Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/216

 Parliamentary Chambers are filled with women politicians. It is assumed in the most inconsequential manner and without any relation to the possibilities of the case, that women are only waiting for the opportunity, to leap into all these exceptional offices and drive men out of them. Paris has a number of women cabdrivers; San Francisco has women jurors; Finland has women members of Parliament; Minneapolis has a woman policeman, doing excellent work in the dance-halls of the city; but there is no evidence to show that there is more than a handful of women in the whole wide world occupying positions and doing work which the common sense of women would say was best done in the main by men.

The feminist would throw open the work to women, and afterwards would rely on the common sense of her sex, a quality which may safely be trusted if one may judge from the past, to save women from entering those walks of life which, for natural reasons, they cannot fill with credit to themselves and profit to the general community. Such occupations as involve the use, on occasion, of enormous physical strength, the common sense of women would save them from the folly and impropriety of entering. Though women have been soldiers and sailors, it is safe to assume that these two spheres at