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Around the palace grounds, sentries from the Scots Greys, Imperial troops, stood at attention as they looked upon the battle before them. The women, adopting military strategy, kept compactly together in the middle of the streets, making it difficult for the policemen to segregate the mobs. Suddenly some one started the anthem of the militant suffragettes and the women all joined. In the meantime, Mrs. Pankhurst was hurried away to Holloway jail. Suddenly Sylvia Pankurst, daughter of Mrs. Pankhurst, dashed toward the palace gates, with a detachment of women at her heels. She was surrounded by policemen, and, after a hard fight, she was arrested. As Mrs. Pankhurst was being taken to Holloway jail, she lost all control of her self. With blazing eyes she struggled in the grasp of the policemen, meanwhile shrieking: "That's right; arrest me at the gates of the King. Go tell the King you have arrested me." When Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested, a mounted policeman lifted her to the crupper of his powerful roan horse and galloped straight at the human wall that barred him. The horse reared and came down with his hoofs on bodies of women. One suffragette seized the horse's bridle and attempted to cut it. The horse reared again, his breast striking the woman, knocking her from her feet. A lane was opened and the prisoner was carried into the ranks of the police. ————————————————————— NIGHT EXTRA ONE CENT TRENTON LOSES SUIT [?] HOLDS THAT COMMISSION GOVERNED CITIES CANNOT ISSUE BONDS WILL APPEAL DECISION Trenton, May 22.-Justice Trenchard today filed an opinion in the Hennessy "Home Rule" law, sttaing that "In so far as it seeks to deprive cities of the be[??] fit of other acts, it is special legislation and therefore unconstitutional ." When this law went into effect the bond houses refused to buy Trenton bonds, holding that it took away from the City Commissioner the power to issue bonds. The city at once began suit, and the above is the outcome. An appeal will be taken to the June term of the Court of Errors Appeals. Under the rules of that body it will be advanced to first place because of its importance. Improvements are being held up because commission-governed cities cannot sell their bonds. Urgent Deficiency Bill Through Washington, May 22- An urgent deficiency bill carrying an appropriation of $6,300,000 and including many items. covering the expenses of troops in Mexico was passed in the Senate today. Visiting This City KING IS MOBBED BY SUFFRAGETTES IN ROYAL THEATRE Militants Create Wild Disorder In Hostile demonstration - George V., Queen and Princess Mary See Battle With Police-One Woman Seriously Hurt-Priceless Paintings Are Slashed-Agitators Riot In Court WOMEN INVADE RESIDENCE OF ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY LONDON, May 22. Militant suffragettes, enraged by the brutality of the police in quelling yesterday's demonstration in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, today launched a bitter war of reprisal. The royal family witnessed one of their first battles. This afternoon King George, Queen Mary and Princess Mary attended a charity performance in His Majesty's theatre. Militants were scattered throughout the house and when the royal party had been seated there ensued a scene the like of which never has been experienced by a British sovereign. "You Czar-" one of the women began. leaping to her feet and shaking her fist at the King. She was interrupted by a man in the audience and ejected by attendants, who carried her screaming and kicking from the theatre. This outburst was the signal for a demonstration against King George that was marked by its hostility. Clamor broke out from all parts of the house. Another woman climbed to her seat and shouted to the King, but her cries were drowned out in the uproar, While she was being carried out one of her comrades stood up and endeavored to harrangue the monarch. "Women are being killed in your prisons in their fight for liberty," she screamed. When attendants tried to remove this militant, they found she had chained herself to her seat. "Rip it up." roared a policeman, and the chair was ripped from the floor and carried, with the fighting woman, to the outside. While this demonstration was going on the King leaned forward with his hands upon the railing of his box, looking with interest at the scene. Queen Mary swept the proceedings with a cold and hostile eye. Princess Mary was visibly affected. After the woman who had chained herself to her seat had been removed a man and woman near the royal box leaped to their feet, waving their arms and shouting. Both were hurled bodily to the street, Then the most darling of the agitators, who had been seated in the first row, vaulted over the footlights and advanced toward the King and Queen. Stage hands threw her off the stage into the arms of policemen. Altogether seven women and two men took part in the disturbance. One of the women was seriously injured. Persons in the audience knocked her to the floor and were beating her when she was rescued by the authorities. The performance at last went on. It was "The Silver King." DESTROY OLD PICTURES Lambeth Palace, the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury was also invated by a delegation of the militants this afternoon. The women were led by Miss Annie Kenney, one of the chief organizers of the Woman's Social and Political Union. The self-invited guests demanded an audience with the archbishop and refused to budge until he had granted them an interview. Miss Kenney said she and her companions would not budge until they had seen the prelate and declared they would stay at the palace all night if necessary. Six paintings, five of them in the National Gallery and one in the Royal Academy had been destroyed by the suffragetes earlier in the day. Mary Spencer, a woman who heretofore has not been mixed up in the demonstrations, was the slasher who destroyed the painting in the National Gallery. The woman arrested for the Royal Academy vandalism refused to give her name to the police. The five pictures ruined in the National Gallery, all of which were in the collection of Bellini's work, are: Madonna and Child, surrounded by infants and Saints, John and Christopher; Portrait of Girolano Malatini; Landscape showing the death of Peter the martyr; Madonna and child, with portrayal of Christ's agony in the garden of Gethsemane. The Royal Academy painting destroyed was a landscape by Clausen, an American artist. Miss Spencer, when she brought before the court for the depredations in the National Gallery, was committed for trial at the sessions. Addressing the magistrate as a "bumptious old Pontius Pilate," she kept the proceeding lively with her abusive tirade. Miss Spencer slipped by the guards at the gallery, despite the vigilant watch posted for militants after the Rokeby "Venus" was slashed recently. She gained entrance to the building by posing as a sightseer. She spend some time consulting her Partly cloudy tonight and Sat[?] cooler Saturday; moderate [?] more than a mile the tugs succeeded [?] getting her in tow again and she [?] headed upstream under control. BARES SECRETS O[?] 000288 [?] City Night in Face of Villa's Army STORM MAY HALT FIGHTING Juarez, Mex., May 21. A telegram was received today from General Filipe Angeles, commander of General Villa's artillery, by H. Perez Abreu, head of the Constitutionalist information bureau here, stating that Saltillo was evacuated last night by the Federals. Villa's artillery, it was said, had been bombarding Saltillo since Friday. A second despatch, while was said to be official, stated that the Constitutionalists carried all the outer works on the northern and wester sides of the city in an early morning attack. After fierce fighting in the suburbs the Federals began retreating. A terrific storm is raging in the State of Coahuila and Constitutionalist officers fear that it will interfere with or halt the progress of General Villa's army. The storm is particularly severe at Musqueiz -and south of that town. Sixteen persons have been killed at Musqueiz and many buildings destroyed by the cyclone. Any halt in the onward sweep of the rebels now might have a serious effect and give Huerta new strength to hold on to the Provisional Presidency. This storm is the first of the rainy season but generally bad weather, making campaigning difficult, if not impossible, soon may be expected. Paredon, Mexico, May 21-General Juan Maria Oscuro and thirty-one of his fellow-staff officers of the Federal division at Saltillo, in command of General Francisco Coss, have been executed by Villa's forces. They were cut off from their retreating troops and taken prisoners by Villa's forces under Tomas Urbina and Maclovio Herrera, The entire general staff was ordered executed by Villa and the execution took place at Rancho San Francisco del Oro, near the station house. These executions are the only ones which have occurred except where "colorados" or "Red-Flaggers," of Orozco's command were found in the Federal commands, These men were always executed as traitors to the Constitutionalist cause. All others are joining Villa's forces after being taken prisoners. The executed staff officers were captured at Zertuche, fifteen miles south of Paredon, and half way to Saltillo. Women, who follow every Mexican army, took a prominent part in the fighting at Zartuche Sunday. As the Federal soldiers swarmed from their troop trains some of the women dragged out and broke open boxes of ammunition, carrying the cartridges to the Federal soldiers in the face of the Constitutionalist fire. Others crouched on the iron roofs of the cars, took up the rifles of the wounded and loaded and fired with all the coolness and determination of veterans. Six of the women made a desperate effort to bring a machine gun on one of the flat cars to bear on the Constitutionalist troops, but before they could get it in position the male soldiers had surrendered and the Constitutionalists had swarmed over the edges of the cars. Washington, May 21.-More details of the conflict between Mexican Federals and Constitutionalists at Paredon which culminated in wholesale execution of Federal officers were received in official dispatched to the Constitutionalists headquarters today. "The Federals evacuated Monclova and united with the outposts which they had in Paredon, making a total of 5,000 men," said the report. "The flight took place between 10 and 12 o'clock. The enemy were completely routed. Eight hundred prisoners were taken. Three complete railway trains, 600,000 rounds MARRIAGE LINCENSES Herbert B. Marzi, 103 N. Sickel st., and Bertha J. Gall, Camden. James G. Stokes, 4243 N. 7th st., and Ella Archibald. 5335 Woodland ave. Armando Valentini, 1308 Green st., and Anna Buxbaum. 2632 N. 18th st. Albert W. Hicks, 3232 N. 13th st., and Irene A. Hell, Allentown. Harry H. Estell, 2237 Taggart st., and Pearl B. Selah, 1306 N. 12th. Samuel S. Wieder, New York, and Matha Spagat, New York John L. Kelly, Clifton Heights, and Bridget McHale, Gray's Ferry road. Romert L. Hazlett, 5311 Catherine st., and Anna F. Outerbridge, 1806 Norris st. Beanford R. Sampson, League Island, and Barbara Beringer, 640 Callowhill st. Walter J. Ross, 3043 D st., and Irene Con[?]elman, 3040 D st. Harry F. Kleiber, 1513 Marvine st., and Emma Dimter, 122 E. Westmoreland st. Dean D. Smith, New Haven, Conn., and Mildred E. Husted, 1634 Clearfield st. William M. David, 26 E. Penn st., and Frances A. Cutler, 230 W. School lane Dr. John G. Cannon, Frankford, Del., and Hattie J. Lingo, Millsboro, Del. Jospeh G. Wiltshire, 3812 Mt. Vernon st. and Emily B. Wright, 3814 Mt. Vernon st. Harry Hausen, 2951 N. Bailey st., and Ingrid Grevstad, 2058 S. Beechwood st. Harry D. Robinson, 804 Tioga st., and Grace W. Fry, 617 Venango st. John F. Conway, 2503 Carpenter st., and Sadie Knight, 1928 N. Reese st. John Bartley. 1945 N. 4th st., and Sadie Knight, 1928 N. Reese st. Dr Walter B. Lavelle. 1533 S. 15th st., and Lillian J. McCloud, 28 N. 39th st. David W. Klaiss, 2503 N. Front st., and Margaret M. Wardie, 3128 G st. Frederick A. Finkeldey, 838 S. 56th st., and EthenePrice, Bryn Ahtyn, Pa. Chalkley Kirby, 1823 Filbert st., and Jennie R. Blair, 1727 Filbert st. Martin J. Whalen, 1306 Green st., and Anna M. Farrell, 536 N. 13th st. Albert Thomas, 3415 Lee st., and Sarah Richmond, 3428 Kipp st. Herman Einhorn, 939 McKean st., and Fannie Feldsher, 4176 Germantown ave. William S. Linck. Jenkintown, Pa., and Anastasia R. O'Neill, 3037 N. 9th st. John R. Sieyes, 2233 S. 3d st., and Marguerite C. McAvoy, 117 Daly st. Harry T. Boteler, 3219 Ridge ave., and Sylvia E. Kafouy, 6030 Chestnut st. IN MEMORIAM BARR -In living remembrance of my dear sister. LORRAINE H. BARR, who departed this life May 21. 1913. EDITH DEATHS CROUSE. -On May 21, 1914. CLARA V., widow of William Brennan and widow of George W. Crouse, in her 65th year. Relatives and friends are invited to attend the funeral, on Monday morning, at 8.30 o'clock, from her late residence. 3121 N. Broad st. Solemn Requiem Mass at St. Stephen's Church, Broad and Butler sts. Interment private. CASEY.-At Palmyra. N. J., May 21, 1914 JAMES CASEY, ages 75 years. Relatives and friends are invited to attend the funeral, on [?] SYNOPSIS OF "80 Million Women Want-?" A timely political drama of to-day Mabel, a beautiful girl, just returned from college, has been studying the problem of "Women's Political Equality." Travers, her fiancé a young lawyer, twits her for being a "suffragette" and tries to laugh her out of the "fad," but Mabel remains true to the "cause" and begins active campaign work as a street orator, working under the banner of Mrs. Harriet Stanton Blatch of the Women's Political Union. "Boss" Kelly, an unscrupulous politician, in the midst of a hot fight to maintain his power, learns that Travers, still a briefless, clientless, fledgling at the law, is a great orator and for this reason offers him a political career if he will join the Kelly Association. Travers refuses, because machine politics are contrary to his standards and because he knows that such work would shatter his sweetheart's high ideals for his future. Kelly urges and tells of his pull and what he could do for his future success, but Travers is obdurate and they part in anger. Travers' first legal case results from an accident. Flynn, a henchman of the "Boss," runs down Arthur with an automobile, and he is badly hurt, Flynn appeals to the "Boss" for legal protection. The "Boss" learning that Travers is the lawyer for the prosecution, decides to teach the "young upstart" a lesson and show him that influence is required even for success in the courts. Travers loses the case and soon realizes that he must have Boss Kelly's influence if he is to succeed, so without consulting with this sweetheart, he allies himself with the "Boss" and accepts a retainer from him. Mabel in the meantime has been fighting earnestly for the "cause" and Kelly and his henchmen see that their power is waning. Mrs. Blatch sends a committee from the Women's Political Union to interview the "Boss" and protest against his political methods, while demanding equal suffrage. Kelly, of course treats the visit as a joke and refuses to listen to them. The unexpected arrival in this country of Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, suffrage leader from England, puts new courage and life into the fight, and Mrs. Pankhurst makes a personal visit to the "Boss" and enters into a heated argument with him about political methods and injustice to women. Kelly while tolerant and suave, of course repudiates her and Mrs. Pankhurst, dramatically denounces mankind in general but the "Boss" in particular. Owing to her carelessness of the stenographer, letters from Travers to Kelly and Mabel are placed in the wrong envelopes and Mabel receives the one written to Kelly acknowledging the receipt of money for services rendered. Instantly she realized her lover's duplicity and after a few tragic moments by herself, when her high ideals of her lover are shattered, she rushes to his office and denounces him for his deception and breaks off their engagement. Travers soon tires of "dirty" politics and becomes heartbroken because of his sweetheart's scorn. He resolves to live down the past and start afresh. He visits the "Boss" again and a violent quarrel ensues as each denounces the other. This quarrel is overheard by the porter and later he sees Travers leave the Boss' office. In the meantime Arthur, who was injured by Flynn's automobile and whose damage case was lost, owning to the Boss' influence with the judge, endeavors to "get square" and after carefully planning against detection, and by the use of a "Maxim Silencer" on his pistol, attacks the "Boss" while others are present, but owing to the "silencer" the attack is shrowded with mystery. Upon the evidence of the porter who overheard the quarrel between the "Boss" and Travers, the latter is arrested for the crime. Mabel learns of his arrest through the newspapers and her love for Travers causes her to forget and forgive 'his deception. Through a very clever piece of detective work and the use of the finger prints Mabel is able to discover the real criminal and place the evidence before the District Attorney so that Travers is released and Arthur arrested. During the political campaign before the election, the street scenes, election fights, the work of the gangs and repeaters, the electioneering of the suffragists headed by Mrs. Pankhurst, Mrs. Blatch, and the Women's Political Union, are all given in vivid detail and lend great interest to the story of the play; the climax is very striking and telling. Travers and Mabel are reunited and under the caption of "The Most Popular Ballor for Suffragist, Maid, or Mere Man," are shown examining a wedding license, the final being an embrace and kiss. "Eighty Million Women Want --------- ?" The Ballot, Marriage, or the Kiss? Don't fail to see this picture and answer this question as you believe it should be answered. 80 Million Women Want-? A Political Drama in 4 Reels Produced by UNIQUE FILM CO. Mrs. EMMELINE PANKHURST "THE GREAT ENGLISH MILITANT" Rented by ECHO FEATURE FILM CO., 835 Broadway, New York Scenes from "80 MILLION WOMEN WANT?" Cast includes Mrs. EMMELINE PANKHURST and Mrs. HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH Attack on "Boss" District Attorney whom "Boss" could not buy Mrs. Parkhurst and "Boss" Mrs. Blatch at Headquarters At tragic moment Grafters "Evidence of his double dealings" [*Mrs E. Y. Hartshorne [?rion] Station, Pa. SEVENTH EDITION THE IMPORTANCE OF THE VOTE BY MRS. PANKHURST Photo by Schmidt, Manchester. PUBLISHED BY THE WOMAN'S PRESS, 156 CHARING CROSS ROAD, W. C. PRICE ONE PENNY. VOTES FOR WOMEN. National Women's Social and Political Union. Offices: 4, Clements Inn, London, W.C. Telegraphic Address: WOSPOLU, LONDON. Telephone Holborn 2724 (three lines). Committee: Mrs. PANKHURST (Founder) Hon. Secretaries. Mrs. TUKE Hon. Secretaries Mrs. PETHICK LAWRENCE, Hon. treasurer. Miss CHRISTABEL PANKHURST, LL.B., Organising Secretary. Mrs. WOLSTENHOLME ELMY. Miss MARY GAWTHORPE. Miss ANNIE KENNEY. Miss ELIZABETH ROBINS. Miss MARY NEAL. Bankers: Messrs. BARCLAY & Co., 19, Fleet Street, E.C. Auditors: Messrs. SAYERS & WESSON, Chartered Accountants, 19, Hanover Square, W. Publishing Office: The Woman's Press, 156, Charing Cross Rd., W.C. Tel. : 3961 City. Newspaper: VOTES FOR WOMEN. Colours: Purple, White, and Green The Women's Social and Political Union are NOT asking for a vote for every woman, but simply that sex shall cease to be a disqualification for the franchise. At present men who pay rates and taxes, who are owners, occupiers, lodgers, or have the service or university franchise, possess the Parliamentary vote. The Women's Social and Political Union claim that women who fulfil the same conditions shall also enjoy the franchise. It is estimated that when this claim has been conceded about a million-and-a-quarter women will possess the vote, in addition to the seven-and-a-half million men who are at present enfranchised. The Women's Social and Political Union claim that a simple measure, giving the vote to women on these terms, shall be passed immediately. CONSTITUTION Objects. - To secure for Women the Parliamentary Vote as it is or may be granted to men ; to use the power thus obtained to establish equality of rights and opportunities between the sexes, and to promote the social and industrial well-being of community. Methods. - The objects of the Union shall be promoted by- 1. Action entirely independent of all parties. 2. Opposition to whatever Government is in power until such time as the franchise is granted. 3. Participation is Parliamentary Elections in opposition to the Government candidate and independently of all other candidates. 4. Vigorous agitation upon lines justified by the position of outlawry to which women are at present condemned. 5. The organising of women all over the country to enable them to give adequate expression to their desire for political freedom. 6. Education of public opinion by all the usual methods such as public meetings, demonstrations, debates, distribution of literature, newspaper correspondence and deputations to public representatives. Membership. - Women of all shades of political opinion who approve the objects and methods of the Union, and who are prepared to act independently of party, are eligible for membership. It must be clearly understood that no member of the Union shall support the candidate of any political party in Parliamentary elections until Women have obtained the Parliamentary Vote. The entrance fee is One Shilling. