Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/229

 men go abroad for a living, for adventure, for glory or for plunder, what becomes of their regard for the child? They beget everywhere, children, surely the most deserted on earth, who have neither father nor country, and they leave the problem of half-breeds as a most bitter inheritance for their children's children. Letourneau says that legal monogamy has for its object the regulation of succession and the division of property; so Hagar and Ishmael in all times and nations have been repudiated.

Now, at last, there are signs that the light is breaking. Knowledge is showing men that neither their own happiness nor the welfare of the child can ever be served by the subjection, the crippling or the thwarting of women. And intelligent men are coming over in their thousands. Even a very rough crowd in the Midlands, that had been stoning the women's suffrage, pilgrims, because the}^ were supposed to be militants, cried out to them as they went home, after a meeting, "We are all for it!" meaning they were all for the enfranchisement of women, although they felt so shocked at the violence of the militants that they felt impelled themselves to resort to worse violence.

Men have said to us over and over again, "You are quite right. You ought to get it, and you will get it. Go on fighting. It is a woman's question, and you women must solve it for yourselves." It is strange to women that such men have not seen the baseness of this attitude. It is