Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/215

 limited, their hours and conditions of labour should be regulated by Parliament, and their wages should not be the same as those of men for the same work. Others hold the contrary view on each of these points. Most of them are agreed that, whatever restrictions are established, and whatever regulations are enforced, women themselves should be partners to them, and should not be governed in these matters of intimate concern to themselves without their knowledge and consent.

The out-and-out feminist has very definite views on the subject of women's labour. She is in favour of throwing open to women all professions and occupations which are open to men. She is opposed to all legal restrictions and regulations of women's work which do not govern the work of their male associates, and she is emphatically in favour of equal pay for equal work, a formula which may mean something or nothing, as the case may be.

The admission of women to every profession, business, and trade is an idea very repugnant to a great many people. The untrained and half-trained human mind, with its extraordinary facility for leaping to the extremes of imagination, pictures a country defended by women soldiers, whose ships are manned by women sailors, whose streets are patrolled by women policemen, whose Benches are filled with women magistrates, and whose