If the average of agricultural laborers' wages is low at present, it must be remembered that in 1872 88. to 128. a week was the amount given by their leader, Joseph Arch, as a fair estimate of their ordinary earnings. After their enfranchisement their trade union, with the uncertainty attending all such organizations, gradually ceased to exist. The unquestioned improvement of the minimum 8s. to 15s. in the face of the industrial disaster like the collapse of the union can be traced to their improved political status. Just as so much of the amelioration of their social and industrial condition can be traced to the possession of what Joseph Arch called the "political telephone of the vote" and in the working of those political forces in which he had such faith. Indeed, nowadays there is growing to be little doubt among trade union men as to the value of votes in the industrial world, and to this low-growing conviction is due the modern development of the labor representation movement. Experience teaches, and it is noteworthy that the trade unions that fifty years ago received all suggestions of political action with cries of "No politics" are now running their own special candidates for Parliament.

(3) Mrs. Ward says that marriage and the expectation of marriage affect the industrial value of woman's work unfavorably. There are two sides of this question. In trades and professions where women are stopped working on their marriage, and married women are not employed, such regulation no doubt takes the quality of stability from their work, and tends to the employment of very young girls, which is always a misfortune from an industrial point of view. But there are very few of these trades, and married women are specially useful members of trade unions (if their husbands are earning), as in times of industrial

dispute they have something to fall back upon and this gives them independence and power. The same applies to their husbands, and many a man has been tided over times of struggle or unemployment through the help of his wife's earnings. Two incomes in a family lend security to the industrial position of its members.

(4) "There is far more competition for men's labor" is Mrs. Ward's fourth reason for women's low wages. This is rather a cryptic saying, as competition varies so much in different trades, and in cases where it is a real factor it will usually be found to be due to easily removed causes, such as either the debarring of women from technical training, or the old but fast dying tradition of women's inferiority as workers or human beings-a tradition which made it, a few years ago, a distinct and marked descent in the social scale to employ a maid instead of a footman. So we come back again to the real root of all the economic mischief, the need of the mass of women for political life and energy to widen out this industrial outlook and strengthen their earning power.

(5) "Men are stronger than women." This is a generalization elusive and hard to test, for to measure strength is indeed a difficult task. The bearing of this statement on the problem of women's low piece-work rates is hard to understand, because the strength of the worker, though it may affect the amount of his or her output, could in no way affect the value of the work per piece, provided that it is up to the standard of excellence required. If the employer's standard is not satisfied, the solution is easy; the incompetent worker, man or woman, is dismissed to make room for a more competent one. But, apart from the industrial point of view, this question of relative strength, and especially of physical strength, is a very important one, for

here we come to what I would venture with all respect to call the root error of the "Anti-Suffragists." "The mod

ern

State," says Mrs. Humphry Ward, "depends for its very existence on the physical force of men." Now you might say with equal obviousness, "the modern State depends for its very existence on the physical capacity of women." Without going so far as the Christian Scientists, who tell us that matter does not exist, surely such a material point of view is hard to maintain in face of the accumulated thought and energy and will that has built up the difference between our own imperfect civilization and the rude and brutal life-customs of a savage tribe.

Meanwhile we all know practically in our own lives that it is on our wills and our presence of mind, and not our fists, that we rely in any extremity. If it had not been so, the world might have been ruled by lions and tigers or even elephants. But the human will has conquered and rules over physical force, and the divine power of thought is the greatest power in the world. It is not even true that physical force, ruled and organized by will, controls our affairs. We do not choose our Prime Ministers and Governments because they know how to lead armies and win battles, and when our successful Generals come home from the war we may load them with honors and applause, but we do not entrust to them the destinies of the nation. The days of Napoleon and Julius Cæsar and Alexander the Great have passed and all who found their claims to rule on their superior physical force are building on the sand, and their claims must in the course of evolution crumble away into the same ruin, as the claims of the lion or the pack of wolves to terrorize the human race. We all know in our individual lives that will power is no respecter of sex. women have the same capacity for strength as

men; where they have not developed it as individuals or nations, they have been subjected through the hypnotism of fear and ignorance, and the penalties of such subjection are surely leading the way to a higher wisdom. It is wide of the mark to talk about the trained and specialized knowledge that men alone are able to get as a reason for women's low wages. With equal truth it might have been said when women were not allowed to qualify as doctors that it was impossible for them to practise because men alone were able to get trained and specialized knowledge. Monopolies in technical education are most certainly doomed, and even now this barrier is breaking down on all sides, and it will not be disputed that women are gaining trained and specialized knowledge and qualifications in many and various fields. In politics, Mrs. Ward says, "women are debarred by their mere sex from that practical political experience which is at least always open to men." And she does not see the curious working of the law of reaction or compensation by which it happens that this very debarring and shutting out of women from politics has given them a practical experience almost unknown among men. Just as, in a nation, want of success in war means concentration of national energy on questions of Army Reform, so the long political struggle against fearful odds, though it may have developed a tendency to disorder and mafficking among the less sober, has also given unique opportunities for political experience, and developed political faculties among the working and organizing part of the female population, faculties that cannot be crushed by physical force, for they are the stuff of which the political will to live is made, and as such they are a necessary part of the national life and carry in their very existence the complete assurance of their final victory.

