The Review of Reviews. 



August I, 1906. 



Photo-jfUtj}! } ' 



[f. H. Mills. 



Mrs. Pankhurst. 



(A proiiiiiieul mtiuher of the Woman's Social and Political 

 ■Union.) 



Newark Market Place, when standing in a cart 

 she declared war against the C. D. Acts. And the 

 more you listen to Annie Kenney, the more you 

 hear of her simjjle, fervent |ileading for justice, the 

 rrore you begin to realise that here is a new Jose- 

 phine Butler, from the lower social stratum indeed, 

 but one of the elect souls who from time to time 

 are sent into the world for the salvation of the 

 Cause, Matthew .\rnold's famous lines, which 

 twenty ye.ars ago I applied to Mrs. Butler, may 

 with equal justice be applied to Annie Kenney. The 

 times have need of her. and she has been raised up 

 one of th*_' sacred band who in the hour of sore need 

 of our fainting dispirited race appear — 



Ye. like anarels appear 



Radiant with ardour divine. 



Beacons of hope. ,ve appear! 



Lan^our i3 not in your heart. 



Weakness is not in your word. 



Weariness not on .vour brow. 



Ye alight in our van! At your voice 



Panic, despair flee away. 



Ye move through the ranks: recall 



The strasrfrlers.^ refresh the outworn. 



Praise, reinspire the hrave. 



Order, courage, return; 



Eyes rekindling, and prayers 



Follow \'our steps as ye go- 



Ye fill uiJ the gaps in our files. 



Strengthen the wavering line, 



'Stablish. continue our march. 



On to the bound of the waste. 



On to the City of God. 



Like Josephine Butler, Annie Kenney is a 

 Church-woman, .'^he was educated in a National 



School, was confirmed by the Bishop of Manches- 

 ter, and was for some years teacher in a Church 

 Sunday-school. She has been acquainted with 

 poverty from her youth up. One of twelve children 

 in a Lancashire 0[>erative's family, she was put into 

 the mills to earn money when ten years of age, and 

 she has been in- the mill ever since. Yet she is a 

 «oman of refinement and of delicacy of manner and 

 of speech. Her physique is slender, and she is in- 

 tensely nervous and high-strung. She vibrates like 

 a harpstring to every story of oi)pression. She is in 

 a const.ant state of stern protest against the injus- 

 tice \.jth which women are treated.- She took up the 

 mission to which she has dedic^ited her life as a 

 legacy from her dead mother. On her death-bed 

 that Lancashire woman addressed her daughters, ad- i 

 juring them always to fight for the weak, and to see 

 to it that they themselves refused to submit to the . 

 injustice to which she had perforce submitted all her 

 life. 



" From the time I was a little g-irl," said Miss 

 Kenney, " I was impressed with a sense of the in- 

 justice of the way in which things were arranged to 

 the disadvantage of women. My mother and my 

 father worked in the mills. \Vhen father came 

 home he spent the evening in reading, or in com- 

 pany at the club or at jaiblic meetings, eduaiting 

 himself and having a good time. But mother had 

 all the housework to do, and with twelve children 

 it was never done. Never had she an evening in 

 which to read or to cultivate her mind. It was work, 

 w crk, work : until at midnight she would still be 

 at work darning stockings. ~ It did not seem to me 

 fair, and the sense of the unfairness of it to mother 

 has never ceased to rankle. Then when we girls were 

 old enough to go to the mill, the same injustice pre- 

 vailed. Both boys and girls put their weekly wages 

 into the family purse. ^^Tlen we received back our 

 pocket-money, the boys were given much more than 

 the girls. Why was that ? Our needs were the 

 same. But the girls were stinted, and the bovs had 

 plent)-. And so it seems to me it is everywhere. 

 It is the we.aker who goes to the wall. And there is 

 no sense of justice in dealing with women." 



How like Mrs. Butler I " The very idea of jus- 

 tice." she wrote in 1883. " justice in the abstract, 

 appears to be a thing past the comprehension of 

 many persons. England has forgotten to some ex- 

 tent the sound traditions by which we are taught to 

 apply to all alike the great principles of justice and 

 of the common law. Stronger than all bodily needs, 

 deeper even than love of kindred and country and 

 of freedom itself, lies buried in the heart of man 

 the desire for justice." 



The career of .\nnie Kennev in the mill was that 

 of an active reformer, taking an active part in all 

 efforts to better the conditions of labour. She sat 

 as the solitary woman delegate on the district com- 

 mittee of her trade union and devoted the delegate 

 fee of IS. 3d. a fortnight to qualify her as a corre- 



