Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/28

 as men, the victims of Capitalism as well as men, and are seeking and needing the same freedom as men.

But there is an important difference between the present position of men and of women. The political power which is the key to their common economic prison is already in the hands of one sex, but is still denied to the other. That the prison door has not yet been opened is not the fault of the voteless women; but the responsibility of keeping fast within a helpless sex is with those who have the power and will not use it. Men might have voted themselves and their sisters into freedom half a century ago had they had the wisdom. Now women are clamouring for the right to do for themselves what men have so long neglected to do for them.

Nor is the tale of present inequality fully told when it is shown that women have no voice in making the laws which govern themselves and their children.

In the industrial world, women are generally paid much less for work similar in kind, quality, and amount to that done by men, and sometimes more in amount than that done by men in the corresponding