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE VOTE. BY MRS. PANKHURST. (A Lecture delivered at the Portman Rooms, on Tuesday, March 24th, 1908.) It seems to me a very strange thing that large numbers of women should have met together to-night to consider whether the vote is of importance, while all day long, across the water, in the Peckham Bye-election, men, whether they realise the importance of the vote or not, have been exercising it, and in exercising it settling for women as well as for themselves great questions of public importance. What, then, is this vote that we are hearing so much about just now, so much more than people have heard in discussion at least, for a great many years? I think we may give the vote a threefold description. We may describe the vote as, first of all, a symbol, secondly, a safeguard, and thirdly, an instrument. It is a symbol of freedom, a symbol of citizenship, a symbol of liberty. It is a safeguard of all those liberties which it symbolises. And in these later days it has come to be regarded more than anything else as an instrument, something with which you can get a great many more things than our forefathers who fought for the vote ever realised as possible to get with it. It seems to me that such a thing is worth fighting for, and women to-day are fighting very strenuously in order to get it. Wherever masses of people are gathered together there must be government. Government without the vote is more or less a form of tyranny. Government with the vote is more or less representative according to the extent to which the vote is given. In this country they tell us we have representative government. So far as women are concerned, while you have representative 1 government for men, you have despotic government for women. So it is in order that the government of the country may be made really representative, may represent not only all classes of the community, but both sexes of the community, that this struggle for the vote is going on on the part of women. To-day, women are working very hard for it. And there is no doubt whatever that very, very soon the fight will be over, and victory will be won. Even a Liberal Government will be forced to give votes to women. Gentlemenwith Liberal principles have talked about those principles for a very long time, but it is only just lately that women have realised that so far as they are concerned, it began in talk and ended in talk, and that there was absolutely no intention of performance. To-day, we have taken off the mask, and we have made these gentlemen realise that, whether they like it or not, they will have to yield. People ask us, " Why force it on just now? Why give all this trouble to the Liberals, with their great and splendid programme of reform?" Well, we say, after all, they are just the people to whom we ought to give trouble, and who, if they are sincere, ought to be very glad that we are giving them trouble, and forcing them to put their great princuples into practice. To-night, it is not for me to talk to you very much about the agitation. I have to talk to you about what the vote will do for women, and what being deprived of the vote has caused women to suffer. And so I mean to devote most of the time at my disposal to this side of the question. What I am going to say to you to-night is not new. It is what we have been saying at every street corner, at every bye-election during tge last eighteen months. It is perfectly well known to many members of my audience, but they will not mind if I repeat for the benefit of those who are here for the first time to-night, those arguments and illustrations with which many of us are so very familiar. In the first place it is important that women should have the vote in order that in the government of the country the women's point of view should be put forward. It is important for women that in any legislation that afects women with men, those who make the laws should be responsible to women in order that they may be forced to consult women and learn women's views when they are contemplating the making or the altering of laws. Very little has been done by legislation for women for many years - for obvious reasons. More and more of the time of Members of Parliament is occupied by the ckaims which are made on behalf of the people who are organised in various ways in order to promote the interests of their industrial organisations or their political or social organisations. So the Member of Parliament, if he does dimly realise that women have needs, has no time to attend to them, no time to give to the consideration of those needs. His time is fully taken up by attending to the needs of the people who have set him to Parliament. While a great deal has been done, 2 and a great deal more has been talked about for the benefit of the workers who have votes, yet so far as women are concerned, legislation relating to them has been practically at a standstill. Yet it is not because women have no need, or because their need is not very urgent. There are many laws on the Statute-book to-day which are admittedly out of date, an call for reformation; laws which inflict very grave injustices on women. I want to call the attention of women who are here to-night to a few Acts on the Statute-book which press very hardly and very injuriously on women. Laws affecting Women. Men politicians are in the habit of talking to women as if there were no laws that affect women. "The fact is," they say, "the home is the place for women. Their interests are the rearing and training of children. These are the things that interest women. Politics have nothing to do with these things, and therefore politics do not concern women." Yet the laws decide how women are to live in marriage, how their children are to be trained and educated, and what the future of their children is to be. All that is decided by Act of Parliament. Let us take a few of these laws, and see what there is to say about them from the women's point of view. First of all, let us take the marriage laws. They are made by men for women. Let us consider whether they are equal, whether they are just, whether they are wise. What security of maintenance has the married woman? Many a married woman having given up her economic independence in order to marry, how is she compensated for that loss? What security does she get in that marriage for which she gave up economic indepence? Take the case of a woman who has been earning a good income. She is told that she ought to give up her employment when she becomes a wife and a mother. What does she get in return? All that a married man is obliged by law to do for his wife is to provide for her shelter of some kind, food of some kind, and clothing; of some kind. It is left to his good pleasure to decide what the shelter shall be, what the food shall be, what the clothing shall be. It is left to him to decide what money shall be spent on the home, and how it shall be spent; the wife has no voice legally in deciding any of these thing. She has no legal claim upon any definite portion of his income. If he is a good man, a conscientiou man, he does the right thing. If he is not, if he chooses almost to starve his wife, she has no remedy. What he thinks sufficient is what she has to be content with. I quite agree, in all these illustrations, that the majority of men are considerably better than the law compels them to be, so the majority of women do not suffer as much as they might suffer if men were all as bad as they might be, but since there are some bad men, some unjust men, don't you agree with me that the law ought to be altered so that those men could be dealt with? 3 Take what happen to the woman if her husband dies and leaves her a widow, sometimes with little children. If a man is so insensible to his duties as a husband and father when he makes his will, as to leave all his property away from his wife and children, the law allows him to do it. That will is a valid one. So you see that the married woman's position is not a very secure one. It depends entirely on her getting a good ticket in the lottery. If she has a good husband, well and good: if she has a bad one, she has to suffer, and she has no remedy. That is her position as a wife, and it is far from satisfactory. Now let us look at her position if she has been very unfortunate in marriage, so unfortunate as to get a bad husband, an immoral husband, a vicious husband, a husband unfit to be the father of little children. We turn to the Divorce Court. How is she to get rid of such a man? If a man has got married to a bad wife, and he want to get rid of her, he has but to prove against her one act of infidelity. But if a woman who is married to a vicious husband wants to get rid of him, not one act nor a thousand acts of infidelity entitle her to a divorce; she must prove either bigamy, desertion, or gross cruelty, in addition to immortality before she can get rid of that man. Let us consider her position as a mother. We have repeated this so often at our meetings that I think the echo of what we have said must have reached many. By English law no married woman exists as the mother of the child she brings into the world. In the eyes of the law she is not the parent of her child. The child, according to our marriage laws, has only one parent, who can decide the future of the child, who can decide where it shall live, how it shall live, how much shall be spent upon it, how it shall be educated, and what religion it shall profess. That parent is the father. These are examples of some of the laws that men have made, laws that concern women. I ask you, if women had had the vote, should we have had such laws? If women had had the vote, as men have the vote, we should have had equal laws. We should have had equal laws for divorce, and the law would have said that as Nature has given to children two parents, so the law should recognise that they have two parents. I have spoken to you about the position of the married woman who does not exist legally as a parent, the parent of her own child. In marriage, children have one parent. Out of marriage children have also one parent. That parent is the mother - the unfortunate mother. She alone is responsible for the future of her child; she alone is punished if her child is neglected and suffers from neglect. But let me give you one illustration. I was in Herefordshire during the bye-election. While I was there, an unmarried mother was brought before the bench of magistrates charged with having neglected her illegitimate child. She was a domestic servant, and had put the child out to nurse. The magistrates - there were colonels and landowners 4 on that bench - did not ask what wages the mother got; they did not ask who the father was or whether he contributed to the support of the child. They sent that woman to prison for three months for having neglected her child. I ask you women here to-night, if women had had some share in the making of laws, don't you think they would have found a way of making all fathers of such children equally responsible with the mothers for the welfare of those children? Let us take the law of inheritance? Often in this agitation for the vote, we have been told by advanced members of the Liberal Party that to give votes to women on the same terms as those on which men now have the vote, would be to strengthen the influence of property, and to help to continue the existing laws of property. When you look at the laws of inheritance in this country, it makes you smile to hear that argument. Men have taken very good care that women do not inherit until all make heirs are exhausted. So I do not think these democratic gentlemen are quite sincere in the fears they express lest the influence of property should be very much strengthened if women got the Parliamentary franchise. I do not think it is time yet for women to consider whether the law that the eldest son shall inherit the estate is a just law. I think we should put it in this way : if it is to be the eldest child, let it be the eldest child, whether that child is a man or a woman. I am perfectly certain that if women had had the vote when that law was made, that that is how it would have been settled, if they had decided to have a law of primogeniture. Well, one could go on giving you many more of these examples. I want now to deal with an objection which may be in the minds of some people here. They say, you are talking about laws made a long time ago. Laws would not now be made like that. If a new law were made, it would of course be equal between the sexes. But as a matter of fact, it seems almost impossible for men, when making new laws that will affect both sexes, to recognise that there is any woman's side at all. Let us take an illustration from the last session of Parliament. For many years we have been accustomed to see pass through the House of Commons and go up to the House of Lords that hardy evergreen, the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill. I used - it is many years since I began reading the debates on that measure - I used to read the speeches carefully through to see if I could find one speech from a man which showed any kind of realisation of the women's side of that Bill. You read eloquent appeals to make it possible for a man who had lost his wife to give to the children the best kind of step-mother that they could have. Who could make a better step-mother, it was asked, than the sister of their deceased mother? By natural ties, by old associations, by her knowledge of the children, she was better fitted than anybody else to take the mother's place. But you never heard of a man who thought there might be another side to the picture. So you have on the 5 Statute-booke a piece of legislation which gives relief to the widower who would like to provide a kind step-mother for his children, but does not gie relief to the widow who would like to give a kind step-father to her children. I do not think it ever entered into the minds of these lgeislators that there might be a widow who would like to fulfil the behest of the Old Testament that the living brother should take up his deceased brother's burden and do his buty to his brother's family. So you see, even in the twentieth century, you have got the same spirit. The man voter and the man legislator see the man's needs first, and do not see the woman's needs. And si it will be until women get the vote. It is well to remember that, in view of what we have been told of what is the value of women's influence. Woman's influence is only effective when men want to do the thing that her influence is supporting. Prospective Legislation. Now let us look a little to the future. If it ever was important for women to have the vote, it is ten times more important to-day, because you cannot take up a newspaper, you cannot go to a conference, you cannot even go to church, without hearing a great deal of talk about social reform and a demand for social legislation. Of course, it is obvious that that kind of legislation - and the Liberal Government tell us that if they remain in office long enough we are going to have a great deal of it - is of vital importance to women. If we have the right kind of social legislation it will be a very good thing for women and children. If we have the wrong kind of social legislation, we may have the worst kind of tyranny that women have ever known since the world began. We are hearing about legislation to decide what kind of homes people are to live in. That surely is a question for women. Surely every woman, when she seriously thinks about it, will wonder how men by themselves can have the audacity to think that they can say what homes ough to be without consulting women. Then take education. Since 1870 men have been trying to find out how to educate children. I think they have not yet realised that if they are ever to find out how to educate children, they will have to taken women into their confidence, and try to learn from women some of those lessons that the long experience of ages has taught to them. One cannot wonder that chole sessions of Parliament should be wasted on Education Bills. For, you see, it is only just lately that men have begun to consider education, or to try to learn what the word means. So as we are going to have a great deal more time devoted to education, I think it will be a great economy of time if we get the vote, if only that we may have an opportunity of deciding how girls are to be trained, even in those domestic duties which gentlemen are so fond of reminding us we ought to attend to. 6 I suppose you all read your newspapers this morning. You saw that a great statesman [Mr. John Burns] was pouring out words of wisdom on a subject which one may think might well be regarded as women's business, and which they might at all events have some share in deciding. How it makes one smile to hear a statesman comparing whisly and milk, and discussing whether babies should have natual mother's milk, or humanised molk, or sterilised milk, or what is a sufficient quantity of milk. All these things Cabinet Ministers have discovered that they are quite competent to decide without us. And when a few women ventured to make a small protest and suggested that perhaps it would be best to give to women, the mothers of the race, an opportunity of expressing their views on the subject, they were characterised as disgraceful, and turned out of the meeting for daring to raise their voices in protest. Well, we cannot wonder that they are deciding what sort of milk the babies are to have, for it is only a few months ago that they decided how babies should be brought into the world, and who should officiate on the occasion. The Midwives Act, owing to the extreme difficulty and slowness with which, during twelve years of ceaseless agitation, it was carried though Parliament, has made of the women who agitated for it convinced suffragists, since, if they had had votes the measure could have been passed in a couple of years. Even whe carried, it was at the expense of many concessions, which, had the women promoting the Bill possessed the franchise, they would certainly have been able to avoid. To this day the midwives have no direct representation on the Central Board which administers the Act. Still, in spite of legislation like that, we find politicians, responsible member of the Government, saying that women ought to have nothing to do with politics, and that they ought not to ask for the vote. What limits are there to be to this? The same gentleman who thinks himself wuite competent to say how babies ought to be fed tells us that he is going to interfere not only with babies, but with their mothers as well. He is going to decide by Act of Parliament whether married women are to be allowed to earn an economic independence, or are to be prevented from doing so. He thinks married women who are earning their living are going to submit to a virtual repeal of the Married Women's Property Act, and to leave it to their husbands to decide whether they shall have any money to spend as they please. To deprive married women of the right to go out to work, to decide this for them without consulting women voters whether they are to earn wages or not, is an act of tyranny to which, I believe, women, patient and long-suffering as they are, will not submit. I hope that even the Liberal women will revolt when it comes to that. But I am not over hopeful about them, because, unfortunately for poor married women who know what it is to need to earn a living, those who decide what the polici of the Liberal women shall be are women who have never had to earn a living, and 7 do not know what it is to have little children dependent upon them and liable to be starved if their mothers are prevented from going out to work. But fortunately the women who are going to be interfered with are not the kind of women who will submit to be interfered with quietly. Women who belong to the aristocracy of industry, women such as the cotton workers in the Lancashire mills, are not likely to be driven into the ranks of the sweated without protest. What is the reason for the proposal? We are told it is to set these women free, to let them stay at home. I do not see that Mr. John Burns proposes to compensate women for the loss of their earnings. I do not see that he proposes to compel husbands to give to their wives a definite portion of their income for housekeeping purposes. All he proposes is that women, who are earning from ten shillings to thirty shillings a week shall be prevented from earning that income for themselves. He does not propose if the husband is sick or weakly and unable to earn enough to keep the home, to supplement that income by a grant from the State. All he proposes to do is to take away from the married woman the right to earn an income for herself. This, he says, will stop infantile mortality and put an end to race degeneracy. Could you have a greater example of ignorance of the real facts of the situation? I come from Lancashire. I was born in Lancashire. I think I know more about Lancashire than Mr. John Burns. I can tell you this, that infantile mortality and physical degeneration are not found in the homes of the well-paid factory operatives, but they are found in the home of the slum-dweller, the home of the casual laborer, where the mother does not go out to work, but where there is never sufficient income to provide proper food for the child after it is born. That is where babies die - in those horrible slum districts, where families have to be maintained on incomes of from sixteen shillings to eighteen shillings per week, and where you have rents from five shillings to eight shillings per week to play. What woman can feed her children on an income like that, even if her husband brings the whole of it home? I know the cotton workers of Lancashire. Not long ago, we were in the Rossendale Valley, Mr. Harcourt's constituency. In that constituency more women earn wages than men. You find daughters earning more money than their fathers. You find wives earning more money than their husbands. They do piece work, and they often earn better wages than the men. I was talking one day to one - a married woman worker whom I met in the train. She was going home from the mill. She had a child of three or four years of age, well dressed, very blithe, and looking well fed. I asked her if she worked in the mill. She said "Yes." I asked her what wages she earned. She said," "Thirty shillings a week." She told me that she had other children. "Who looks after the children while you are at work?" 8 "I have a housekeeper," she answered. I said to her, "You are not going to be allowed to work much longer. Mr. John Burns is going to make you stay at home and look after the children." And she said, "I don't know what we shall do then. I suppose we shall have to clem." I don't know whether you all know our Lancashire word "clem." When we say clem, we mean starve. In thousands of homes in Lancashire, if we get Mr. John Burns' proposal carried into law, little children, now well clothed and well fed and well cared for, will have clemmed before many months are over. These women say a shilling that they earn themselves is worth two shillings of their husbands' money, for it is their own. They know far better than their husbands how much money is needed for food, how much is needed to be spent on the home. I do not think there is a woman in Lancashire who does not realise that it is better to earn an income of her own than to be dependent on her husband. They realise it better than women of the upper classes who provide nurses and governesses for their children. I put it to you whether the woman of the working class, so long as she sees that her children are well fed and are well enough cared for, has not as much right as her well-off sister to provide a nurse for her children. We should like to say this to Mr. John Burns, that when women get the vote, they will take very much better care of babies than men have been able to do. The Sweated Workers. There may be many women in this room to-night who do not know much about the industrial women from practical experience. I want to say something about them. Here in London last year there was the Sweated Industries Exhibition. That Exhibition went to Manchester. It went to Birmingham. The papers were full of it. After it was held there were conferences in the Guildhall, conferences in the large centres of population, and resolutions were carried demanding legislation to deal with the sweating evil. Nothing has come of it all. If any of you women are doubtful about the value of the vote to women, that example ought to be enough. Look at the Government's proposals. What do you get in the forefront of their programme? You get an eight hours' day for miners. But you get nothing for the sweated women. Why is the miner being attended to rather than the sweater worker? The miner is being attended to because he, the miner, has got a vote. You see what the vote will do. You see what political power will do. If women had had the vote there would have been proposals to help the sweated woman worker in the Government programme of this session. I think that women, realising the horrible degradation of these workers, the degradation not only to themselves, but to all of us, caused by that evil of sweating, ought 9 to be eager to get political freedom, in order that something may be done to get for the sweated woman labourer some kind of pay that would enable her to live at least a moral and a decent life. Professional Women. Now let me say something on another point. Among those here are some professional women. You know what a long and a weary struggle it has been for women to get into the professions, some of which are now open to women. But you all know that the position of women in those professions is not what it ought to be, and it is certainly not what it will be when women get the franchise. How difficult it is for women to get posts after they have qualified for them. I know this from practical experience on a public body. Every time we had applications from women for posts open to them, we had applications also from men. Usually the standing of the women was very much higher than that of the men. And yet the women did not get those appointments. The men got them. That would all be altered if we got political equality. It is the political key that is needed to unlock the door. Again, in all grades of education, certainly in elementary education, women are better qualified for the work than the men. You get a better type of woman. Yet for work equal to that of men, she cannot get equal pay. If women teachers had the Parliamentary vote, those men who go to the House of Commons to represent the interests of teachers as well as the interests of men. I think that that gentleman who made the teachers the stepping-stone to office, and who talks at bye- elections about manhood suffrage would have taken up the interests of the women who have paid his wages if he felt that he was responsible to women voters. Almost everywhere the well-paid posts are given to men. Take the College of Arts. Women art students do quite as well as the men students. And yet after their training is over, women never get any of the posts. All the professorships, all the well- paid posts in the colleges and Universities are given to men. I