Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/17

 grown grey in the cause of justice for her sex. For over forty years the suffrage societies have pleaded for the elementary rights of citizenship before parliaments more amenable to voting pressure than to the claims of justice or chivalry. They have pleaded in vain; but the patience of the older suffragists now shows signs of exhaustion, and the General Election of 1906 would have been a memorable one in the history of the movement, even without the new departures of the Women's Social and Political Union. Never before were candidates so persistently "heckled"; never before were the views and pledges of every elected man so clearly recorded. The fact that 420 members of the present Parliament are definitely pledged to Women's Suffrage is largely due to the efforts of the older societies. In the congested state of public business the election promises of private members matter little, if unsupported by a vigorous agitation outside; but, in view of the present position of the suffrage movement among women generally, this theoretically favourable attitude of Parliament is a fact of great importance. The efforts of the suffragists have secured a large majority in the House, and if this Parliament dies without conferring the franchise on women, the blame must rest entirely with the Cabinet. This is a satisfactory result of the work of the older suffrage societies, but it is due to the vast increase of vigour displayed by them for some time before the elections. In spite of the many acute issues then claiming the attention of the public, the education, fiscal, and Chinese labour