Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



197 



school buildings, the hours of study, the holidays, etc., 

 and they have even gone so far as to require that 

 teachers shall not only be competent, bi.t that their 

 private life shall not give occasion for criticism. 

 Questions relating to public health, cleanliness of cities, 

 erection of drinking fountains, pure food, and many 

 more important matters apt to be considered mere 

 details by men, are in women's eyes of supreme 

 importance. 



TESTIMONY OF JfDOE LIXDSEV. 



George Creel and Judge l.indscy have testified to 

 the fact that the complete citizenship of women has 

 raised the intelligence, the character, and the mutual 

 esteem of the two sexes. The possession of the vole 

 has made women take an interest in political and 

 general questions, and this has naturally . stimulated 

 the interest of the men. The interest taken by women 

 in public affairs has indeed forced men to greater 

 activity, and there is no evidence to show that the 

 widening of the domestic horizon has had any evil 

 results. The two Chambers of the Federal Parliament 

 of Australia in 19 10 declared that the women's vote 

 after si.\teen years' operation in different parts of the 

 country, and nine in the Australian Federation, had 

 fully justified the expectations of its partisans and 

 deceived the fears and the black prophecies of its 

 enemies. Its effects had been (i) the gradual education 

 of women to understand their responsibility for the 

 welfare of the community and (2) the urgency of 

 domestic social legislation. 



WHY WOMEN NEED THE VOTE. 



Wherever the experiment has been made a large 

 percentage of women have used the vote, and the 

 percentage of men voting has been considerably 

 increased. The women of Colorado have made over 

 twenty laws in less than twenty years. It took tliem 

 only one year to win the woman's right to be equal 

 guardian with the father of their <hi!dren, while in 

 .Massachusetts, where men legislate on behalf of 

 women, it required fifty-four years to attain the same 

 result. Every objection against the vote disappears 

 as soon as the vote is adopted. So true is this that 

 tlie .Anti-Suffrage Leagues of the five .\ustralian States 

 where women vote arc moribund, and in the .\ustralian 

 Parliament there is not now a single anti-suffrage 

 m<-ml)er. The implacable enemy of the woman 

 suffragist is the liquor-seller. 



Without the vote, concludes the writer, one may 

 agitate in vain. What is needed is the material and 

 moral cleansing ol the streets, homes lor working 

 people, higher wages and better conditions ot work, 

 and, above all, the iTosingof drinkshops. The vote is 

 the only imans by wlii( h one ran ),'el these retornis. 



J< 1 , 1 J R 1 ..S.S 1 Mi w o .Mi: .\ '.S 

 GRIKVANCLS. 



1'iiK White Siave Trakhc Miir. 

 In the .\ugust issue of the Engltshwoinan Mr. \\ . .\. 

 Coote, secretary of the National Vigilance .Association, 



has a timely article on the White Slave Traffic Bill now 

 before Parliament. 



MUTll..\TION IN P.^RLIAMENT. 



Clause 1. of the V>'\\\, which was intended to give a 

 constable power to take into custody without a warrant 

 any person whom he had good cause to suspect 01 

 having committed, or being about to commit, any 

 offence against Section II. of the Criminal Law Amend- 

 ment Act of 1885, and so check a large percentage o^f 

 the traflic from England to other countries, it was fair- 

 to assume, thought .Mr. Coote, would be carried without 

 discussion. But this was not the case. Around this 

 clause raged a fierce controversy in Comrhittce, and llic 

 opponents of the Bill, in the supposed interests of the 

 " liberty of the subject,'' succeeded in amending it so 

 as to make it practically useless. Yet a man suspected 

 by an ordinary constable of " loitering about a house 

 with intent" can be arrested on the spot without a 

 warrant. Equally, an unfortunate woman soliciting 

 in the streets can be taken into custody without a 

 warrant. The clause now reads that a constable " not- 

 below the rank oj a sergeant and one detailed jor this 

 special duty may take into custody," etc. Also the 

 words " being about to commit " were altered into 

 " attempting to commit." 



Mr. Coote hopes every reader interested in this 

 question will unite in demanding the restoration of the 

 original clause, which contains the whole crux of the 

 matter. The Archbishop of Canterbury thinks it ought 

 to humiliate us into the dust with shame that the facts 

 of the trafl^ic could go on for a single week without an 

 out( ry from one end of the kingdom to the other. Mr. 

 Coote forgets to add that the Bill has been shorn of its 

 proper name, and that it is to be known as the Criminal 

 Law Amendment ,\ct. No. II.— a title which means 

 little or nothing to the majority of people. 



TflE FRANCPIISE QIJESTION. ^ 



.Mr. W. H. Dickinson, .M.P., writing in the Con- 

 tew fxiraiy Review for August, would meet the difficulty . 

 raised by the Franchise Bill either by raising the 

 qualifying age for a woman's vote to twentv-fivc or to 

 thirty, or, preferably, in this way :— 



We may wilh pcrfecl fairness to the female sex compel ihem 

 to pass tlirouyh ilic " ocui|Mlion " stage as men h,-»vc .lone 

 I.efore rcceivinf; llie full privileges of alull female suffru'c' 

 .\n(l, afler all, il is a fair arj;iimeiit ihat tlie mollier, .is i hi-uj. 

 of the family, ought lo lake precedence of her (laughters 111,1. 

 her ilomestic servants in entering into iheir new lieritacc oi 

 political power. ^' 



I estimate that if we were to enfranchise wonicn at the age of 

 t»ent)-one hy this niutho.1 we should have on the register in 

 hngland an.l Wales something under six millions, whilsl (he 

 numher in .Scotland ami Ireland would he rather over half-a- 

 million in each country. If, on the other han<l, the age were 

 fixed at twenty-live, the luiini.er In lingland an.l Wales would 

 he about five million, wilh proportionately reduced numbers in 

 Scotland and Ireland. 



About one-half of tlie women in the country would 

 Ik- by this arrangement enfranchised. 