knew the Head of one of the training colleges in one of our great cities. She said to me: "It makes me feel quite sad to see bright young girls expecting to get their living, and finding after their training is over that they can get nothing to do." The Parliamentary vote will settle that. There is no department of life that you can think of in which the possession of the Parliamentary vote will not make things easier for women than they are to-day. Questions of Administration. Then there is the administrative side of public life. We want the vote not merely to get laws made. I think the possession of the Parliamentary vote is very important on the administrative 10 side of politics. I have every reason to think that, because I have just come out of prison. We may congratulate ourselves that the Militant Suffragists, of whom I am one, have at least succeeded in forcing the Government to appoint the first woman inspector of prisons. Of course, it is a very small thing, but it means a very great deal. It means the beginning of prison reform, reform in prison discipline and prison treatment that have been needed for a very long time. Well, when we get the vote, it won't take many years talking about things to get one woman inspector appointed. The immediate result of our getting the vote will be the appointment of many more women inspectors of factories. When I last made inquiries there was only one woman inspector of factories in all Ireland. Yet in Belfast alone, more women and girls are working in factories than men and boys. The need there is for inspection is enormous in those linen and jute factories. It is perfectly obvious that when you have women and girls working in factories, if they are to be properly inspected, you must have women inspectors. We shall get them as soon as we are able to get women's interests properly attended to, which we shall only be able to do when we are in possession of the vote. There is the same thing with regard to education. Women inspectors of schools are greatly needed. Moreover, there is not a single woman Poor Law inspector, nor a woman inspector of workhouses and workhouse hospitals. And yet it is to the work- houses and the workhouse hospitals that we send old people, sick people, and little children. We need to get women relieving officers appointed. I cannot get away from Mr. John Burns. You would think that a working man by origin, and the son of working people, might have been able to realise that it would have been a good thing to have women as relieving officers. And yet when Mr. John Burns, shortly after his appointment, was asked whether he would sanction the appointment of a woman relieving officer in a large Union in the North of England, he said it was not illegal, but it was a practice not to be encouraged. We shall get that position for women. We shall get it made possible for women to manage the business which men have always conceded is the business of women, the care of the sick, the care of the aged, the care of little children. Well, I could go on giving you many, many more of these illustrations. In fact, the more one thinks about the importance of the vote for women, the more one realises how vital it is. We are finding out new reasons for the vote, new needs for the vote every day in carrying on our agitation. Conclusion. I hope that there may be a few men and women here who will go away determined at least to give this question more consideration than they have in the past. They will see that we women who are doing so much to get the vote, want it 11 because we realise how much good we can do with it when we have got it. We do not want it in order to boast of how much we have got. We do not want it because we want to imitate men or to be like men. We want it because without it we cannot do that work which it is necessary and right and proper that every man and woman should be ready and willing to undertake in the interests of the community of which they form a part. It has always been the business of women to care for these things, to think of these home questions. I assure you that no woman who enters into this agitation need feel that she has got to give up a single one of her woman's duties in the home. She learns to feel that she is attaching a larger meaning to those duties which have been woman's duties since the race began, and will be till the race has ceased to be. After all, home is a very, very big thing indeed. It is not just your own little home, with its four walls, and your own little private and personal interests that are looked after there. The home is the home of everybody of the nation. No nation can have a proper home unless women as well as men give their best to its building up and to making it what a home ought to be, a place where every single child born into it shall have a fair chance of growing up to be a fit, and a happy, and a useful member of the community. ON SALE at the Woman's Press, 156, Charing Cross Road, W. C. - - - Tel. : City 3961. For List of Pamphlets see next page. BOOKS. Awakening of Women, The. By Mrs. F. Swiney 1s. net. British Free Women. By C.C. Stopes 2s. 6d. How the Vote was Won. (A play.) By Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John 3d. "No Votes for Women." By Lady Constance Lytton 3d. Record of Woman's Suffrage. By Helen Blackburn. 6s. 0d. Sphere of Man and Woman in the Constitution. By C. C. Stopes 6d. net. Subjection of Women, The. By John Stuart Mill 6d. net. Votes for Women. (A play.) By Elizabeth Robins 1s. net. Woman : Her Position Today. By Constance Smedley 6d. net. Woman and Economics. 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Lloyd Thomas 1d The Earl of Lytton on Votes for Women ... ... ... ... 1d. From East to West. By Dr. Helen Hanson ... ... ... ... 2d. Words to Working Women. By Lady Chance ... ... ... 1d. The "Physical Force" Fallacy. By Laurence Houseman ... ... 1d. The Majestic Unity of Women. By a Member of the Woman's Silent League of Women ... ... ... ... ... ... 1d. The above can be obtained at the Woman's Press, 156, Charing Cross Rd., W.C.; at the Head Offices of the Union, 4, Clements Inn, W.C., and at all public meetings of N.W.S.P.U., and of all Local Secretaries. A large number of leaflets for distribution can also be obtained at 9d. per 100, 6/- per 1,000. Samples will be sent on application (see previous page). READ Votes for Women. Edited by MR. and MRS. PETHICK LAWRENCE. Price . . ONE PENNY WEEKLY. The Organ of the Women's Social and Political Union. Of all Bookstalls and Newsagents, or from THE PUBLISHER, 4, CLEMENTS INN, W.C. (For details of books, postcards, etc., on sale see previous page.) Printed by Garden City Press Limited, Letchworth, Herts. - 14737. Corra Harris 169 her April head and regarding him with cool, tear-stained suspicion. "Did you get the valentine I sent you?" he whispered, and was astonished at her blazing wrath. "You are the third man to ask me that tonight!" she cried, leaping to her feet. "Billy Hawks and Sam Gunter both say they sent it!" It was a tremendous moment. The little poet could not have done a braver thing if he had seized the flaming lava skirts of Mount Vesuvius. But he did seize Azalee's fingers and draw her back. "They don't know who they sent valentines to, darling, but I know I sent mine to you," he murmured, as she struggled faintly to escape. His arm was about her waist. She knew that he was trying to kiss her, though no one had ever tried before. Her mind flew distractedly back to the chapter on kissing in "Manners and Customs of the Best American Society." The kiss of respect was "obsolete," thank heavens! And the "kiss of friendship," she remembered, was upon the forehead! She hoped that he would not choose this place from a lack of knowledge of its significance. She doubted if he was acquainted with those manners and customs, still, as she went on evading him with her smiling lips, she hoped his instinct would lead him to kiss in the right place. After all, she discovered that it was no so much the man, but his kiss that counted. She did not think this. She was not of that discriminating intelligence; but she felt it. And at this moment he succeeded. With her upturned face close to his narrow breast, he placed the seal of his poetic passion upon her lips, and impressed it with the ardor of a highwayman. Far down the moonlit road two other young men walked with their self-confessed Valentines. There was no trouble in the world, no sorrow, no fear of poverty, or of that future which brings all three. These were carried in the hearts of the older people, the fathers and mothers who trudged along in silence together, wondering vaguely why the young people kept so far behind. Many Million Women All over the world, if they were asked who is the most famous living cook--and the best--would unhesitatingly name Mrs. Sarah Tyson Rorer She has enjoyed that reputation for nearly a score of years. It was well won. She has written more workable recipes, planned more good things to eat, sold more helpful books, and by her suggestions for economy of time and money struck a harder blow at the high cost of living than any other woman in America. Beginning with the March issue she will become editor of our Three Meals a Day Department. She is as enthusiastic --and almost as young--as she ever was. She is prepared to add to her reputation by making Good Housekeeping the accepted leader of things culinary. Her work will be found in no other publication after March 1st. In the same issue Martha Bensley Bruere will begin a department intended to show the housewife how to take the drudgery out of housekeeping. Every wife and mother has more important work to do than most women have yet found out. Mrs. Bruere expects to show them this work and how they can get time to do it. It you helped to "tidy up the nation" --or to embroider it--you will find good advice in her department. Remember, both these departments begin in the March issue. [*G.H, feby 1914*] photo by Alice Boughton Mrs. Pankhurst at the end of her American tour. This picture was taken just before she went to the ship that was to take her back to England--where the government thought her of sufficient importance to send out a patrol-boat to arrest her before she landed. It was a most impressive tribute, matched by her later arrest on the train from Dover. One little determined woman keeping the British government awake o'nights! 170 The Making of a Militant By Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst "The first time I went into the Manchester workhouse I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors. There were others at the hateful labor who aroused my keenest pity. I found women scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world. I thought I had been a suffragist before, but now I began to think about the vote in women's hands, not only as a right but as a desperate necessity." That was twenty years ago. With little or nothing accomplished by argument and pleading, the militant campaign was entered upon because "when lives are being broken the breaking of a window is a small matter." In this second instalment of her own story of her life Mrs. Pankhurst gives an array of astounding facts that no one should miss who cares to know the truth about a condition that gives strength to the hands and fortitude to the souls of women known as Militants In 1855, a year after the failure of the third woman's suffrage bill, my husband, Dr. Pankhurst, stood as the Liberal candidate for Parliament in Rotherline, a riverside constituency of London. I went through the campaign with him, speaking and canvassing to the best of my ability. Dr. Pankhurst was a popular candidate, and unquestionably would have been returned but for the opposition of the Home-Rulers. Parnell was in command, and his settled policy was opposition to all government candidates. So, in spite of the fact that Dr. Pankhurst was a stanch upholder of home rule, the Parnell forces were solidly opposed to him, and he was defeated. I remember expressing considerable indignation, but my husband pointed out to me that Parnell's policy was absolutely right. With his small party he could never hope to win home rule from a hostile majority, save by constant obstruction and by anti-Liberal policy which would eventually compel the Liberal party to surrender. That was a valuable political lesson, one that years later I was destined to put into practice. The following year found us living in London, and, as usual, interesting ourselves with labor matters and other social movements. this year was memorable for a great strike of women working in the Bryant and May match factories. I threw myself into this strike with enthusiasm, working with those on strike and with some women of prominence, among them Mrs. Annie Besant. the strike was a successful one, the women winning substantial improvements in their working conditions. It was a time of tremendous unrest, of labor agitations, of strikes and lockouts. It was a time also when a most stupid reactionary spirit seemed to take possession of the government and the authorities. The Salvation Army, the Socialists, the trade-unionists--in fact, all bodies holding outdoor meetings--were made special objects of attack. As a protest against this policy a Law and Liberty League was formed in London, and an immense free speech meeting was held in Trafalgar Square, John Burns and Cunningham Graham being the principal speakers. I was present at this meeting which resulted in a savage conflict between the police and the populace. The Trafalgar Square riot is historic, and to it Mr. John Burns owes, in large part, his subsequent rise to political eminence. Both John Burns and Cunningham Graham served prison sentences for the part they played in the riot, but they gained fame, and they did much to establish the right of free speech for Englishmen. English women are still contending for that right. In 1890 my last child was born in London, and for a time I was less active in public work. On the retirement of Mrs. Annie Besant from the London School Board I had been asked to stand as candidate for the vacancy, but although I should have enjoyed the work, I decided not to accept this invitation. The next year, however, a new suffrage association, the Women's Franchise League, was formed, and I felt it my duty to become a member of it. The League was preparing a new suffrage bill, the provisions of which I could not possibly approve, and I joined with old friends, among whom were Mrs. Jacob 171 Bright, Mrs. Wolstenholme-Elmy, a member of the London School Board, and Mrs. Stanton Blatch, then resident in England, in an effort to substitute the original bill drafted by Dr. Pankhurst. As a matter of fact, neither of the bills was introduced that year. Mr. (now Lord) Haldane, Had the measure in charge, yet introduced one of his own drafting. It was a truly startling bill, royally inclusive in its terms. It not only enfranchised all women, married and unmarried, of the householding classes, but it made them eligible to all in an effort to substitute the original bill offices under the Crown. The bill was never taken seriously by the government, and indeed it was never intended that it should be, as we were later made to understand. I remember going with Mrs. Jacob Bright and Mrs. Blatch to see Mr. Haldane and to protest against the introduction of a measure that had not the remotest chance of passing. "Ah, that bill," said Mr. Haldane, "is for the future." All their woman suffrage bills are intended for the future, a future so remote 172 as to be imperceptible. We were beginning to understand this even in 1891. However, as long as there was a bill we determined to support it. Accordingly, we canvassed the members, distributed a great deal of literature, and organized and addressed meetings. We not only made speeches ourselves, but we induced friendly members of Parliament to speak on our platforms. One of these meetings, held in an East End Radical club, was addressed by Mr. Haldane and a young man who accompanied him. This young man, Sir Edward Grey, then in the beginning of his career, made an eloquent plea for woman's suffrage. That Sir Edward Grey should, later in life, become a member of an anti-suffrage government need astonish no one. I have known many young Englishmen who began their political life as suffrage speakers and who later became anti-suffragists or traitorous "friends" of the cause. These young and aspiring statesmen have to attract attention in some fashion, and the espousal of advanced causes, such as labor or woman's suffrage, seems to them an easy way to accomplish that end. Well, our speeches and our agitation did nothing at all to assist Mr. Haldane's impossible bill. It never advanced beyond the first reading. Our residence in London came to an end in 1893. In that year we returned to our Manchester home, and I again took up the work of the Suffrage Society. At my suggestion the members began to organize their first out-of-door meetings, and we continued these until we succeeded in working up a great meeting that filled the Free Trade Hall, and overflowed into and crowded a smaller hall near at hand. This marked the beginning of a new campaign to make the suffrage cause better understood by the great public. And now began a new and, as I look back on it, an absorbingly interesting stage of my career. I have told how our leaders in the Liberal party had advised the women to prove their fitness for the Parliamentary franchise by serving in municipal offices, especially the unsalaried offices. A large number of women had availed themselves of this advice, and were serving on boards of guardians, on school boards, and in other capacities. Mrs. Pankhurst in 1906, during the first year of the Women's War Seven years of strenuous hardship, of hunger-striking and campaigning, have not materially altered the acknowledged leader of the suffrage cause in England. We are unable to present earlier pictures of her because the government confiscated everything she had--pictures of her babies, herself, her husband, their home. Even little things are of importance in a great war Prisoners for principle- Mrs. Pankhurst at the left, Cristabel at the right. These and other English women have many times faced hostile courts, and received sentences that the authorities could not make them serve A pro-suffrage meeting in Hyde Park, London. Belonging to the Crown, this park is a ground where grievances against the government are discussed. Since suffrage was "put on the front page of the newspapers" many enthusiastic meetings have been held here, where the crowd is comparatively free from its ancient enemy, the police 173 "A man's a man a' that" A year after my return to Manchester I became a candidate for the Board of Poor Law Guardians. Several weeks before, I had contested unsuccessfully for a place on the School Board. This time, however, I was elected, heading the poll by a very large majority. For the benefit of American readers I shall explain something of the operation of our English Poor Law. The duty of the Poor Law Guardians is to administer an act of Queen Elizabeth, one of the greatest reforms effected by that wise and humane monarch. When Elizabeth came to the throne she found England, the Merrie England of contemporary poets, in a state of appealing poverty. Hordes of people were literally starving to death, in wretched hovels, in the streets, and at the very gates of the palace. The cause of all this misery was the religious reformation under Henry VIII, and the secession from Rome of the English Church. 174 "In that day seven women shall take hold of one man" King Henry, it is known, seized all the Church lands, the abbeys, and the convents, and gave them as rewards to those nobles and favorites who had supported his policies. But in taking over the Church's property the Protestant nobles by no means assumes the Church's ancient responsibilities of lodging wayfarers, giving alms, nursing the sick, educating youths, and caring for the young and the superannuated. When the monks and the nuns were turned out of their convents these duties devolved on no ones. The result, after the brief reign of Edwards VI and the bloody one of Queen Mary, was the social anarchy inherited by Elizabeth. This great queen and great woman, perceiving that the responsibility for the poor and the helpless rightfully rests of the community, caused an act to be passed creating in the parishes public bodies to deal with local conditions of poverty. The Board of 175 176 The Making of a Militant Poor Law Guardians disburses for the poor the money coming from the poor rates, (taxes), and some additional moneys allowed by the local government board, the president of which is a cabinet minister. Mr. John Burns is the present incumbent of the office. The Board of Guardians has control of the institution we call the workhouse. You have, I believe, almshouses, or poorhouses, but they are not quite so extensive as our workhouses, which are various kinds of institutions in one. We had in my workhouse a hospital with nine hundred beds, a school with several hundred children, a farm, and many workshops. My Work as a Poor Law Guardian When I came into office I found that the law in our district, Chorlton, was being very harshly administered. The old board had been made up of the kind of men who are known as rate-savers. They were guardians not of the poor but of the rates, and, as I soon discovered, not very astute guardians even of money. For instance, although the inmates were being very poorly fed, a frightful waste of food was apparent. Each inmate was given each day a certain weight of food, and bread formed so much of the ration that hardly anyone consumed all of his portion. In the farm department, pigs were kept on purpose to consume this surplus of bread, and as pigs do not thrive on a solid diet of stale bread, the animals fetched in the market a much lower price than properly fed farm pigs. I suggested that instead of a solid weight of bread being given in one lump, the loaf be cut in slices and buttered with margarine, each person being allowed all that he cared to eat. The rest of the board objected, saying that the inmates were very jealous of their rights and would suspect in such an innovation an attempt to deprive them of a part of their rations. This objection was easily overcome by the suggestion that we consult the inmates before we made the change. Of course the poor people consented, and with the bread that we saved we made puddings with milk and currents, to be given to the old people in the workhouse. These old folk I found sitting on backless forms, or benches. They had no privacy, no possessions, not even a locker. The old women were without pockets in their gowns, so they were obliged to keep any poor little treasures they had in their bosoms. Soon after I took office we gave the old people comfortable Windsor chairs to sit in, and in a number of ways we managed to make their existence more endurable. These, after all, were minor benefits. But it does gratify me when I look back and remember what we were able to do for the children of the Manchester workhouse. The first time I went into the place I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors. These little girls were clad, summer and winter, in thin cotton frocks, low in the neck and short- sleeved. At night they wore nothing at all, night-dresses being considered too good for paupers. The fact that bronchitis was epidemic among them most of the time had not suggested to the guardians any change in the fashion of their clothes. There was a school for the children, but the teaching was of the poorest order. They were forlorn enough, those poor innocents, when I first met them. In five years' time we had changed the face of the earth for them. We had bought land in the country and had built a cottage-system home for the children, and we had established for them a modern school with trained teachers. We had even secured for them a gymnasium and a swimming-bath. I may say that I was on the building committee of the board, the only woman member. What the Poor Taught Me Whatever may be urged against the English poor-law system, I maintain that under it no stigma of pauperism need be applied to workhouse children. If they are treated like paupers, of course they will be paupers, and they will grow up paupers, permanent burdens on society; but if they are regarded merely as children under the guardianship of the state, they assume quite another character. Rich children