Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/121

 have gone out to earn and taken a proper situation," said the victim's brother. It seems a brutal speech, but is it more thoughtlessly cruel than the speech of the fashionable novel-writer who says, She should have reigned as queen in her home?"

Terrible is the fate of the poor woman who clings to-day to home. The worst paid of all workers are the woman home-workers. It is they who figure in the sweating industries exhibitions, and it is they who dare not ask for justice even in a whisper, and who toil on till wages reach starvation point. Out in the open things are not nearly so bad.

Out in the open women begin to combine, and what is more, they begin to look abroad over the great world of industrial life, and to perceive that its progress consists of ever-growing powers of combination, and that those who take part in its life cannot be long home-workers in the old sense. In short, they begin to see that all unknown to them. selves, and almost in spite of themselves, they have to become citizens.

The burdens of citizenship have been assumed by them already. A married woman is responsible for her own acts even to the point of suffering the extreme penalty of the law for certain offences. She is a producer in the industrial markets of the world, a tax and rate payer; and in one constituency at least women trades unionists pay the salary of a representative in Parliament. There is "a disability to bear arms"—but no disability to go to the help of soldiers, as the numerous corps of army nurses who have served in battle can