Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/201

 actions; and, besides, men are really rather fond of the silly things. This is the style of the commoner leader-writer in the anti-suffrage newspapers.

We may grant at once that the women's movement would not be where it is but for its leaders. This is no less true of the women's than of all other movements. A movement does not really get going until leaders have arisen from the ranks; the absurd mistake is to suppose that a movement can be kept going for any prolonged time by the leaders only, without support from the ranks. For many years, the women found it exceedingly difficult to raise up leaders from their own ranks, and a very considerable lead was, as a matter of fact, given by men. But until women had arisen who could carry on the leadership, progress was slow, partial and almost entirely academic. If John Stuart Mill's searching analysis of women's position had not made women think for themselves; if his disgust and shame had raised no answering disgust and shame in women, they would have proved themselves fit for the position they were in, and would never have begun to stir out of it. And about that time there were other men too, ready to help, William Lloyd Garrison and Walt Whitman and Mazzini and Stansfeld and Henry Sidgwick, and all the other people who did the pioneer work of helping the women to get education and training, and of opening up careers to them. Then, although the active reformers among