are not pauperized by being sent to one or another of the free public schools with which England is blest. Yet a great many of those schools now exclusively used for the education of upper middle-class boys were founded on legacies left to educate the poor - girls as well as boys. The English Poor Law, properly administered, ought to give back to the children of the destitute what the upper classes have taken from them, a good education on a self-respecting basis. The trouble is, as I soon perceived after taking office, that the Poor Law cannot, under existing circumstances, do all the Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst 177 work, even for children, that it was intended to do. We shall have to have new laws, and it soon became apparent to me that we can never hope to get them until women have the vote. During the time I served on the board, and for years since then, women guardians all over the country have striven in vain to have the law reformed in order to ameliorate conditions which it breaks the hearts of women to see, but which apparently affect men very little. I have spoken of the little girls I found scrubbing the workhouse floors. There were others at the hateful labor who aroused my keenest pity. I found that there were pregnant women in that workhouse, scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world. Many of them were unmarried women, very, very young, mere girls. These poor mothers were allowed to stay in the hospital after confinement for a short two weeks. Then they had to make a choice of staying in the workhouse and earning their living by scrubbing and other work - in which chase they were separated from their babies - or of taking their discharges. They could stay and be paupers, or they could leave - leave with a two- weeks-old baby in their arms, without hope, without home, without money, without anywhere to go. What became of those girls, and what became of their hapless infants? That question was at the basis of the women guardians' demand for a reform of that part of the Poor Law dealing with the little children who are boarded out, not by the workhouse, but by the parents. Under the law, if a man who ruins a girl pays down a lump sum of twenty pounds, less than a hundred dollars, the boarding home is immune from inspection. As long as a baby-farmer takes only one child at a time, the twenty pounds being paid, the inspectors appointed by the Poor Law Guardians are powerless. Of course the babies die with hideous promptness, often long before the twenty pounds have been spent, and then the baby-farmers are free to solicit another victim. Yet all attempts to reach and protect all illegitimate children, and to make it impossible for any rich scoundrel to escape future liability for his child because of the lump sum he has paid down, have always failed, because the ones who really care about the thing are mere women. I thought I had been a suffragist before I became a Poor Law Guardian, but now I began to think about the vote in women's hands not only as a right but as a desperate necessity. These poor, unprotected mothers and babies I am sure were potent factors in my education as a militant. In fact, all the women I came in contact with in the workhouse contributed to that education. Particularly did the old women impress me. They were in many ways superior to the old men who came there. One could not help noticing it. It was quite touching to see their industry and patience. And these old women, over sixty and seventy years of age, did most of the work of that place, most of the sewing, most of the things that kept the house clean. The Position of Women I began to make inquiries about these old women. I found that the majority of them were women who had not been dissolute, who had not been criminal, but women who had led perfectly respectable lives, either as wives and mothers or as single women earning their own living. A great many were of the domestic-servant class, who had not married, who had lost their employment, and had reached a time of life when it was impossible to get new employment. It was through no fault of their own, but simply because they had never earned enough to save. The average wage of working women in England is less than two dollars a week. On this pittance it is difficult enough to keep alive, and of course it is impossible to save. Besides, the average working woman has to support others than herself. How therefore can she save? Some of our old women were married. Many of them, I found, were widows of skilled artisans who had pensions from their unions, but the pensions had died with the men. These women, who had given up the power to work for themselves and had devoted themselves to working for their husbands and children, were left penniless. There was nothing for them to do but to go into the workhouse. Many of them were widows of men who had served their country in the army or the navy. The men had had pensions from the government, but the pensions had died with them, and so the women were in the workhouse. We have an old-age pension law now, which allows old women as well as old men the sum of five shillings - $1.20 - a week; hardly enough to live on, but enough to enable the poor to keep their old fathers and mothers out Mrs Pankhurst at Dayton, Ohio, where she lectured in November. In most cities she met with an enthusiastic reception, in spite of the fact that New York had almost frowned upon her. New York itself changed its mind and packed Carnegie Hall to hear her speak two nights before she sailed. It is safe to assert that had every man and woman in America heard the facts she presented, facts that are incontrovertible, there would be very few to call her, as many do now, :that awful woman," "anarchist," "incendiary." It seems to be a revolution that she is leading- a revolt against manifest injustice of the workhouse without starving themselves and their children. But when I was a Poor Law Guardian there was simply nothing to do with a woman when her life of toil ceased except make a pauper out of her. Even now there is no old-age pension before the age of seventy, and a woman who has toiled all her life may be old long before she reaches that age. In our out-relief department I was brought into contact with widows who were struggling desperately to keep their homes and families together. The law allowed these women relief of a certain very inadequate kind, but for a women having one child only it offered no relief except the workhouse. Even if the woman had a baby at her breast she was regarded, under the law, as an able-bodied person. Women, we are told, should stay at home and take care of their children. I used to astound my men colleagues by saying to them: "When women have the vote they will see that mothers can stay at home and care for their children. You men have made it impossible for these mothers to do that." In 1898 I suffered an irreparable loss in the death of my husband. His death occurred suddenly and left me with the heavy responsibility of caring for a family of children, the eldest only seventeen years of age. I resigned my place on the Board of Guardians, and was almost immediately appointed to the salaried office of Registrar of Births and Deaths in Manchester. We have registrars of births, deaths, and marriages in England, but since the act establishing the last named contains the word "male person," a woman may not be appointed a registrar of marriages. The head of this department of the government is the registrar-general, with offices at Somerset House, London, the place where all vital statistics are returned and all records filed. It was my duty as registrar of births and deaths to act as chief census officer of my district; I was obliged to receive all returns of births and deaths, record them, and send my books quarterly to the office of the registrar-general. 178 My district was in a working-class quarter, and on this account I instituted evening office hours twice a week. It was touching to observe how glad the women were to have a woman registrar to go to. They used to tell me their stories, dreadful stories some of them, and all of them pathetic with the patient and uncomplaining pathos of poverty. Even after my experience on the Board of Guardians I was shocked to be reminded over and over again of how little real respect there was in the world for women and children. I have had little girls of thirteen come to my office to register the births of their babies, illegitimate of course. In many of these cases I found that the child's own father or some near male relative was responsible for her state. There was nothing that could be done in most cases. The age of consent in England is sixteen years, but a man can always claim that he thought the girl was over sixteen. During my term of office a very young mother of an illegitimate child exposed her baby, and it died. The girl was tried for murder, and was sentenced to death. This sentence was afterward commuted, it is true. but the unhappy child had the horrible experience of the trial and the sentence "to be hanged by the neck until you are dead." The wretch who was from the point of view of justice the real murderer received no punishment. I needed only one more experience after this one, only one more contact with the life of my time and the position of women, to convince me that if civilization is to advance at all in the future, it must be through the help of women, women freed of their political shackles, women with full power to work their will in society. In 1900 I was asked to stand as a candidate for the Manchester School Board. The schools were then under the old law, and the school boards were very active bodies. They administered the Elementary Education Act, bought school sites, erected buildings, employed and paid teachers. The school code and the curriculum were framed by the Board of Education, which is part of 179 180 The Making of a Militant the central government. Of course this led to many difficulties, as this body of men in London could not possibly realize all the needs of boys and girls in remote parts of England. But so it was. Well, as a member of the school board I very soon found that the teachers, working people of the higher grade, were in exactly the same position as the working people of the lower grades. That is, the men had all the advantage. Teachers had a representative in the school board councils. Of course that representative was a man teacher, and equally of course, he gave preference to the interests of the men teachers. Men teachers received much higher salaries than the women, although many of the women had to teach sewing and domestic science in addition to their regular class work. They received no extra pay for their extra work. In spite of this added burden, and in spite of the lower salaries received, I found that the women cared a great deal more about their work, and a great deal more about the children, than did the men. It was a winter when a great deal of poverty and unemployment existed in Manchester. I found that the women teachers were spending their slender salaries to provide regular dinners for destitute children, and were giving up their time to waiting on them and seeing that they were nourished. They said to me, quite simply: "You see, the little things are too badly off to study their lessons. We have to feed them before we can teach them." Well, instead of seeing that women care more for schools and school-children than men do, and should therefore have more power in education, the Parliament of 1900 actually passed a law which took education in England entirely out of the hands of women. This law abolished the school board altogether and placed the administration of schools in the hands of the municipalities. Certain municipal corporations had formerly made certain grants to technical education - Manchester had built a magnificent technical college - and now the corporations had full control of both elementary and secondary education. The law did indeed provide that the corporations should co-opt at least one woman on their education boards. Manchester co-opted four women, and at the strong recommendation of the Labor party, I was one of the women chosen. At their urgent solicitation I was appointed to the Committee on Technical Instruction, the one woman admitted to this committee. I learned that the Manchester Technical College, called the second best in Europe, spending thousands of pounds annually for technical training, had practically no provision for training women. Even from classes to which they might easily have been admittted, bakery and confectionary classes and the like, the girls were excluded because the men's trade unions objected to their being educated for such skilled work. It was rapidly becoming clear to my mind that men regarded women as a servant class in the community, and that women were going to remain in the servant class until they lifted themselves out of it. I asked myself many times in those days what was to be done. I had joined the Labor party, thinking that through this party something vital might come, some demand for the women's enfranchisement that the politicians could not possibly ignore. Nothing came. One day Christabel startled me with the remark: "How long you women have been trying for the vote. For my part, I mean to get it." Was there, I reflected, any difference between trying for the vote and getting it? There is an old French proverb, "If youth but knew, could age but do." It occurred to me that if the older suffrage workers could in some way join hands with the young, unwearied, and resourceful suffragists, the movement might wake up to new life and new possibilities. After that Christabel and I together sought a way to bring about the union of young and old which would find new methods, blaze new trails. At length we thought we had found the way. The next instalment of "The Making of a Militant" will appear in the March issue. Get the New Coles Phillips Girl who appears on this month's cover. It will cost you only 15c to procure a copy without any lettering on 14X11 inch pebbled plate paper. The artist has given it the title "Hard Lines." This is the twelfth picture in the series, and you may have the entire set for $1.50, or any assortment of four for 50c. Safe delivery guaranteed. Address, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING PRINT DEPARTMENT 119 West 40th Street New York City Mrs. PANKHURST The World-famed Leader of the English Suffragettes Exclusive Management J. B. POND LYCEUM BUREAU Metropolitan Life Building 23rd St. and Fourth Avenue, New York. SUBJECTS. "The Militant Methods of the English Suffragettes." "The Meaning of the Woman's Movement in England." "Why Women in England go to Prison for the Vote." "Why Women Want to Vote and How to Win It." Mrs. Pankhurst is a powerful debater and speaker, and at the close of the lectures will be prepared to answer questions that may be put to her on the Suffragette Movement. She will arrive in New York on the 18th of October, and as her lecture engagements will be limited to five weeks, early application for terms and dates is necessary. Mrs. PANKHURST Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst was born in Manchester, England, on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, her father being a great Radical Politician, and her grandfather having narrowly escaped with his life at the great Franchise Riots at Peterloo in 1819. She was educated in Paris, and there met the daughter of Henri Rochefort and became an ardent Republican. In 1879, she met Dr. Pankhurst who had been a member of the first Woman Suffrage Society, founded by John Stuart Mill, and was married to him in the same year. A little later she was placed on the Executive Committee of the only existing Woman Suffrage Society, and was also on the Women's Committee for pushing the Married Women's Property Bill, which subsequently became law. In 1883, she assisted her husband as Independent Radical Candidate for Manchester, and two years later as a Radical Candidate for Rotherhithe. In 1886, Mrs. Pankhurst came to London, joined the Fabian Society and the Holborn Women's Liberal Association. She remained a Liberal until 1892, when she joined the Independent Labour Party and returned to Manchester. In the same year she stood as the Independent Labour Candidate for the Manchester School Board, and was first of the defeated candidates. The following year she was elected head of the poll for the Poor Law Guardians of Manchester and served in that capacity for five years. In 1899, on the death of her husband, she was appointed Registrar of Births and Deaths, and the following year was elected as Trades Council Nominee of the School Board, and twice served on the National Demonstration Council of the Independent Labour Party. In 1903, Mrs. Pankhurst, together with her daughter Christabel, formed the Women's Social and Political Union, and was arrested on the 13th of February, 1908, for heading a deputation of 13 women to the House of Commons and served a term of six weeks imprisonment in the second division; that is, as an ordinary criminal. In October of the same year she was charged with inciting to riot, and together with her daughter Christabel, and Mrs. Drummond, was arrested and tried in the Police Court, and after a trial lasting three days was sentenced to three months imprisonment, but was released a few weeks before the expiration of her sentence. On June 29th of the present year she was again arrested, this time for leading a deputation of eight women to the House of Commons in order to interview the Prime Minister. When the women were brought before the Magistrate the following day and charged with "obstructing the police in the execution of their duty", they were defended by Counsel. He pointed out that under an ancient statute deputations of less than ten in number possessed an absolute right to go in person to lay their claims before the King, or his representative, and the woman were, therefore, legally within their rights in persisting in going. This so impressed the Magistrate, that he agreed to adjourn the case for one week in order that the legal point thus raised might be investigated. The following week, however, he sentenced Mrs. Pankhurst, and her colleagues, to one month's imprisonment, but agreed to suspend the operation of their sentences until they should have been confirmed by a higher Court. The Woman Suffrage Movement in England is of world-wide interest, and Mrs. Pankhurst is coming here to enlighten the people as to the reason for it, the elements entering into the question being of sociological interest. Second American-Canadian Lecture Tour October to January 1911-12 Mrs. Pankhurst The World Famous Leader of the English Suffragettes EXCLUSIVE MANAGEMENT J. B. POND LYCEUM BUREAU METROPOLITAN LIFE BUILDING TWENTY-THIRD ST. & FOURTH AVE. NEW YORK CITY THE time is happily past when Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst - generally known throughout the world simply as "Mrs. Pankhurst" - needs an introduction to American audiences. Her previous lecture tour in the Fall of 1909 proved that. It is with great pleasure that the J. B. Pond Lyceum Bureau announces that arrangements have concluded for Mrs. Pankhurst to re-visit America this season under their management. She comes with renewed enthusiasm to tell of the great progress - and maybe final success by the time she arrives - of the Suffrage Cause in England. Her subjects will be :- "The Triumph of Woman's Suffrage in England." "The English Woman's Fight for the Vote." "The Militant Movement." Mrs. Pankhurst is a wonderful speaker, for in her clam way she never fails to impress her audience with the right of her cause. She is also a powerful debater, and at the close of her lecture is always willing to answer any questions that may be asked regarding the Suffrage Movement. She will arrive in New York about the 15th of October, and will be available for lecture engagements in the United States and Canada until the early part of January. As we are already receiving applications for her, we recommend as early application as possible. MRS. EMMELINE PANKHURST is a native of Manchester, England, having been born in that city on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastile. She comes of Revolutionary stock, for, besides her father being a great Radical Politician, her grandfather was a participator in the Peterloo Franchise Riots in 1819, and narrowly escaped with his life. As a student in Paris, Mrs. Pankhurst met a room-mate of a daughter of Henri Rochefort, and from her caught the Republican spirit. Back in Manchester, she met and married Dr. Pankhurst, a barrister, and who had been a member of the first Woman's Suffrage Society, founded by John Stuart Mill. A little later she was placed on the Executive Committee of the only existing Woman's Suffrage Society, and was also on the Women's Committee for pushing the Married Women's Property Bill, which subsequently became law. In 1886 Mrs. Pankhurst came to London, joined the Fabian Society and the Holborn Women's Liberal Association. She remained a Liberal until 1892, when she joined the Independent Labor Party and returned to Manchester. In the same year she stood as the Independent Labour Candidate for the Manchester School Board, and was first of the defeated candidates. The following year she was elected head of the poll for the Poor Law Guardians for Manchester and served in that capacity for five years. In 1899, on the death of her husband, she was appointed Registrar of Births and Deaths, and the following year was elected as Trades Council Nominee of the School Board, and twice served on the National Demonstration Council of the Independent Labour Party. In 1903 Mrs. Pankhurst, together with her daughter, Christabel, formed the Women's Social and Political Union, known best by the phrase, "Votes for Women." As the head of this organization she has invented most of the ingenious and daring devices of the "Militant Suffragette," which have stirred up so much discussion throughout the civilized world during the past few years. These tactics, instead of being random outbursts of emotional hysteria, have been the successive steps of a cooly thought and deliberately planned campaign. But her plans have been rewarded. The movement has grown from one of small following to a National Issue. And although the English Women intend to fight to victory, it looks very probable that they will not need to keep on much longer. Already their Bill has had two readings in Parliament, and Mrs. Pankhurst hopes that it will have been passed by the time that she visits America. There is no woman in England who is so hated and feared by the politicians, or who is regarded with intense enthusiasm and devotion by so many women. Literally, thousands of them are ready to rush to do her slightest bidding. Hundreds have already gone to prison, and not a few would be willing to lay down their lives. Mrs. Pankhurst is certainly one of the most remarkable personalities of modern times. This Circular is printed in the "Votes for Women" Colors VOTES FOR WOMEN MRS. PANKHURST AT TREMONT TEMPLE SATURDAY, NOV. 15 AT 8 P. M. ONLY APPEARANCE IN MASSACHUSETTS Tickets $1.50, 1.00, 75c, 50c and 25c. On sale at Tremont Temple and at Herricks. Professor & Mrs. E. C. Jeffrey, 47 Lake View Ave., C. POST CARD. COMMUNICATION M? Pankhurst ADDRESS "More than a clergyman is required to make a real marriage. Less than a divorce suit is necessary for a spiritual separation.... If you think that childlessness is the trouble, read the unpleasant accounts of divorce suits, and see how almost always 'the custody of the children' is mentioned" The New Marriage By Jesse Lynch Williams Author of the "The Married Life of Frederic Carrolls," etc. Love cannot live on love alone, but can easily die on it. And so it does, alas! too often. but we don't tell the young people that. Oh, no, that is too truthful. We tell them, "If you only find the right one, nothing else matters." Such nonsense only makes young people who are trying their best to do the right thing in the right way believe that they have not married "the right one" after all. Well, after a more or less happy honeymoon—and the majority are happy, despite disillusionments of the few—the young pair go to their "little home" and begin their "new life" together. At least, that is the way we put it to them, and that is what they want to do, think they are doing. The trouble is they are not together. Man