Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/198

 to the requirements of the law in such matters as air-space and sanitary arrangements. The thinking woman is wise to hesitate before condemning herself and her children to the doubtful happiness provided by such surroundings and such homes. There are over a million more women than men in the kingdom, and this means that the natural instinct towards home-making, of which the anti-suffragist prates so much, must starve, and in its starving, stunt mind and spirit, unless it is permitted to project itself into the sphere of corporate home-making which local and national politics now offer.

Every Act of Parliament involves the interests of women, either directly or indirectly; but the legislation of the last few years has interfered in a very notable manner with the recognised sphere of women—home and children. To work backwards: It cannot be maintained by any sensible person that the new Criminal Law Amendment Act is not supremely a measure in which women are interested. It will most certainly be maintained that this Act has been placed upon the Statute-book without the women's vote, but it must be remembered that practically the same measure was rejected scores of times before the public opinion created by the suffrage agitation made further rejection dangerous to legislators. The Insurance Act