Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/848

 832 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE satisfaction every political right which has been accorded by their Government; they even accept public office. They take all as their birthright; and yet, endowed with this power of education, of prop- erty, of organization, of free speech, of partial political rights, they turn upon the last logical effort in the movement which has given them so much and with supreme self-satisfaction say: "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther." It takes no logic to perceive the inconsistency of such a position. . . . The changed position of women in the world of labor was sketched; the old divisions were obliterated; a great army of women were now competing with men in the open market and there were found not only women but little children. Every- where was cruel injustice to women, barred out from the higher places, working for half the pay of men in others, and discrim- inated against even by the labor unions. 'They are utterly at the mercy of selfish employers, of hard economic conditions and unfair legislation," she said. 'The only logical conclusion is to give votes to working women that they may defend their own wages, hours and conditions. We have worked to gain the suffrage because the principle is just. We must work for it now because this great army of wage-earning women are crying to us for help, immediate help. . . . You and I must know no sleep or rest or hesitation so long as a single civilized land has failed to recognize equal rights for men and women, in the work- shop and the factory, at the ballot box and in the Parliament, in the home and in the church." Here as at all meetings of the Alliance one of the most valu- able features was the reports from the various countries, reaching almost from "the Arctic Circle to the equator," of the progress in the movement for suffrage, juster laws for women, better industrial conditions. Printed in fifty-seven pages of the Min- utes they formed a storehouse of information nowhere else to be found. As the struggle of the "militants" in Great Britain was attracting world-wide attention to the exclusion of the many years of persistent work by the original association in educating not only women themselves but also public opinion to see the necessity for woman suffrage, the report of its president, Mrs. Fawcett, had a special interest :