and wife, however congenial they may have been as boy or girl, have so little in common in the modern home—except rooms. As rule, the man does "go into the fields and raise the raw products"; the woman does not "turn them into finished articles," as in the old days when each home was a self-sustaining, self-sufficient industrial unit–the days which produced the forms and customs we still try to follow in married life, though the vital substance which begot them is dead and gone. 181 182 The New Marriage We can't blame the well-meaning young husband for this. We can't blame the wife either. Even if she wanted to, it wouldn't pay to spin and weave and make soap and cure hams and bake bread. She cannot even boss these feminine tasks in the home, as "fine ladies" used to do. Man and wife no longer, save in rare instances, complement each other's efforts, understand each other's affairs, speak each other's language. According to social experts, fully three- quarters of woman's traditional share of the work of the world has gone out of the home, and it is still considered unwomanly by many good and worthy people for woman to follow her job. Because it used to be attended to at home! Wives are still called "helpmates," just as old maids are still called "spinsters" by our old-fashioned laws, although they can no longer follow the calling which won them that epithet. The whole status of woman has changed, except for man's names and medieval notions about the strange creature. The modern wife is seldom a productive helpmate. In many cases she is not even a reproductive one. She is a consumer, a helpmate in helping him spend what he earns. At best, she is a purchasing agent and general manager of a twenty-five per cent. home, sometimes an excellent but often an execrable one, seldom having had thorough training for this simple but all-important business. In neither case is the typical modern wife a life-partner; she is merely a love-partner. As a rule, she knows less about her husband's real interests than his stenographer does; almost as little, in fact, as he knows about his wife's! But having less than half of the household occupations that their grandmotehrs indulged in, and bearing less than half as many children, more women have more time and opportunity than ever before in the annals of their industrious sex to "make themselves attractive." And it cannot be denied that their efforts are eminently successful. Our wonderful American women are famous the world over. Never before in any country have there been so many full pocketbooks and empty homes. This convenient combination makes married life quite interesting to both - for a while. But you can't fill a hollow hemisphere with mere happiness - not for long. Even the most famous and infamous women in all history, who presumably knew even more about the ancient art of fascination, were not able to enslave one man for life - except when they also took a hand in his larger affairs, and made themselves invaluable. Attracting men is one art; holding them is another. Our modern young American "matrons" (we still call them that, too, whether they have children or not) occupy their spare mornings and minds with art classes, Italian courses, and other harmless pursuits of culture or charity, foreign to their busy husbands' tastes and aspirations. Well, what should we expect them to do? Sit around in their "little homes" all day and wait for their providers to come back and be greeted with a kiss? If they are bright-eyed, energetic American girls, not inmates of an Oriental harem, they've got to exercise their God-given faculties on something, even if it is only bridge. They aren't always so self-indulgent, so socially ambitious as many members of my sex and my profession seem to think. They don't want to hinder their husbands with disillusionment and expense; they would gladly help - but what can they do? What are they allowed to do? The fact is, from the time the happy pair walked down the aisle of the church, pronounced one flesh by a clergyman who ought to know, for he read it in a book, they have taken separate and quite divergent paths, put asunder by the very thing that is supposed to join them together. He goes downtown and works; she stays up-town and plays. He belongs to the laboring class; she belongs to the leisure class. He develops as a man; she degenerates as a lady - that most absurd though seductive product of civilized and barbaric ideals, which most men still cherish and most women still follow, when they can. It's all very pretty in theory, but in practice it does not make a socially sound marriage. Practically, it means a mesalliance, and such things seldom work out very well. To be sure, most of them cannot attain this (financially) high ideal, though a great many helpmates make a bluff at it- perhaps to help their mate's credit. But even when, through nobility or necessity, the wife becomes a superior servant in an inferior home, it is hard to see how the willingness and ability to be a faithful household drudge can in itself make this kind of marriage more sound than the other mesalliance just mentioned. IMAGE: You can't fill a hollow hemisphere with mere happiness - not for long. Even the most famous and infamous women in all history were not able to enslave one man for life - except when they also took a hand in his larger affairs Attracting men is one art; holding them is another As a matter of fact and statistics, it does not. The highest ratio of divorce to marriage is not among the wealthiest, as those who hate them would like to believe, nor among the poorest, but among those between the two extremes. You see, it is pretty hard to remain one flesh when two persons are not of one mind. More than a clergyman is required to make a real marriage. Less than a divorce suit is necessary for a spiritual separation. Of course, if the object of marriage is merely to stay married, we might well rejoice that only one legal union in eleven ends in legal disruption (as yet), shutting our eyes to the truth about certain of the other ten, and calling ourselves optimists because it disturbs our ideals to think of unpleasant things. But I really can't see any optimistic ideal in making marriage a mere endurance contest. If you think that childlessness is the trouble, read the unpleasant accounts of divorce suits, and see how almost always "the custody of the children" is mentioned. And so we come to the problem of the other woman or other man. If we train our girls to cultivate the one art of charming men, we must not be surprised if, after a certain amount of stress and strain, they seem inclined to resume the practice of the only trade that they have been allowed to learn. If, on the other hand, the husband becomes bored with his wife's pretty tricks, grows weary of her idle prattle about affairs that do not enter his existence, we must not be surprised if he craves the diversion of other dolls with a new variety of tricks. Falling in love with some one else is not the cause of unhappy marriages - it's the result. Most people seem to think that here is the only problem of married life, when he goes wrong, or she goes wrong, or they both go wrong. Suppose neither of the married people goes wrong - only the marriage. The vast majority of the wedded are fairly decent folk. Despite the prevalence of divorce - or because of it, as you prefer - the monogamic contract is taken more seriously now than ever before in the history of this ancient and often dishonorable institution. At any rate, suppose our married pair set their teeth and, grimly or cheerfully, do their duty. Even then, just what is a wife's 183 184 The New Marriage duty when, for instance, she ceases to love her husband? Should she tell him so? Should she pretend she still loves him, and play the hypocrite? How are these questions answered for them? They are not answered at all. They are begged. "But you mustn't stop loving your husband!" is the orthodox reply. But suppose he has made loving him impossible; must she continue to live with a man she does not love, who does not love her? "Yes, you must sacrifice yourself and find true happiness in doing right. Marriage is an honorable estate." Is allowing herself to be owned body and soul by a man she loathes doing right? That seems rather like a dishonorable institution more ancient than marriage. "But marriage is holy!" Suppose, however, that she cannot look upon this kind of marriage as holy; how is she to live when she has no other means of livelihood than this legalized one? Such questions are racking not a few women's souls; and what are the answers of the orthodox? They have none. Content in their comfortable happiness, or smug in their respectable depravity, they shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh, don't think so much about such things and just do your duty." Most wives are still trying bravely to do their duty, but it is asking a little too much when you tell them not to think. They have more time and more training for thinking than ever before. They no longer are called upon to bear a dozen children apiece, to bury half of them, to rear the rest by hand, to teach them at the mother's knee. Trained experts attend to that - outside the home. Wives no longer conduct with their own hands, or manage with their own heads, a set of domestic industries as complex as the modern department store. Indeed, they cannot help thinking a great deal. What are we going to do about it? We can keep on dealing out individual treatment for these social ills with the same sad social and individual results we now behold on all sides. Or we can look at the matter sensibly instead of sentimentally, and drain some good out of all this modern unrest. But the reform, if it comes, and I for one think it is inevitable, will not arrive without a wrench to some of our cherished ideals. We can hardly hope to reestablish the old-fashioned wife in the new-fashioned home. We cannot go backward and restore old conditions which have gone as irrevocably as the tallow dips which the old-fashioned wife used to make in the home. But some of us see hope for a saner, more wholesome, more lasting marriage coming from a quarter where the blind worshipers of things as they used to be see only despair. I refer to the new-woman movement. To be sure, those who judge every cause by its worst advocates will only shake their heads at this. Every new movement, including Christianity, has first drawn to itself the oppressed and discontented, for those who are neither are those who have waxed fat and content with things as they are, and seldom want them changed. Every reform in the history of civilization, since and before and including Christianity, has had to fight its way in, despite the opposition or indifference of the majority - especially all reforms affecting women. There were objections on the part of men to granting them souls. There were loud cries against giving them seats at the same dinner-table. There was shocked amazement at giving them education. And now we see the same old familiar protest against giving them the ballot. But whatever we may think of some of these new women - though I am bound to say that using their energies instead of abusing them has made most of those I have the honor of knowing more attractive, and far more lastingly so, than if they had remained flabby parasites - whatever most men and some women may think of the freaks in the movement, the movement itself is, in essence, not a radical tendency at all. It's a conservation one. These new women, blindly, sometimes awkwardly, but quite persistently, are simply conserving woman's ancient share of the work of the world. We mistake form for substance, phrases for facts. We think of the new woman as trying to take up man's work. As a matter of fact, man has taken woman's work out of the home. Woman is now going out after it, and will not be stopped, even by man, until she gets it. That is all. She is not really a new woman at all, but the same true, old-fashioned woman we have always admired, expressing Jesse Lynch Williams 185 the same brave and tireless spirit as of old, the same brooding, mothering instinct - only in a form so new we do not recognize her when we see it. Therefore we ridicule her, because it is human to jeer at what we do not understand. For that matter, she does not always understand herself. The external conditions of life have changed so much and so fast that she has not yet found herself, nor her own work, in most cases. But it seems rather stupid to accuse a whole class of "elbowing their way into man's sphere" simply because one woman in every six now supports herself by some means other than matrimony. It's ridiculous to accuse these women of "unsexing themselves" when they refuse to profane the sacredness of sex by selling themselves in marriage or something worse. This much, however, we have got to get into our heads whether we like it or not: The new woman has come to stay. So we can make the best of it, or the worst of it - and of her - for the new marriage which will follow in her train. For we shall never solve the woman problem nor the marriage problem by merely ordering all females back into the well-nigh empty house, simply be- cause some of them "can find enough to do" there. They won't go back. Not even the superior sex can force them back by chivalrically underpaying them. Those who do the most important work in the world, bearing and rearing the modern small family, find it impossible to do it with the old-fashioned ways and means - even if they want to, as of course no intelligent mother does. Woman's sphere is not the house. It never was. Woman's sphere is the home. It will always be. If three- quarters of the home has left the house, woman is going to direct three-quarters of her energies upon things outside of the house, let squawking standpatters say what they will. Man's prejudice against this movement is not always due to masculine selfishness, as some of the older women, crying for women's "rights," still seem to think. It is due, in part at least, to the immemorial instinct of the race for preserving the sex which bears the race. But, like all instincts, this noble one is blind. At present it is just beginning to see that, as in times past, it has been defeating its own intentions. Not until men, and women too, have learned that females are more than sex, as males are more than sex, and that the normal employment of all their human qualities (instead of only one of them) does not make woman less, but on the contrary, more desirable to man and necessary to mankind - not until we get a higher and healthier sex ideal, permitting us to see that woman can and must follow where her own, not man's, sphere leads her, even though it be far afield from the sheltered retreat of a more brutal age - not till then can more than a few men and women marry at the age intended by God, but now prevented by man, not till then can many true mates find each other and true happiness in true marriage. And all the signs of the times point hopefully to this happy consummation. IMAGE: When the brain is all right your nerve-cells look like this When your "nerves" begin to "get on edge" something is wrong, not with the nerves, but with the nerve-centers to which they lead. The tonometer tells the specialist where the trouble is, and he doctors you - your brains, your body. When these are cured your nerves will be all right Here the nerve-cells have almost disappeared, and general paralysis is the result Are Your Nerves in Tune? By Dr. Henry Smith Williams "More nerves than a woman!" Why should such an expression contain reproach? Women have no more nerves than men, but they seem to be more highly strung, so that they "go to pieces," many of them, at the slightest provocation. It should not be so. To prevent our becoming a nerve-wrecked nation we should take thought for ourselves and our children. Nerves that we are ignorant of possessing are priceless; we should all covet them - and cultivate them. The purpose of this article is to tell you how YOU know that you have a nervous system, of course; and there are probably times - say, when the dressmaker spoils your gown or when you discover a new wrinkle - when you think you must have at least half a dozen of them. It isn't as bad as that, fortunately; for one nervous system can make quite trouble enough. But you really have two of them; and some of your chief difficulties, if I mistake not, arise from the fact that one of these sometimes treats the other badly. 186 At best your primary nervous system ignores the secondary one and leaves it quite out of the reckoning in catering to your whims. Yet this secondary nervous system performs every hour miracles that no scientist could duplicate in his laboratory. Every cell in your body is an individual organism that must be fed and exercised, and renovated by the removal of its waste products. The secondary nervous system controls this work - a far more wonderful task than anything you ever do consciously. And this wonderful apparatus needs your Dr. Henry Smith Williams 187 assistance. If you treat this other self of yours badly, you must pay the penalty - and the penalty is "nerves" of the kind you do not relish. Although these two nervous systems are closely interlinked, they are curiously different in function. One of them has to do with sensations of every kind, with the motions of the arms and legs and voluntary muscles in general, and with the whole realm of consciousness - seeing, feeling, willing, thinking. This system has the spinal cord and brain for its centers, and is called the sensory-motor system. A good assortment of nerves of this kind, in good working order, would be just the thing to make your housekeeping tasks seem simple. They might even reduce shopping to a task that could be got through with each week in less than six days. The Sympathetic System The other set of nerves has to do with those vital activities that lie mostly or entirely beyond the reach of conscious direction - the digestion and the assimilation of food, the feeding of myriads of cells in the body, the action of the secretory and excretory glands, and the control of the heart and blood-vessels and of the breathing apparatus. This is called the sympathetic system. If it chances to get out of order, you are in need of sympathy - and so are your family and friends. For though you don't know that you have this "sympathetic" system while it is in good order, you will discover it soon enough if it is out of gear. You will then have a case of "nerves" sure enough. For the animal functions that are controlled by that system underlie all the activities of the conscious self. If the digestive apparatus and the heart and lungs are really in good working order, there is not much chance that anything is wrong with the muscles and brain, for the tissues of the vital organs are the first to feel the danger-signals. The work of your sympathetic system might be likened to the absolutely essential service of the culinary department of your household. The family in general doesn't know that there is a culinary department except when the cook puts too much salt in the soup or burns the roast, and then there is trouble. Similarly you don't know you have a sympathetic system until something snaps. Then you find it out, and run to the nerve-specialist. His first business is to find out why things are wrong. He can see what is wrong easily enough. He will inquire in detail about your food-habits. Do you take your meals regularly? Regularity is highly important. Do you eat wholesome, nourishing foods - eggs, meats, vegetables, fruits, cheese - or do you sate your appetite and clog your system with an undue proportion of sweets and pastries? Do you eat three moderate meals, or do you sip a cup of coffee in lieu of breakfast, nibble a sandwich at lunch-time, and then go through a ten- course dinner? "But, Doctor, it is my nerves that are wrong, not my stomach," you will be sure to protest. Yes, yes, he understands that; but let us see how you treat your nerves. Do you drink plenty of water, to flush out the waste matter of the system and keep the blood healthily diluted, or do you habitually drink tea and coffee, with perhaps wine and an occasional cocktail instead, and thus subject your tissues to chronic poisoning? Also, what about tobacco? Nicotine is a virulent poison, likely to derange stomach, heart, and nerves. Have you achieved the cigarette habit that has come to us from Europe lately with so many other doubtful blessings? Cigarettes do not help the nerves. And again, do you give your tissues a full supply of oxygen, or do you starve them by habitually working and sleeping in rooms with closed windows? These are matters that the specialist will consider vital. Mostly they do not seem to you to concern the nerves, but in point of fact they have everything to do with the tissues that your sympathetic nervous system controls. Your Habits and Your Nerves More than likely the specialist's questions will establish the fact that you have been a very undesirable companion for that other self of yours. And it will appear that your sympathetic system, controlling that other self, has been patient and long-suffering. But now, at last, too greatly imposed upon, the ganglia of the sympathetic system make a protest that is heard at the headquarters in the brain. Hence your headaches, your indigestion, your feeling of apprehension and depression, your wakefulness at night and lassitude by day, your irritability and "nervousness" in general. In addition to this, it is more than likely that you have put a further handicap upon 188 Are Your Nerves in Tune? your brain and the nervous apparatus with which it is directly connected, by the tasks to which you have subjected them. For example, it is probable that your habits of mental activity are not of the best. It is likely that you have never learned the value of regular sequence of work-time and rest- time for your brain which proper habits of sleeping would give. You probably need eight hours' sleep - perhaps more. But you cannot get yourself to retire at a reasonable hour, and when you do go to bed you take your worriments with you, and so do not get sound, restful slumber. Yet sound sleep, and plenty of it, is the only normal and certain restorative for exhausted brain-cells. Then when you have risen from your unrestful slumber you probably subject your brain to periods of undue stress through overwork, and to the wearing influence of worry or of fits of temper. You find the coffee too weak and the toast cold and the marmalade too bitter. You rush complainingly through your breakfast and run for a train or trolley, because you must get to that bargain sale before the things are all picked over. Fifty cents to be saved - and a fifty-dollar doctor's bill to be incurred! If you miss a car you fume and fret. You fly into a rage at the most trifling misadventure. And every fit of temper, did you but know it, eats into the brain-cells like a devouring fire. The Toll of "Trifles" If you could look into your own brain with the eyes of the microscope, you would find that its cells suffer positive injury every time you indulge a freak of temper or imagine you are overworked or worried. Brain-cells that have been overworked suffer an actual breakdown of their substance, so that they become vacuolated, as the technical phrase is - that is to say, portions of the active cell-substance are substituted by droplets of serum that have no more power of nervous functioning than so much water. A brain thus harassed becomes abnormally susceptible to impulses from the outer world, and erratic and incoordinate in its responses. Things thus work in a vicious circle. Your maltreated visceral system irritates the brain, and the brain, in turn, reacts disturbingly on the visceral system. Your exaggerated sensations may take the form of acute pains or of a pervasive sense of ill-being, apprehen- sion, and hypochondria. Worst of all, your harassed brain-cells reach a stage of sensitiveness in which they are perpetually responsive to the messages sent to them from various parts of the body. This means that you cannot sleep, and prolonged wakefulness in itself produces further exhaustion of the brain-cells. This is about the time when you go to consult the nerve-specialist. And he, having finished his tests and elicited these symptoms, will tell you that you are suffering from nervous exhaustion. In his casebook he will write "neurasthenia." And the big word means, after all, about