Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/260

 a moderate amount of simple pleasure. A trade or a business which cannot maintain its workers in a condition of simple decency has no right or title to an existence. Parliament might become the instrument by which the equality of women before the law could be secured—a necessary reform if the value of women in the eyes of men is to be raised. The drink traffic should be seriously dealt with by those in earnest about the social problem, for there is the most intimate connection between it and impurity; and if the price to be paid for a pure womanhood and a clean, strong manhood is the total abstinence of every individual, the price is not too big for a nation of patriots and Christian people. Citizenship should be summoned to clear out the gambling dens and brothels and all such places as contribute to the contamination of youth. It is not suggested that enfranchised women will at once accomplish what men have for so long tried and failed to accomplish; but it is quite certain that this class of question will receive closer attention and deeper scrutiny by the admission of women to political opportunity.

In the meantime the women of the country have power in their hands to do much towards the solution of the moral problem without the aid of the vote, much that the vote most wisely used is powerless to accomplish, and which it