In answer to the claim that it is inexpedient that what Mrs. Humphry Ward calls hygienic regulations should be imposed on the work of women, especially married women, without their own consent, she uses the curious argument that though the women concerned have no voice in the matter, other women who have neither worked in mills themselves nor been chosen by the workers to represent them have been consulted in the making of these laws. And here many of us would emphatically protest against the extraordinary theory that in political matters, while men must choose their own representatives, any woman can choose herself to represent all other women and no questions will be asked. The Anti-Suffrage Manifesto speaks of "representative women" being brought into closer touch with Government departments. But, as far as Government is concerned, there are no representative women. There are no women with a mandate from their fellows to represent them in political matters. Whilst women have no votes they cannot have accredited political representatives. Labor questions are involved and difficult, and when factory laws are ignorantly and theoretically drafted, without due regard to the practical interests of some section of workers, it is no comfort to those workers to know that some "distinguished" woman favored among politicians has been consulted about their affairs. This sort of so-called representation is no safeguard to anybody; if it were, men would never have felt the need for democratic institutions, and England might still be peaceably governed by irresponsible rulers who, by right of birth, consider themselves and one another fit to coerce the multitude for their good. Practically we recognize, as far as men are concerned, that the only safety for the governed lies in the fact that their governors in some way

depend on them, and are therefore sensitive not only to their needs but to their judgment. A politician must have the countenance and support of his constituents, and it is to his constituents that in the last resort he must make his appeal. Without constituents you cannot have representation. Under a fair system if a woman wanted to be representative of the aspirations of a female factory population she would have to be prepared to stand up for what they really wanted, not her theories of what they ought to want, unless of course she could convert them to her theories. But until women have votes it is impossible that they should get true and honest representation from other women, who, however wise and cultured and distinguished they may be, can only have any influence as long as their views please the men in power. One of the lesser evils attendant on the present voteless condition of women is the fact that there is no test for the working value of women politicians, no means of gauging their influence and claims to be representative of other women. The truth is, the power of the few women of the upper classes who by their position and social influence are able to keep in touch with legislation is no comfort at all to the mass of the working women, who want to be governed by people who are responsible to them, and to whom it will therefore come as a matter of course to consider their interests and consult their intelligence, and the fact that men will anxiously consult distinguished and philanthropic ladies does not touch the point at isNor does the example of American institutions. The strange thing about America is that it is often quoted to us as an ideal country where public opinion has such a high standard that barmaids would not be tolerated, and

sue.

anti-suffrage societies flourish.

wood, bedad!" For this Hobbinol of mine is an Irish imp, I fancy, related by Royal blood to the familiar that accompanied Barry Lyndon, who had, as you will remember, "the finest natural taste for lace and china of any man alive." And Hobbinol always prompts one skilfully, for he has that ineffable something called flair. If, walking down from Bloomsbury to Westminster, I get an impulse to go round by Caramel Street or Sallow Alley, it is Hobbinol who suggests it, and there will be something treasurable to be found in Caramel Street or Sallow Alley, I well know; it was Hobbinol who hoicked me, lazy, out of the Hôtel Brasseur, and sent me trapesing through the kermesse. "Asy, now!" said he, when for nine francs I had rescued the blue and white pair of patricians from their coarse surroundings and carried them off-in a fragment of the Etoile Belge to a calm old Square. Easy, indeed, in my mind I was as there, in that tree-hung Palace all dappled with shadow-leaves clear-cut and bluish, I, sitting at an outside café-table, by electric light and a lens examined my find. Josiah Wedgwood medallions indeed they were, not a doubt of it, and rare ones at that; exquisite in touch and hue, egg-shell smooth, and the rich blue shimmering through the ivorywhite. Under-cut the high reliefs had been, and polished by the lapidarythe mark was evenly impressed and legible, the oes in it were orangeshaped-in short, there were all the signs of aristocracy which real old Wedgwood jasper shows. Votive medallions they were, Muses of Poetry and Painting weeping classic tears upon the profile of a young Apollo; and when around the cranium of the young Apollo I read the name Gessner, instantly off the shelf in my own cranial garret came the old "Death of Abel" book to mind.

It is all a matter of taste, as Scar

and

amouch says when he munches the soap it is all a matter of taste, I know, but-what is it that gives a wretched book and a duffing author their tremendous vogue? What made the fame of Martin Tupper? What causes the innumerable works of Mr. and the Misses to pervade the English-speaking world, I almost think I know. There are still more than half the population of these islands who do not write for the Press, and therefore regard as exceptional those who do. "The ancient men that invented writing, and made the voice of man triumphant over Space and Time, were deservedly accounted next to gods," said Carlyle; and something of that feeling persists. If you write, no matter how badly you write, you shall get reputation from folk to whom writing is still a kind of hieroglyphics; as Lamb said, "All poems are good poems to George." "Der Tod Abels," by Salomon Gessner, was the most pervasive piece of modern print in the world about a century ago. And why? I have hunted up three English versions of it-the Sunday book it was, in Georgian and Victorian households, for two or three generations-and listen; listen and lament that such a book and such a penster should have gained such a vogue:

"The silent hours led on the blushing morn, and sprinkled with dewy tears the shadowy earth: the sun darted his early rays through the shade of the black cedars on the hills, and tinted with rosy light the fleecy clouds, that swam through the twilight Heavens, when Abel, and his beloved Thyrza, forsook their mossy couch, and repaired to a neighboring bower of jassmin and roses." Listen again: "My beloved parents!" exclaimed Abel, "I will pursue my brother to the field. I will say everything to him that fraternal love can dictate; I will embrace him, and he shall not leave my arms till he has