what people mean when they say that one's nerves are "on the outside of one's skin." But what is really at fault, as we have seen, is not so much the nerves themselves, which only convey the impulses that come to them, as it is the essential cells of the spinal cord and brain, where these impulses are normally gathered and controlled. Your trouble now is that the impulses go to the brain in double-quick time, but are not controlled after they got there. Remedies - or Prevention? The specialist prescribes just what you might expect, now that you know what caused your condition of "nerves." He puts you on a rational diet, and tells you to drink plenty of water and little of anything else, unless it be milk; to live in the open and inhale any amount of oxygen; to stop work and worry, and, if possible, to get into the country where things are quiet and your tired brain-cells can have a rest. Perhaps he treats you with a high-frequency electric current, to soothe your muscles and arteries; possibly he gives you a course in the "baking" ovens; he may use the resources of hydrotherapy to stimulate your enervated and rebellious tissues. He may prescribe a course of mechanical massage and of passive exercises with the Zander apparatus, in which your arms and legs will be put through sundry contortions with or without your aid. He will counsel rest in the hospital or exercise in the open - directing and diverting your mind, perhaps, by such occupational exercises as basket- making, modeling in clay or wood, and the like. Or he may combine most of these prescriptions in one by ordering you to the hot springs. This is all very well; but would it not have been a good deal better, from your Dr. Henry Smith Williams 189 standpoint, to have avoided the need of these prescriptions? Obviously; but how prevent a disaster of such insidious approach and of such varied factors of causation? The answer is as simple as the housekeeper's problem of how not to burn the roast - don't keep it too long in the oven. Don't keep your nervous system under too great tension - that is the simple rule for keeping nerves from jangling. Stop fretting and worrying over trifles. What if the cook did spoil the salad dressing and thus annoy your husband? It is easier to get new salad dressing, or a new cook, or even a new husband, than to get a new nervous system. Pay heed to the essentials. You would not cut up a Paquin gown to make a kitchen apron. Then why tear up a good nervous system to make a salad? Several services of salad cost less than one doctor- bill. So have a little talk with yourself about self-control; add a few words about proper diet, some out-of- door exercise, and rational hygiene in general - and then take your own prescription. It will surprise you to find what a nice, orderly nervous system you really have after you have followed this routine for a month or so. And while you are at this job of nerve- adjustment, pass the good word along. Apply what you have learned to the case of your children. Bear in mind that nervous disorders very generally get their start in childhood. So you should always be on guard to see that your children are given a rational environment - and environment in this sense includes not merely the outside world, but the tissue of the body itself. For example, there are the eyes, ears, nose, throat, and the teeth - all of them important organs that have an abundant nerve-supply. Nothing can happen to any of these organs without word of it being sent directly to the brain; and defects at any of these points of contact with the outer world may be the source of constant irritation to that organ. Eye-strain, due to some easily remedied error of refraction, may cause more fatigue of the brain than all the studies in the curriculum. Give careful heed, also, to the inherent traits and capacities of your children as revealed in their every-day conduct. Teach them nervous control - control over their emotions, their passions, their selfish desires. And in aiding them to select vocations, when the time comes for that, consider their traits of mentality, their innate capacities, rather than your own predilections - and be governed accordingly. But consider, also, your own capacities and aptitudes and those of your parents and grandparents. Also your husband's. It is easy to see that he and his family have a good many traits that may well be trained out of your offspring. All along the line, in a word, heredity can tell you much as to the child's probably limitations. It is better to regard these limitations than to 190 Are Your Nerves in Tune? attempt to force the child into some vocation for which it is not fitted by nature. A chief reason for the great number of nervous breakdowns is that there are so many misfits in the vocational world - people who selected their life-work haphazard, without reference to their fitness or unfitness. Something of this has always been known, of course, to every practical man, but latterly the students of efficiency and the psychologists have joined hands to see what can be done to remedy the matter. Of course you cannot personally apply the tests of the psychological laboratory, but you can apply common sense in judging the qualifications of your children- basing your decision partly on a knowledge of your own traits, which are likely to have been inherited by your child, and partly on observation of the child itself. Such practical decisions may often carry you almost as far as the more technical method. If you can thus direct your sons or daughters into the right vocational niches- the ones for which they are inherently equipped- you will do them a better service than through almost any other bequest. As to yourself, you should be able to make an analysis of your own mentality, based on comparison with the persons with whom you come in contact, that will be of inestimable value to you. Test yourself by wholesome introspection- never, however, carried to the stage of morbid brooding- day by day, and determine to better your quality of brain-action, however good it was in the beginning. Remember that the all-important thing is brain-control- capacity to restrain irrational responses, to turn the mind into normal channels, to bar out excessive action along one line- which constitutes worriment; to rest the mind by diverting it into new channels, to gain new and better habits of seeing, feeling, thinking, and acting. The brain itself is closely comparable to a phonograph. But it is a far more sensitive and universal recorder of impressions than phonograph, because the latter takes note only of sound-waves, whereas the brain makes a permanent record of every sensation that comes to it. Dr. Henry Smith Williams 191 From earliest infancy vibrations of many kinds are being sent into the brain-centers along the various nerve-paths, and channels of action are being worn smooth, as it were, so that particular types of action in response to these specific impulses become more and more easy and "natural." This is what we really mean when we say that certain habits of thinking and acting are being established. It is all-important for the individual that the channels of nervous action thus early established should be those that result in right rather than in wrong action. Heredity will determine something as to this. We all know that habits that are easy to acquire for one individual are hard for another; for example, playing on the piano, or reciting poetry, or learning mathematics. But environment and practice will also determine much. We do not inherit knowledge; we inherit capacity to learn. The brain at birth is a blank record, with all its possibilities unrealized and unrealizable except through the right kind of experiences in after life. What about the material you supply for this? You read newspapers doubtless. This is important but are newspapers all sufficient? You read novels, and according to Emerson, novels may be as useful as Bibles if they teach the right lesson. But do they by themselves supply an all-sufficient mental pabulum? If you knew by heart all the best fiction in the world, and nothing else, would you be really educated in a proper sense- fully equipped for your life-work? Obviously not. So you need to supply your mind with the records of serious books in which the mature thought of wise men of earlier generations has been recorded. You need to supply your brain with matter worth remembering, as material for building an effective mental structure. It was never more true than it is today that knowledge is power. Bear in mind, then, that every hour you give to desultory thought and vapid conversation, or to trivial reading, is an hour not merely wasted but devoted to the permanent damage of your brain, because you are preserving what may be likened to a jangling, discordant noise-record, graven on a phonograph cylinder that might have received instead a record of fine music. 192 Are Your Nerves in Tune? And remember, too, how imperishable is the record. Hour by hour you are carving these telltale lines in your brain, and you can no more transform them all of a sudden than you can change your phonograph record from ragtime to symphony by merely wishing it changed. Yes; I agree that some ragtime is all right. But you do not want all ragtime. A lace fichu is very well in its way, but it does not take the place of a fur coat. Perhaps you are inclined to doubt the permanency of the brain-records, because you forget so many things. But in point of fact, even the things you forget are permanently recorded in the brain. Daytime experiences to which you gave no thought may be so deeply graven in the brain as to make the substance of haunting dreams, linked with experiences of childhood that have been no part of conscious mentality for perhaps a score of years. Building Personality Dr. Frederick Peterson, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, published some time ago an interesting account of tests made by him in association with Doctor Yung, at Zurich, Switzerland, in which methods were found of getting at the unconscious and subconscious mentality of patients by merely pronouncing various words and asking the patient to pronounce in turn the first word that comes into his mind in response. By such a test it is possible to show strange associations of ideas which the psychologist can interpret in the light of the patient's early experiences, proving that the brain-cells permanently retain records of events, many of these of the most trivial character, of which the conscious individual has no definite recollection. Bear all this in mind as you are choosing your reading, your associates, your topics of thought and conversation. Remember that your mind at maturity will be largely what you have chosen to make it. "As a man thinketh, so he is," is the most literally true of maxims. When the maxim was written, women were not expected to think at all. But in our day we may confidently affirm that as a woman thinketh, so is she also. And even now it is not apparent that the average woman thinks so very well - she would be a mistake for the average man if she did. But the average man is trying to learn how to think a little better; and the average woman should try at least to keep pace. The competition isn't very keen, but even at that you will not keep up if you do not try. But can the brain-records be changed at all? This is the most important of questions; back of it lies the whole problem of education. In point of fact, it is possible that no individual record can be changed except to make in more intense, or to allow it to become enfeebled through lack of repetition. But as all important experiences are complex, it is possible to pile up in the brain new records of such character as will tend to subordinate unfortunate earlier records, and finally to make these relatively inconsequential. So there is always the cheering possibility of bringing new sets of cells into action - of making good records to supplement and subordinate the bad ones, thus, in effect, changing the character of the brain action and of the personality associated with it. In reality, each of us is thus building a new personality on the foundation of the old one, day by day. The great question is, Are you building a new, modern, fire-proof mental structure or a rattle-trap affair, with rotten timbers, flimsy rafters, insidious cobwebs, and loose shingles? Good mental housekeeping can be done only in a good mental house. The other kind will keep you all the while searching for cobwebs and mice and cockroaches and the other disturbers of good housekeeping. Remember always this underlying principle: doing a thing once - good thing or bad thing - makes it easier to do that thing again. This is the basic principle of nervous action. It is easier for future impulses to travel the old track than to break into new channels. In reality, the chief function of volition is to inhibit the responsive action of the brain-cells which would tend to result in sending nervous impulses along old channels, and through such inhibition to make possible the opening up of new channels. Nerves of Least Resistance There has recently been founded in New York City a Neurological Institute where some extremely interesting tests are being made in this connection, particularly with the galvanometer. In these tests the patient sits with hands on a pair of metal plates, making no movement, while the physician near at hand makes seemingly aimless remarks or utters detached and apparently meaningless words, watching in the meantime, not the patient, but a scale connected with a revolving cylinder which IMAGE: Here are four chief avenues for the transmission of impressions - indelible impressions - to the brain. Our modern life, with its accentuation of every sensory delight and discord, taxes our nerves to capacity. Is it any wonder they so frequently become unstrung? reflects a beam of light from a little mirror under a bell-jar on a neighboring desk. This recording apparatus is called a kymograph. The shifting beam of light tells of changed resistance to the passage of an electric current through the patient's body, and this resistance alters constantly with the changing thoughts, moods, and emotions of the patient. "Multiply four by five," says the doctor. The little mirror oscillates slightly. "Multiply eight by twelve." A slightly greater shift of the mirror shows a stronger mental effort. Mathematics is not this patient's forte. Then, without seeming relevance to anything in particular, the doctor pronounces the name "Jane." The little mirror oscillates sharply; the recorder on the revolvig drum gives a jump, and the observer notes that the word has aroused a strong emotion. It begins to be clear that the mystic galvanometer is a reader of thoughts, a tester of emotions. Its operator is Doctor Peterson. He has made classical experiments with the apparatus, and is endeavoring now, with the case under observation, to get at the real causes of an incipient mental malady, to find out what nerve-channels are so weakened as to be overburdened with impulses. It is a case of scientific mind- reading. Remember that "will-power" is largely power to prevent action. A trained will is one that holds the brain-cells in leash, as it were, and determines that the nervous impulses sent out shall not always take the old familiar line of least resistance. All mental discipline may be summed up in the development of this inhibitory power of the will, for, in the last analysis, this is what we mean by mental training. All that has been said emphasizes the lesson that the right kind of training of the brain-cells cannot be begun too early. The fewer bad habits of nervous action, the less need there will be unlearning, and the easier will be the task of discipline. But however well the task may have been begun, the habit of training the brain-cells to better and better lines of action is one that should be continued throughout life. The test of conscious life itself is to be able to send out nerve stimuli from the brain. The test of youth - I know that subject is contraband, but let me hasten to add that I mean the test of youth regardless of years - is to be able to set up new channels of innervation so grooved that they act automatically in the best way. And nothing else in life is so much worth while as to have a brain trained to act with the fullest measure of efficiency - to the full limit of its best capacities. A brain thus trained will know how to select the right tasks, and how rationally to conserve its energies. There is little danger that nerves controlled by such a brain will ever get the better of you and grow "on the outside." 193 [PICTURE] [CAPTION] Giving and taking the responsibility for a human soul. The lady in white Mr. Lewis calls his "intermediate mother." Just for the love of them she cares for the babies and "tones them up" while those who have offered them homes are being investigated. Dealing in Babies By Judd Mortimer Lewis "Anybody want a baby?" That question, asked in good faith of almost any two Americans assembled together, would result in the offer of at least one home for the little wanderer. North, South, East, West, there are not enough babies to go round, to fill the hungry hearts of men and women denied children of their own. It is a worth-while work to bring homeless babies to baby-less homes. And it has its recompense; it gives one a new faith in man and in God to see homes of wealth and refinement opening to little waifs cast up on the sea of life. The whole story of the baby bureau run by Mr. Lewis would fill volumes. Here are some chapters from it that make you feel the warmth that is stored up in the human heart. BABY-BUREAU work is full of heartaches, of heart-breaks, and of happinesses. Always the men and women who undertake it find depths of suffering, examples of renunciations, and heights of happiness which they had not dreamed existed. I am speaking now of unorganized baby-bureau work, which is the work which occupies my time and attention outside of the hours it is necessary for me to give to earning the wherewithal to take care of my own babies. I think August was the homeliest baby I have ever seen. I might almost say the homeliest baby anyone has ever seen. 194 When I found him I had for some time been seeking for a suitable baby bot for a home in one of the South Atlantic states. It was a good home, thoroughly investigated, and both the husband and wife were hungry-hearted for a baby to love. Then I found August, or, to be more correct, the people who had August in charge found me. August was seven months old, and to have got any more freckles on his face it would have been necessary to have them stood up edgewise. He was pug-nosed. Also his eyes squinted, due to the fact that while his mother, who had taken in washing in an effort to keep her baby with her, had bent over the tubs, August had played about in G.H. Oct 1913 It would have been unfortunate for the government if a suffragette had died–in jail; so in jail, instead of being tortured to death as of old, a woman was tortured to life. It saved the embarrassment of martyrs -and was a good story to tell, if you forgot the tradition of British liberty. Is a mere vote worth it? The Measure of the Militants By Samuel Merwin Editor's Note:--Women do not want the vote–as a vote. They do want the rights and privileges shared and enjoyed almost universally by men. They are tired of being held subject, and their protests, expressed differently as the opposition differed, have called attention to the most amazing revolution in the history of the world–and earth-wide rising-up of womankind with a demand that things be changed, and that they get the benefit of the change. Only in Great Britain has turbulence followed this uprising. It is this "militancy" that we seek to explain; the campaign in England is too fine a thing to be longer misunderstood, for the fiber of the Christian martyrs is in many of these women who have vainly tried to carry petitions to their king. If this be championing the militants–well, make the most of it. An open-minded reading of this article will set more a-thinking. For eight years now–since 1905– the newspapers of America have been publishing reports of conflicts between the British Militants and mobs of the police; of window-smashing campaigns and so-called "raids" on Parliament; of the imprisonment of women, many from the upper classes; of prison mutinies and "hunger strikes," followed by further and more violent "outrages" on the part of these women, even to the destruction of houses and of a public building here and there, not to speak of the "bombs" found in numerous public places. Since it is the traditional policy of all but a few of our papers to ignore the mass of underlying facts and the historical background of such outbreaks as these, and to give us only the more picturesque or disturbing surface facts, most of us take an extremely superficial view of the matter. The present writer has, within the year, heard various specimens of the "man in the street" type utter judgments on these women quite as extraordinary, quite as violent, as the extraordinary and violent acts of the women. He has heard it said of Mrs. Pankhurst, for example, that "she ought to be given twenty years at hard labor "; "she ought to be kicked"; "she is a faker"; "she is a bluffer"; "the British government is too easy on these women; they ought to take the leaders out and shoot them. Then they might restore order". 445 446 The Measure of the Militants Of course the supposedly civilized men who uttered these opinions never expected to be confronted with them in print; probably they did not fully realize the brutality of their words. They had heard occasionally of the arrest and conviction of five or six of these strange women; they were not informed that the actual number of women arrested ran into the thousands - that on two days in the month of November, 1910, more than three hundred were arrested, and seventy- five convicted. It did not occur to them, as they read of the recent series of "bomb outrages," to inquire why none of these bombs ever seemed to explode. They knew no more of the facts than could be gathered by an occasional glance at a newspaper headline, in which the "story" of the moment was heavily emphasized to the exclusion of all the other facts in the matter. Nevertheless, the views of these men seem to the writer to represent a considerable part of casual American thought on this extremely important matter. And therefore it seem worth while to present a few of the facts that underlie this strange movement - or, at least, a fairly consistent, if personal, view of those facts. British Women a Subject Race And in presenting this view of the facts, it must be understood that we are dealing not so much with the militant movement considered as an outgrowth of what might be called local conditions in Great Britain. One of the oldest of aphorisms runs that "there is usually a reason for things in this world." Undoubtedly the prime reason for militancy in Great Britain is the earlier failure of the so-called Constitutional Suffrage Movement. We will consider this aspect of the matter in a moment. The secondary, though basic, reason is the fact that the English women, looking at the situation through their own eyes, occupy even today, in law and in fact, much the position of a subject race. The theory that "the woman pays" is traditional in all human society. But few of us realize how much more rapidly we of the United States have progressed toward a basis of general human equality between the sexes than have the people of England. There, under the ancient legal doctrine of coverture (which has been modified, but by no means abolished during the past century), a wife's civic existence was practically suspended during marriage, and she was prevented from taking any legal action on her own behalf except through her husband, or with his consent. "Husband and wife were one, and the husband was that one." Today, under this ancient doctrine, the husband has, by the common law, the custody and control of his wife. She must live where he desires, and must arrange their joint domestic life in accordance with his commands. Though she is now permitted to have separate property, if the husband embezzles and spends that property she has no redress; nor can she punish the husband for the wrong done to her by malicious libel. The Bondage of the Wedding-Ring In case the wife and husband are acting as partners in a shop or a farm, sharing the labor, and even the direction of the work, all profits go to the husband. The law makes no allowance for the wife's industry. Under the old common law of England the wife, in case of the husband's death, had the right of dower out of the husband's property. This right has gradually been removed, until today the husband is free under the law to leave the whole of his real and personal property away from his wife and his children. He can, if he chooses, leave them destitute, to become public charges, no matter what his own wealth. The old theory that the wife is the chattel of her husband is responsible for much brutality toward wives in England today. Under the old law a husband who killed his wife was treated with some leniency by male judges and juries, but if a wife killed her husband her crime was treason, and the punishment was burning alive at the stake. Which accounts for the attitude, common today in ordinary lower-class British life, that a man has a right to beat his wife. In the matter of divorce, a man in England is granted his freedom on proof of the unfaithfulness of his wife. The wife cannot obtain a divorce merely on that ground. These few examples are typical; the list covers nearly the whole range of human life. Particularly in the field of industry the woman finds the law against her at every turn. As in our own country, throughout the public service a woman receives hardly more than half what a man is paid for the same work. And on every hand, intelligent women, looking about them at the sort of civilization which men, and men alone, have ordered and devised, and the administration of which the men have been astute IMAGE: We read of American women quietly gaining the suffrage, and wonder what sort of creatures the English militants can be. Should we not rather weigh the difference in the men? Could this thing, which is of almost daily occurrence in England, happen more than once in all America? If the voice of American wives and mothers, publicly raised, received such responses as this would our police stand by, passive? And if so, would American women bear it in "womanly" silence? 