Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/146

 women who could not endure the misery of starving slowly, and who are selling their souls for food and clothes and shelter. I have read in the Daily News of 50,000 souls, men, women, and children in West Ham, starving, and I have seen the marches of the unemployed in Tottenham and Wood Green, in the North, and the terrible, never-to-be-forgotten march of East End unemployed to Hyde Park. I took part in the women's march, and I can assure my readers only a heart of stone could look on unmoved. Then I go to the other end of your wonderful city and see the signs of wealth in houses and furniture, luxuries abounding everywhere, children happy with their nurses, beauty, plenty, happiness. One is led to ask are we all children of one great Father, and members of one human family, and subjects of the same King, and legislated for by the same Parliament? If so, surely the weak and helpless should have the first care. I look with horror on your misnamed "workhouses," and see in them breeding dens of discontent, envy, malice, and hatred, and nurseries for idleness and selfishness. The cost of maintaining these iniquitous blots on twentieth century legislation would go a long way to providing old age pensions, and starting reproductive works for the able-bodied men and women to earn their livelihood. When men and women are old they are entitled to old age pensions, which really are the interest of the wealth their own labour has produced. With charity or relief, indoor or outdoor, recipients are paupers, and consequently forfeit all privileges of citizens; with old age pensions go respect, honour and rights