Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/136

 woman can find plenty of suitable work to her hands on the Council as the elected representative of a town ward.

It is a thousand pities that the number of eligible women in England is so restricted. Capable married women are the very people to sit upon the Health, Education, Midwives, Lunacy, and Housing Committees of Town Councils; but because of their marriage these women are barred, except in London. This must be borne in mind when the critic of woman suffrage complains that so few women have come forward for public service in this way. Few women are qualified, and, to a very large extent, they belong to the class of wage earners who have no leisure for public service of this sort; and are elderly women whose days of activity are over; widows, and spinsters who have lived in their fathers' houses without responsibilities of a public sort until well advanced in years, and who come to their new duties as voters and their new powers as potential representatives with extreme reluctance and vague misgiving.

Parish Councils in England and Wales are usually looked upon as quite insignificant public bodies, engaged chiefly in taking care of the village pump. It is true that the Parish Coimcil area is small, and that the provision of a water-supply comes within the scope of its duties; but there are other duties of a very