Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/187

 look at the world he is actually living in, he would see that some of the needs of the mothers in the administration of the Insurance Act were more effectively put and urged by unmarried women than by married men. I knew a woman who had a very warm discussion with a man on sex questions, what time his wife sat silent by. The man constantly declaimed about " what women wanted, what women thought," and still the wife never spoke. Later, when the two women were alone, the one expressed a hope that she had not spoken too strongly and offended the wife, who replied, "I can't tell you how glad I am that you said what you did. You see, I can't, because I'm his wife."

Mr. Heape proceeds in this elegant style: "Those of us who are strongly in favour of gaining assistance from women who are qualified to give it may well be drastically opposed to the claims made by those who are responsible for the present agitation; for we are thus confronted with the probability that extended power given to women will result in the waste products of our Female population gaining power to order the habits and regulate the work of those women who are of real value to us as a nation" (italics mine). In the next paragraph he declares that he finds it difficult to "refer with equanimity" to the books and pamphlets of the women's movement, and he mentions one odd publication, which he appears to attribute to feminists and which, he avers, holds up man to