Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - From Fireside to Factory (c. 1916).djvu/65

 of a coming age, as the intelligent, ambitious, middle class mill girl of the early nineteenth century was a forerunner of present-day womanhood. She has assimilated the new ideas that the pioneers of a century ago just barely conceived. She has fully adapted herself to woman's new environment, and stands prepared to take a leading part in coming struggles for justice and freedom, in behalf of her sex, as well as in behalf of her class. For the modern, enlightened working woman is representative of the two greatest movements of modern times, the labor movement and the woman movement. As a woman, she demands social and political equality. As a worker, she demands economic justice. While her share in the labor movement has steadily increased, from the first, ephemeral flare-ups of the early days to the thoroughly organized methods and actions of the present time, she has become a factor of increasing importance in the woman movement also. Until within recent years the woman movement was almost exclusively conducted by women of the middle class, but now it is fast gaining adherents among the workers, because the workers are beginning to understand that the ballot is as important a means of self-protection as the trade union, and that while they are learning to use the one they must strive to win the other. Anti-suffragists have abandoned the argument that working women do not wish the additional burden of the vote, and suffragists have learned to dwell far more upon the needs of working women than upon the grievances of taxpayers. Practically all advocates of woman suffrage are agreed that the working woman is in even greater need of the ballot than the woman of leisure, and that the introduction of woman suffrage is an important step in improving the condition of the working class. Most promising of all—the workingmen also have come to recognize that industrial organization and political action are as important to their female fellow workers as to themselves. While the women in industry have undergone a transformation in their relation to society, the men in industry have undergone an equally great transformation in their relation to the women.