Page:Lily Gair Wilkinson - Revolutionary Socialism and the Woman's Movement.djvu/21

 18 qualifications? The average wage of working women does not exceed 7/6d. per week; what proportion of these wage-workers will be able to pay £10 for an unfurnished room, or to prove occupancy independent of any resident landlord? Under the law as it is to-day a great many male workers are unable to use the franchise; unmarried working men are very rarely able to live under the conditions necessary for voting. If this is the case in regard to men, how will unmarried women of the working class obtain the vote with their still more wretched wages? The law has already decided that married women are not women at all, and unless they are specially constituted into legal personality, the law will, in all probability, interpret the Bill in such a sense that married women, as legal nonentities, will be unable to vote. In any case, working class married women are not likely to be able to show separate property qualifications which it is hard enough for the husband alone to fulfil.

An attempt has been made by members of the Independent Labour Party to prove that a limited Bill would enfranchise working women. A record was taken in regard to the municipal vote in "50 towns or parts orof [sic] towns," and the result claimed to show that 82.45 per cent. of the women voting are working women. But this record being taken by the I.L.P. branches in "towns or parts of towns," and these branches having their connection in working class districts, the conjuring trick of this marvellous 82.45 per cent. is revealed. The true marvel would have been had the figures turned out otherwise. We don't look for capitalist majorities in working class "parts of towns," which capitalists are, as a rule, at every pains to avoid as residential quarters. Again, the term "working woman" is so loosely and vaguely defined in the directions given to the branches as further to deprive the record of any real value. It would, indeed, hardly be worth mentioning, but that this 82.45 per cent: has been much used by the Suffragists in their propaganda in order to gain working class support.

Without very full statistics (which we do not at present possess), it is impossible to state what proportion of working women would be enfranchised by the limited measure. But it is certain that the proportion would in itself be insignificant, and, as compared to the proportion of enfranchised propertied women, it would amount to a relative decrease of the working class vote. The present Suffragist agitation is, in fact, a fraud upon the working women.

While the workers must not be side-tracked by this Suffragist