Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/66

 weapon makes society very sensitive to the grievances and claims of the band of workers who are so well equipped. There are some people nowadays who still see the world in water-tight compartments. They will tell you that industrial results are due to economic causes, political results to political causes, social results to social causes. But we have seen a war a great political event that was undoubtedly the result of economic causes; we have watched every Factory Act that passes the House of Commons become more and more fraught with consequences to the industrial lives of women; we have seen indeed the gradual widening of the social chasm between the men who have emerged into political power and position, and their women comrades who are still washing dishes and cooking dinners. And we realise that all the arbitrary limits between the political and industrial world are only limits of the imagination. They do not, in fact, exist. Few people will deny that money is power; the discovery of this generation of English people, the discovery which is gradually working its way into the minds of the poor, is that power is money. Industry, society, politics, there is one magic key that opens the doors of prosperity in all the worlds, and that key is power. In the case of the working women, they have to break through a vicious circle of political disability working itself out in industrial weakness and social impotence. There are many causes given for the low rates earned by women, and doubtless many factors go to decide the vexed question of wages; but I