447 448 The Measure of Militants enough to keep entirely in their own hands, find themselves at a disadvantage. The superior wisdon, it has traditionally been assumed, was man's. The power and the glory were man's. The making of laws, the theories and the administration of justice, were all man's. The policies of government were such as best suited man's tastes, and emphasized his points of strength. The reward, of every sort, were man's. In all the three main lines of life open to woman - marriage, industry, prostitution - woman was subject to man's caprice, used or cast aside, almost literally, at his pleasure. He had even arranged matters so that he was free to revel in immortality- free to degrade dependent, helpless girls - while she was held strictly accountable, and by him. He had actually gone so far as to embody this fact of life in his laws! The Gathering of the Storm Woman's only course, therefore, was to please man; to admire his strength in peace and war; to hearken unto his superior wisdom; to keep herself as ignorant and dependent as possible, lest she disturb his complaent sense of superiority, and thereby frighten him away; and by constantly and subtly emphasizing her sex charms and hiding her mind, o capture him through his emotions, where he was notoriously (to women) weakest, thereby securing for herself, within the bonds of marriage if possible, a less or more precarious living. This, to discerning women, was man's position - and woman's. But these discerning women, through a long century, have dreamed of a greatly changed England, in which there should be literal equality. These women saw that the parliamentary vote, while nominally a slight thing, perhaps not exercised oftener than once in four or five years, is potentially a powerful weapon. They saw that the efforts of subject classes of men to win the franchise, and with it some part of the control of society, were invariably resisted bu the intrenched classes of privilege. And further, they saw that success on the part of these subject classes in getting the franchise ) by riots, fighting, bloodshed, or the threat of it - led inevitably to a better footing in the community for those classes. The discerning women of England pondered over these results. They saw the males of one class after another fight for the franchise, get it, and improve their condi- tion as a class. Yet they themselves - numerically more than half the people of the nation - were not advancing. However individual women might benefit indirectly through the improved standing of the individual men to whom they were attached, woman as a sew, as a class, remained a subject class. It was still only by surrendering her mind and body to the unquestioned, quite legal control of a make person that the individual woman could acquire any share in the benefits that the men had fought so hard to win for themselves. The First Suffrage Campaign And these discerning women had seen something else ) they had seen nearly forty years of organized agitation for the vote end in defeat and ridicule. We of today are likely to forget the importance and the magnitude of the great, peaceful "Constitutional" woman's campaign that began in 1866 - led, in Parliament, by John Stuart Mill, and finally turned back, in 1884, by Gladston, when he threatene to withdraw the support of the government from the County Franchise Bill if the woman-suffrage amendment to it were carried. These earlier advocates worked tirelessly. They organized the women of England into a peaceful suffrage army. They bombarded Parliament with petitions - presenting, between 1867 and 1884, more than three million signatures. They pledged one new member after another to their cause, until, at the time when Gladstone finally checkmated them, it was generally understood that they had an actual majority in the House of Commons. But they cated always "as women," keeping rigidly within the limits of decorum outlined for them by their male rulers. They fairly spent themselves, in the aighteen-year campaign, struggling to gain by "womanly" methods alone what every class of men that had won the privilege had had to get by actual intimidation of those power. After 1884, for twenty years the terms "Equal Suffrage" and "Women's Rights" had about the standing in public thought and in the press that the mother-in-law joke has. Hardly more. Devoted women continued to meet, to issue pamphlets and petitions, to listen to "lectures"; but they were rather the limited type that naturally turns its attention to such subjects. At that, they were never "unwomanly" in any Samuel Merwin 449 striking or determined way. They never risked the scorn of their men by openly violating the traditional limitations on feminine activities. And they were generally regarded as a set of freakish and rather unfortunate women who, for some one of a number of reasons, had failed in the accepted feminine job of capturing a man's fancy and pinning him down to pay for her keep and her comfort. "Can't you get a husband?" was the jibe they heard week in and week out. They were in no respect a menace to man's established sense of power. It had not been so during the seventies and early eighties. Then the women were working together. They were organized on a national scale. But they knew no other course than to ask. It had not occurred to them to insist, to take. They wtill held to the doctrine of submission which had been inculcated in them by those male teachers and moralists who, themselves, had never hesitated to resist oppression, nor to strike farther afield and spend treasure and blood in seizing upon the riches and powers of the earth. They had not yet come to realize fully that the whole great structure of human "liberty," has been built, stone by stone and plank by plank, through centuries of bloodshed. What men have, they have fought for. What Privilege has yielded, it has yielded only to force, or to the menace of force. The Position of Man The fact appears plain enough now that the men who have controlled Great Britain's policies and destinies have never had the slightest intention of giving women the vote. It is frankly a revolutionary thought. "Women want the vote," says Pethick Lawrence, "first, in order that they may play their part in the life of the nation and introduce their point of view, so long neglected, into the government of the country; and, secondly, in order that the interests of women may be safeguarded." These great aims cannot be achieved, obviously, without a subtle and immense change in the position of man. Which change means the surrendering of privilege up and down the line. And nobody who lives and benefits by a privilege likes to do much of that sort of surrendering. To be sure, the women could not be handled too brusquely. Women traditionally play an active part in British political campaigns; their help means much to any candidate. Therefore the politician cannot afford to ridicule openly their political pretensions. And, too, nearly every man has to face a woman at close quarters, intimately indeed, when he goes home at night. Women do certainly have to be faced. They have to be guided and, at times, to be cajoled. The voting records indicate that many a man entered Parliament as a suffragist, and with the women supporting him, who took the whole business much less seriously than his supporters thought. Gladstone himself was unwilling to expose his hand until he perceived the danger that there were so many such members who might, after all, have to vote for the women that the measure might actually be carried. And then the great Commoner was driven to divert the women by forming the "Women's Liberal Suffrage Association," with Mrs. Gladstone as its president, to give them a sop of some harmless and quite meaningless work "within the party." The Seed of Militancy So the women didn't get the vote. And, so, for another two decades, the movement drifted along, quite a harmless little thing. It no longer disturbed Parliament. The government was free to continue its traditional policy of considering only such matters as seemed important to the male mind, andof astutely protecting that sex and those interests which were so fortunate as to have representation. Then in Otober, 1905, Miss Annie Kenney and Miss Chistael Pankhurst arose in a political meeting at Ma,chester and asked Sir Edward Grey what position the Liberal Government purposed taking in the matter of giving votes to women. They asked the question because their newly formed organization, The Women's Social and Political Union, wished to know precisely that. They waited, quite properly, until the speech was over and questions from the audience had been invited. When it became apparent that no reply of any sort was forthcoming, Miss Kenney held up a banner inscribed with the words, "Votes for Women"; this in order that the nature of the question might be understood by the audience. The effect of this simple action was extraordinary. The two women were seized and forced down into their chairs. A man put his hat over Miss Kenney's face. When 450 The Measure of the Militants order was finally restored, a constable gave Miss Kenney the opportunity to write her question, to which she added the information that she was there as an accredited representative of nearly one hundred thousand organized women cotton-operatives. The slip of paper was passed about among the speakers on the platform, causing some amusement; then it was laid aside and ignored. No answer was offered. It was doubtless assumed that the women would not embarrass the speaker by pressing the matter. The Breaking of the Storm But these women were not from submissive stock. They insisted on a reply. They insisted, even, as a right. Annie Kenney mounted her chair, and shouted the question again. The temper of the outraged gathering changed swiftly from amusement to fury. The two young women were dragged out by force, resisting every step of the way and shouting their question to the last. They were thrown into the street, where they promptly gathered a crowd and started a meeting of protest. The police stopped this at once, and arrested the two on a charge of "assault." The next day, when a local magistrate gave them the alternative of fines or imprisonment, both chose the latter. So the militant movement was born. The question that these two women asked had first been raised in England more than a hundred years earlier. Forty years earlier it had shaken the nation. But it had always been asked in a ladylike manner, submissively. And it had always been answered - through whatever evasion, confusion of issues, trickery - in the negative. To the women of the newly organized W. S. P. U. submission meant subjection; and subjection was intolerable. The fact that man traditionally prefers woman submissive meant nothing to them. Their interest was not in what man wants; but in what woman wants. They meant business. And so the men, outnumbering them a thousand to one, laid violent hands upon them, beat them, threw them into prison. Their offense appears to have been that they did mean business. That was the one thing that the men could not tolerate. Since that night the militant women have been doing just one thing. They have been asking the British government whether it purposes giving votes to women. They have revived the ancient right to petition the king, or his prime minister, that is a traditional and legal perogative of the people of England, under certain conditions. They have scrupulously observed those conditions. And they have invariably been prevented by force from accomplishing their purpose. In the course of the eight-year revolt they have been concerned in many amazing incidents, but during the first four or five years they confined their actions wholly to efforts, violent-appearing, some of them, to bring their cause, and their right to present it, to the official notice. If a woman chained herself to the grille in the ladies' gallery of the House of Commons, it was to call attention to that grating, which, down the centuries, had advertised woman's disability before that governing body. Also, it was herself she chained, and not a member of cabinet. If a woman broke through a line of soldiers and dashed at the king's carriage, it was for the purpose of throwing into it a slip of paper bearing her vital question. She was not there to assault the king; and nobody thought she was. What was injured by such acts was the British sense of propriety. And that, was precisely the institution the militants wished to change. It was the British sense of propriety that had defeated the women during more than a century. Indeed, the rather curious fact appears to be that during these years the movement, in one sense, was not militant at all. The women, carefully advised by legal sympathizers and guided by that extraordinary woman, Mrs. Pankhurst, simply went where they believed they had a legal right to go, and tried to see persons in authority whom they had a right to see. But from the point of view of these persons in authority, to receive the women at all was in some measure to recognize the right which they were pressing; to refuse publicly to see them was awkward - exceedingly awkward. Accordingly, force was used to prevent their seeing these persons. In every instance, such was their courage and hardihood, they persisted in their efforts. And in most instances they were handled with a brutality which, unfortunately, has not been widely reported in the American papers. And meanwhile their cause was growing so rapidly that in 1911 the W. S. P. U. alone had raised some five hundred thousand dollars, and was con- ducting a huge national organization, with ramifications extending into almost every part of the country. The brutal handling of the women, particularly by the police, is a matter of record. Early in 1911 such evidence was brought before the Conciliation Committee of Parliament as to cause that body to vote unanimously to transmit the evidence to the Home Office, and demand a public inquiry into the conduct of the police. The occasion was the series of suffragette "raids" on the Parliament Buildings in November, 1910. These "raids" were simply the orderly marching of the IMAGE: Miss Christabel Pankhurst, a leader who rose to inquire, and started the militant campaign women, headed by Mrs. Pankhurst, for the purpose of demanding that a small delegation be admitted to present their case formally to the prime minister. They were met by solid lines of police, who ordered the women back; and on their refusal to stop, force was employed. The police were evidently acting under rather unusual orders. The movement was now at its height. The cabinet found itself more gravely embarrassed than ever by these persistent women, and quite unable to answer their questions. From the report of the Conciliation Committee, and judging only from the evidence that was admitted by the Committee, there is some reason to believe that the object of the Home Office, or of the police heads was so to impress on the women their physical weakness and vulnerability as to discourage them from further efforts. If this could IMAGE: Weak of limb, beaten down and buffeted by armed guards, dauntlessly these women went on demanding a hearing. Why? Just because they wanted political equality? 451 452 The Measure of the Militants be done by physical handling and intimidation, without permitting the principles on which the women were insisting to come to a public issue, it might easily relieve the government in its dilemma. The methods employed by the police, and by plain-clothes men who appeared to be working in harmony with them, were as follows: Beating women up and down the spine; twisting the thumbs and bending them back; forcing a finger up the nostril; striking across the face with a stick and with helmets; pinching the arms; throwing a woman about from one policeman to another, and finally dashing her against a lamppost with such force that two teeth were loosened; striking the face with the closed fist; knocking down a young girl repeatedly until she became unconscious, and then kicking her; rubbing a woman's face against iron railings; seizing women by the throat. It was the judgment of the Conciliation Committee that: It is indeed difficult to understand or explain what motive or calculation can have prompted it (the assault on the women). The only reason for interfering at all with the women was to prevent an obstruction to the thoroughfares. . . . The consequence of ordering the police to engage in a protracted conflict with the women was that for many hours on November 19th the whole of this area was abandoned to a struggle which was by the tactics of the police so prolonged as to cause the maximum of disturbance to traffic. These words, bear in mind, are official. The Parliamentary Committee which framed them was in charge of preparing the compromise suffrage bill that was later presented to the House. The report continues: But there emerges from the evidence before us a much graver charge. We cannot resist the impression that the police as a whole were under the impression that their duty was not merely to frustrate the attempts of the women to reach the House, but also to terrorize them in the process. They used in numerous instances excessive violence, which was at once deliberate and aggressive, and was intended to inflict injury and pain. Many of them resorted to certain forms of torture. They frequently handled the women with gross indecency. These acts of indecency were of the following nature: Several times constables and plain-clothes men (this from one of the statements published in the report as being typical) passed their arms around me from the back and clutched hold of my breasts in as public a manner as possible, and men in the crowd followed their example. I was also pummeled on the chest, and my breast was clutched by one constable from the front. As a consequence, three days later I had to receive medical attention . . . as my breasts were much discolored and very painful. On the Friday I was also very badly treated. . . . My skirt was lifted up as high as possible, and the constable attempted to life me off the ground by raising his knee. This he could not do, so he threw me into the crowd, and incited the men to treat me as they wished. Consequently, several men who, I believe, were policemen in plain clothes, also endeavored to lift my dress. . . . Women of sixty to seventy years of age were as roughly treated as their younger comrades. One old lady of nearly seventy . . . . was deliberately knocked down by a blow from a policeman's fist. The report concludes: This is not yet the time of to make any general comment on a mass of evidence which, we believe, does on the whole fairly represent the facts. We are content to observe that such an exhibition of brutality is calculated not to deter women of spirit, but rather to provoke them to less innocent methods of protest; that it must be destructive of discipline in the police, and demoralizing to the public which witnesses it; and, finally, that if it were to be tolerated or repeated, it would leave an indelible strain upon the manhood and the humanity of our country. In the opinion of the present writer, no better reason than this report was ever given for the necessity that women should have an equal share in the control of the government under which they live, at present without the privileges derived from responsible citizenship, and without even the traditional right to present a grievance to their rulers. This battle of November 18, 1910 - it was hardly less than a battle - was the climax of a long series of skirmishes. Previous to this time, the militants, aside from their set policy of pestering cabinet ministers, had been carrying on political work through the usual channels in the effort to win seats in Parliament; and with some success. Also, since they were decidedly "women of spirit," they had persisted in intruding into meetings and gatherings where they believed they had a right to be, but where they certainly were not wanted. Hundreds upon hundreds of them had been arrested, some of them numerous times. But little by little it came to light that the government was pursuing a rather unusual policy of imprisonment. It would appear to the outside observer - and it certainly so appeared to these women - that they were entitled to be classed as political offenders, or prisoners of the first division. The government saw the matter differently. In all but a few instances the women were put in the second or third divisions, along with thieves, druknards, vagabonds, and prostitutes. For a while they endured this treatment. Then they began to protest. It looked very much as if, in IMAGE: Mrs. Pankhurst IMAGE: The inspiration and center of the tumult, the director of the fray - saint or merely sinner - Which? IMAGE: The pantheon of the immortals has in her a new figure, one the world will no more forget than it will Joan of Arc prison, as outside, the government was working to undermine the militant movement by breaking the spirit of its leaders through hardship and general bad treatment; and by methods none too legal, at that. Finally, in 1909, these same leaders, far from broken, resolved upon a policy of fighting the government within the walls of the prisons, as they were fighting it outside. And they made it plain that their new form of resistance, like the other forms they had employed, was brought about in defense of their legal rights. The famous "Prison Mutiny" followed. The women barricaded themselves in their cells. Their spirit was dauntless, unafraid. They gave fight. They broke the cell windows. Finally they refused to eat. The hunger strike proved to be an effective stroke. It meant that these women stood ready to die for their principles - not one or two devoted and perhaps fanatical leaders, but all of them! It is easy to see that a government which was not in a position to meet an issue was most assuredly not in a position to permit a startling series of martyrdoms for that issue within its own prisons. Officials watched the women, came to the painful conclusion that they still meant business, 453 454 The Measure of the Militants and finally devised the system of treatment that is known as "forcible feeding." A number of cases are on record in which prison doctors are reported to have behaved with some