Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/49

 towards the special wants of women, and thus opening to them some few careers from which they are excluded simply by law. Whether, indeed, this, desirable as it may be, will greatly increase the resources of working women is open to doubt. Some economists will suggest that the free admission of women to every function which they can possibly fulfil might do more to depress the whole standard of wages earned by the working classes than to raise the earnings of women. One thing is certain; the current price of labour is not immediately and directly affected by a man's or a woman's possession of the Parliamentary franchise. No master raises his footman's wages because the manservant happens to be a voter; he will assuredly not raise the wages of his housemaid simply because he finds that under some Woman's Enfranchisement Act she has got her name placed on the Parliamentary register. Why in the name of common sense should a vote confer upon a woman a benefit which it has not conferred upon a man? In any case it argues recklessness, not to say unscrupulosity, to tell working women, ignorant both of