brutality, such as losing patience and striking the woman in the face. Usually the operation was conducted with carelessness and indifference. An examination of the prisoner's heart was supposed to precede the operation; but in many cases this was omitted. Several cases are reported in which the tube was carelessly passed into the lungs instead of the stomach; one of these cases having particularly serious results. The Spirit of the Hunger Strike The attorneys for the W. S. P. U., in opposing the forcible feeding, made the point that to perform an operation on the human body without the person's consent is a violation of an essential human right, unless that person has been certified to be insane. A test case was brought to trial. On what appear at this distance to be technical grounds, the Lord Chief Justice refused to allow the main contention of the W. S. P. U. to go to the jury, and submitted instead a minor point. The case was lost. And it stands now, or did stand at last reports, that an English man or woman, once committed to prison, loses control of his own body in this respect. But if the government won this case technically, it appears to have lost morally. The trouble with forcible feeding was not alone that it is a rather ugly business, not quite human, a little too close to torture to fit in with Anglo-Saxon notions; but that there was at the heart of it an unpleasant hint of weakness in the government's position. It had the air of being a desperate, brutal attempt to keep these women from demonstrating how really determined they were. You can't very well kill a cause with ridicule once its devotees really begin to die for it. Or even if you can, in the heat of the moment, the absurd affair is likely to look a little different a few years later. Somehow, it is a long, long time since people have laughed very widely at Martin Luther, even though he did flaunt the authority and majesty of the temporal and spiritual power of his time; and even if he did make it disturbingly evident that he meant business by breaking all vows and marrying a nun, thereby outraging the deepest moral tradition of his day. Nor do we laugh at Savonarola. Nor at poor, misguided, tragic old John Brown. Nor at Washington and his property-destroying crew. Nor at Carl Schurz, and his fellow revolutionists in Germany. Nor even at the rather ridiculous Wat Tyler. The Storm at Its Height Indeed, in our lucid moments, away from the heat and dust of conflict, we have a curious habit of doing reverence to the great rebels of the past. Soberly, each of us knows that whatever we enjoy today of liberty and equality and the right to live has been won for us by our rebels. If ever-widening classes of human beings had not protested, and fought to make their protests good, civilization would not now be what it is. Our own nation was founded on the theory that the right to revolt is an inherent right. A fact it is well to remember in these different times when some of us find ourselves caught quite unexpectedly on the conservative side; when we find our own personal comfort and security threatened in some new and alarming way which we perhaps don't quite understand. Yes, even the government of Great Britain found the forcible feeding business a little unpleasant. Finally a way out was discovered. The so-called "Cat and Moue Act" was put through Parliament. Under this law a prisoner who goes on a hunger strike is simply released, but is kept under surveillance. When in the judgment of the authorities she has recovered her strength sufficiently to endure a little more imprisonment, she is locked up again. And so on, indefinitely. This is the policy, at the time of writing, with Mrs. Pankhurst. The officials now have full legal authority (however queer this very special law appears to an outside observer) to play with these women virtually as they choose. This, of course, is much pleasanter for the authorities. For one thing, they are now relieved of their greatest nightmare - that one or more of the women may die in prison. Now it will be easy, and quite legal, to have whatever dying occurs take place outside. In which event it will not be difficult to emphasize the possibility of other causes for the deaths than torture and brutality in prison under official direction. It was stated earlier in this paper that in one sense the movement was Samuel Merwin 455 not militant at all. It was, in the main, a series of violent episodes brought about by the insistence of the women on what, they were advised, was their right, and not directly by violence on their own part. But it is not intended by this statement to minimize the real militancy to which the women have been driven. The thing is a revolution - a long and complicated revolution, that has its violent aspect; in the main a deliberate policy of pin-pricking and threatening, a sort of modernized and feminized guerrilla warfare. During the past year or so - since the truce with the government - this policy has been pressed farther than in the earlier years. Some property has been destroyed. But it is a notable fact that in this protracted and really considerable revolution, in which a militant section of a sex that number more than half the population of the country has been fighting desperately for the liberty of the last remaining great subject class, the only lives lost to date have been those of some of the women themselves. Considering the fact that the history of the growth of the English ideal of liberty is the history of a long series of bloody revolts; considering the fact that the suffrage movement, militant and constitutional, is numerically the greatest of them all, and is perhaps the most deeply significant of them all (when one realizes the subtlety and magnitude of the changes implied by the expressed intention to "introduce the women's point of view, so long neglected, into the government of the country"); considering these things, and considering also what the women who have borne the brunt of the fighting have had to endure, it is easily the most extraordinarily patient, long- suffering, bloodless revolution that England has ever seen - or is likely to see until a much higher development of civilization and human brotherhood than anything we know now shall have been evolved. IMAGE: The suffragettes are attacking the world's biggest stronghold of conservatism - equality with man. In most of their onslaughts they have advanced in orderly file, petitions their only arms. Thrust back by the police, they have - woman fashion - resisted arrest. And the world beyond stands aghast at the frenzied accounts of their "riots" 456 The Measure of the Militants In this connection, of course, one should bear in mind that many of the "stories" of militant outrages circulated through our American press have been absurd on their face. Some of the fires were undoubtedly the work of other persons. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in recent correspondence to her own little magazine, The Fore Runner, tells of the man who burned his own lumber- yard for the insurance, and tried to cover his tracks by placing suffragette literature where it would be conveniently found. Fortunately he himself was found, with a false beard on; and it is understood that he did not succeed in collecting the insurance. I do not, however, recall seeing this, or any "story" like it in the New York papers. Wrecking for Posterity The elaborate series of "bomb outrages" reported in our papers last winter was distinctly absurd. For the bombs did not explode. Certainly most of them were dummies. They were a warning, yes; but not a wholesale assault on society. New York City has, almost regularly, more actual, disastrous bomb explosions in four months among the lawless groups of its foreign population than the militant movement has known in eight years. But these do not happen to be "stories," in the newspaper sense of the term. The militants have, however, broken a lot of windows (beginning with the windows of cabinet members who refused them the right to present their grievance). They probably have burned a few buildings. They have put acid in mail-boxes. And they have doubtless done other things regarding which we are not fully informed on this side of the water - all part of a deliberate policy, every step executed with vigor and judgment, and all carried through by members of the so-called weaker sex. I have made no attempt in this paper to conceal my own admiration for the spirit and endurance of these women, and my sympathy with their cause. To attempt such concealment, in what is frankly an effort to present something of their case and their point of view to readers whose minds have been largely fed by another sort of report, would hardly be fitting. And this being the case, perhaps I may be permitted to state the personal conclusion that these women will probably not succeed in their own im- mediate plans. The pioneer seldom reaps the fruits of his labor. The extreme fighter seldom shares the peace of compromise that follows his efforts. The most likely event, if the prophecy may be ventured, is that the women of England will get their vote, but only after the government has found a way to save its face so far as the militants are concerned. It will be said then - as it is said even now - that the militants have "delayed" the cause of suffrage by their violent tactics. It will be easy to say this, for few who hear the statement will have any proper knowledge of the facts. But those who do know the facts will smile - grimly. Militancy and Woman's Status The militants have rescued the whole cause of suffrage from the back columns of comic weeklies and have placed it in big type, during eight long years, on the front page of every newspaper in the world. In every civilized and barbaric nation the new concept of woman's share and part in life has grown and spread in an absolute coincidence with the growth and persistence of the militant movement in England. They have taught men what men never knew before in all the long history of human life: that woman has courage, fortitude, and the capacity for organization. Quite incidentally, they have exposed the medieval prison system of England, during an exhaustive observation and experience of its horrors. They have demonstrated the hollowness of male chivalry, and woman's absolute need of having that odd "point of view" of hers "introduced into the government" for her own protection, and for the civilizing and humanizing of man. And, still quite incidentally, they have driven their point home through years of humiliation, suffering of the kind that woman is supposed to be least able to endure, and torture. I really do not know that one could say any finer thing of them than that. Perhaps, on some scale of judgment that I, for one, find difficult to comprehend, Mrs. Pankhurst ought to be given twenty years at hard labor. Perhaps she ought to be kicked (as if she had not been!). Perhaps she is a faker. Perhaps she is a bluffer. Perhaps the government ought to take her out and shoot her in order to restore order. But I, for one, think not. [PHOTO] MRS. PANHURST AT STATION [PHOTO] {SIGNED} E. Pankhurst ??? 1913 THE EVENING TRIBUNE, PROVIDENCE, R. I., ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mrs. Pankhurst Welcomed The English Militant Suffragette Greeted by Eager Supporters on Her Arrival at the Union Station April 11, 1913. THE SUFFRAGETTE. 421 MRS. PARKHURST'S DEFENCE. ------------------------- Verbatim Report of Mrs. Pankhurst's Speech at her Trial at the Old Bailey on Thursday, April 3, 1913. ------------------------- My lord, gentlemen of the jury, when you were empanelled it came into my mind that I might in justice object to each of you as you took your place, because in this country it is an accepted axiom that every Englishman is tried by his peers if he is accused of breaches of the law. No woman is tried by her peers. You are of one sex, I am of another; but I decided not to challenge you -- not because I would for a moment expect that my objection would be upheld, but because, after all, these trials afford us, at a very big price, an opportunity of trying to get into the minds of the men who try us -- who are human as we are -- something of what women feel about their condition, about the laws to which they have to submit, although they have had no part in making these laws, and what they feel about the administration of these laws if unhappily they are brought in conflict with the law. The Conduct of the Prosecution My lord, I propose to say a few words about the prosecution, and the way in which it has been conducted. I shall not take very much of the time of the Court in dealing with it, but I feel I must say, first of all, a little about the speech of counsel for the prosecution. mr. Bodkin said, and quite rightly, that I stand here accused of a serious charge, a serious crime, and that the whole situation is very serious. I entirely agree with him. I could have wished that in his speech he had relied upon the actual facts to be proved, upon my speeches and the general seriousness of this situation, unprecedented in the history of this country, where a very large number of women, women against whom no word can be said as to their moral character nor their ordinary conduct in life, come into conflict with the law and [?] to serve long the dignity of the situation, to bring suggestions of this kind into so serious a matter. Before I leave this subject, I would like to say that in ending his speech counsel suggested to the jury that it would be their duty to end this impossible state of things by finding me guilty, and by making it possible for his lordship to decide what punishment should be inflicted. I feel he held out to you a false hope if he led you to believe, gentlemen, that your verdict could possibly end this serious situation. Now I want to explain to you, my lord, why I detained the Court by cross-examining the witness for the police who had made reports of my speeches. it was not that I wished in any way to question the substantial accuracy of their reports as to the line I took in my speeches. Perhaps you may not understand my motive, but it was this. It doesn't matter very much in my case whether I prove that verbal inaccuracies occured in these reports, but it may have a very serious import in other cases. You may have to try a case where the actual expressions used mean that someone's liberty, someone's future, might depend upon an absolutely accurate report. That is not so in my case, but I do venture to say it is a very serious thing that gentlemen against whom I have nothing whatever to say as individuals, or against their desire to be accurate, should be employed by the authorities of this country to deal with very delicate reports -- reports that might involve every serious consequences to those persons accused, when obviously by their training they are not competent to make absolutely accurate reports of what people say. One of the witnesses under my cross-examination showed that his vocabulary, his [?] meaning of words was entirely different to [?] by than all else in life, and yet we find that when men made laws to deal with offences against children who are being trained to feel like that, the maximum penalty is two years' imprisonment. The Law of Divorce. Then -- I don't want, gentlemen, to weary you with reciting all these laws which are so intolerable to women, but I do want to refer quite briefly to a law which every mother in the country who has thought seriously upon this matter and who realises what law is, feels ought to be altered. I am a mother of children myself, and I dont want you to imagine that there are not many women like me, many, many women who have been fortunate. i have been fortunate in my marriage; I have been fortunate because my husband never invoked the power of the law against me or attempted to interfere with me in my relationship with my children, but it is possible under the law that women have to submit to, made by men, for a mother to be deeply wounded in her tenderest feelings towards her children, because married mothers by the law of this country are not constituted equal legal guardians of their children with the fathers. Women for many years, my lord, have been trying to get equal power of guardianship with the fathers over the children, and we know that the vote is needed to get that equal legal power. [?] there is the law upon which the Royal Commision has been sitting for some time past, the law of divorce. The law of divorce in this country is the most scandalous in Europe as it affects women. Its inequality is intolerable to women. Talking about revolution and rebellion! Why, I tell you gentleman, that that law in itself, once women are convinced that revolution is necessary to later it, is sufficient[?] THE EVENING TRIBUNE, PROVIDENCE R. I., SAT Mrs. Pankhurst Welcomed The English Militant Suffragette Greeted by Eager Supporters on Her Arrival at the Union Station. 422 THE SUFFRAGETTE. April 11, 1913 . dock to-day, what experience has brought me to make the speeches that they have heard, and I ask you, my lord, to trust me not to use names. I don't want to blacken any human being's character, but I do ask you to allow me to try to put into the minds of these gentlemen, to make them feel my point of view, and the point of view of all these other women. The Judge: I have told you the proper limits within which you can exercise your rights, and within those limits you are at liberty to address the jury at any length you think fit. You say something about mitigation of sentence. At the present moment the sole question before the jury is—are you, or are you not guilty of this offence? Any observations relevant to that question by all means address to them, and I should be the last to shorten or stop your address. Mrs. Pankhurst: Then, my Lord, do you decide that I am not to offer any criticisms whatever on the administration of the laws as the affect women? The Judge: Your criticisms of persons, which I gather is what you desire to make, I do stop. It has nothing on earth to do with the question we are concerned with. The jury have to give their verdict on the evidence, and anything you like to say upon the evidence you are at liberty to say and I desire you should say. Mrs. Pankhurst: Well, my lord, at an earlier stage of the proceedings I wished to have certain passages from my speeches read, and I agreed to their omission because I thought that when I addressed your lordship and the gentleman of the jury, I might be allowed to refer in my speech --- The Judge: If there are passages in your speeches that have not been taken down and that are relevant to the question, I should not mind your reading them, but they must be relevant to the question whether you are or are not guilty of the charge made against you. If you refer to any passages in your speeches which deprecated this sort of [crim??] which you wish to give as evidence, you can do [?] Mrs. Pankhurst: Well, my lord, is it not motive allowed to come into this question at all? The Judge: The motive you have already told the jury, and have said that you are not wicked. As a matter of fact, you are not charged with being "wickedly" guilty of this offence. It is immaterial [what ?] your motive was for committing the crime. It [?mmitted] [?edly"] is going to how is it that members of His Majesty's Government are not in the dock by my side, for they are equally guilty? Mr. Hobhouse, a member of the government, said that women could not have the vote until they had done the things that men did in their agitation to get the vote. There are other people also who ought to be here with me, and they are the leaders of His Majesty's Opposition. Even within the last few days speeches have been made about Ulster, boasting that the men of Ulster are drilling in clubs and preparing for civil war. Threats are being made that Ireland is to be drowned in blood if the Home Rule Bill is forced upon unwilling people in Ulster. And yet these people, who are being invited in that way, referred to in that way, are not in the position I am in. They are voters. They have the constitutional means of getting redress for their grievances; but women, it is our place, as counsel said, to behave like ordinary citizens. When I interjected in the course of counsel's speech, a reference to the women who have died in this agitation, counsel retorted that they should behave themselves as ordinary citizens. We are not ordinary citizens, gentlemen. If we were ordinary citizens, armed with the power that ordinary citizens possess, that men have, we should get redress for our grievances by constitutional means, but even deprived of those constitutional means as we are, we do not break the law like ordinary citizens who are men. In one of my speeches I pointed out that in London there is provision for five thousand men law-breakers and only provisions for seven hundred women law-breakers. Well, gentlemen, I ask you, what are women to do? I have been told that I may not refer to the provocation we have received in the administration of the law, that I may not tell you of a judge of Assize who was found dead in a brothel. The Judge: I think you have committed and been guilty of a most shameful want of decorum in making that observation. I stopped you before. You have done the very thing that I told you a few minutes ago that you ought not to do. Mrs. Pankhurst: It is true, my lord. The Judge (angrily): You have not loyally abided by the observation I made to you and by the limits I laid down within which you should keep. You are doing yourself no good, allow me to tell you. Why Women are Militant. Mrs. Pankhurst (proceeding): Gentlemen of the jury, I want [you ?] [to ?} understand how women felt who went before [?] [?] on Divorce. A gentleman occupying you as representing others in the same position—if you are prepared to go on doing that kind of thing indefinitely, because that is what is going to happen. There is absolutely no doubt about it. I think you have seen enough even in this present case to convince you that we are not women who are notoriety hunters. We could get that, heaven knows, much more cheaply if we sought it. We are women, rightly or wrongly, convinced that this is the only way in which we can win power to alter what for us are intolerable conditions, absolutely intolerable conditions. A London clergyman only the other day said that 60 per cent, of the married women in his parrish were breadwinners, supporting their husbands as well as their children. When you think of the wages women earn, when you think of what this means to the future of the children of this country. I ask you to take this question very, very seriously. Only this morning I have had information brought to me which could be supported by sworn affidavits, that there is in this country, in this very city of London of ours, a regulated traffic, not only in women of full age, but in little children; that they are being purchased, that they are being entrapped, and that they are being trained to minister to the vicious pleasures of persons who ought to know better in their positions of life. Well, these are the things that have made us women determined to go on, determined to face everything, determined to see this thing out to the end, let it cost us what it may. And if you convict me, gentlemen, if you find me guilty. I tell you quite honestly and quite frankly, that whether the sentence is a long sentence, whether the sentence is a short sentence, I shall not submit to it. I shall, the moment I leave this Court, if I am sent to prison, whether to penal servitude or to the lighter form of imprisonment - because I am not sufficiently versed in the law to know what his lordship may decide; but whatever my sentence is, from the moment I leave this Court I shall quite deliberately refuse to eat food - I shall join the women who are already in Holloway on the hunger strike. I shall come out of prison, dead or alive, at the earliest possible moment; and once out again, as soon as I am physically fit I shall enter into this fight again. Life is very dear to all of us. I am not seeking, as was said by the Home Secretary, to commit suicide. I do not want to commit suicide. I want to see the women of this country enfranchised, and I want to live until that is done. Those are the feelings by which we are animated. We offer ourselves sacrifices, just as your forefathers did in the past (?), and I would ask you all to Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.