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stowed on their own more central work. While domestic life absolutely requires the immense amount of energy now bestowed upon it, which yet falls far short of the demand; while children are dying at so fearful a rate, or growing up stunted and degenerate because the full discharge of maternal duties is impossible where women are the breadwinners; while able-bodied men are not ashamed to be supported by their wives: while these things are so it does appear to me to be madness to encourage the ignorant cry for votes, though they could cure the miseries brought upon women and children, and through them on the whole nation, by poverty and ambition, by want of thought, and want of dutifulness. The unnatural state of things, by which so many women are driven to compete, on very unequal terms, with men for a bare livelihood, and are thereby debarred from serving their country in family life, is surely a state to be corrected at any cost; not to be assumed as the permanent basis of our electoral system. Let that system, however, be what it may-it matters little, so long as Women are true to their highest duties.2

Caroline E. Stephen.

II.

Review,

Miss Stephen, in her contribution to discussion of the above subject in the February number of this dwells upon "the impossibility of detaching [the question of female suffrage] from the much larger and deeper problem of the right general position of women, and the feminine and human ideals to which that position should correspond and contribute."

The Editor kindly allows me to introduce here a note which I regret to have omitted from my article in the February number (p. 231).

In our Quaker Parliament (as we may call the yearly meeting of the Society of Friends), there has been for more than 100 years a sepa

These words strike the key-note of the opposition engendered in the minds of (I believe) large numbers of the most thoughtful women in this country, by the proposal to introduce and establish their sex in the political arena. There are, of course, many side issues; but the real ground on which we of the Opposition join battle is the fundamental one that the proposal involves a futile contradiction of the "nature of things," an ignoring of unchangeable facts and relations of facts in human life, which is bound to lead to disaster. To many all this seems mere profitless verbiage. Of course (say they) the differences between the sexes are patent in carrying on the business of life. You need not enlarge upon them. We see them; but we hold that they do not affect the claim of women to a share in determining the laws by which they as well as men are governed, and in the management of affairs-in a word, the policy-of the country which is their country as much as men's.

It is certainly a plausible-many hold it to be an irrefragably just-contention. But let us look a little closer into the matter. Claims are of various origin. There is the claim of weakness upon pity, generosity, honor, good statecraft; but it is not this kind that the advocates of "women's rights," and of women's suffrage among those rights, principally urge. The claim to act, on the other hand, rests upon ability. Can women do these things which they claim to do? Are they, indeed, competent, and is it, therefore, desirable in the interest of the whole community that they should be admitted, to exercise all or most of the functions of the male citizen?

rate Women's Meeting; which, though without legislative power, exercises a very marked influence on the action of the Society, through the opportunity it provides for the voice of Women Friends to be heard on all its affairs, and for their views to be placed on record. 3 The Living Age," March 9.

Here occurs some divergence. People answer with all manner of shades of meaning-distinguons. Every one, indeed, shrinks from the "all"; every one rules out certain functions, certain vocations, for which women are by nature too obviously unfitted for the most ardent champion of female "rights" to claim female fulfilment of them. But after the unanimous ruling out of these, there is much variety of category in estimating the claims and functions of women apart from the bearing and bringing-up of children. Some people are prominently for the political female ratepayer and her vote for Parliament. Do let in this little tiny concession, is their cry. It is as reasonable as it is tiny; it would not alter the existing state of things, socially or politically, a jot; but it would remedy a crying injustice to certain ratepayers. And it is as a ratepayer that one stands before the universe; and a ratepayer who is not a voter is a living "contradiction in terms"-she is "as smoke in air or foam on water." Then comes another cryor rather, a roar; The "existing state of things" as between the sexes in matter of politics is a monstrous survival of mediæval superstition and tyranny—it is effete-no, it is powerful-well it is both effete and powerful; it must be overturned and abolished. Women are the half of the race, therefore they ought to have half the voting power of the English Parliamentary electorate. Give us this, and the New Jerusalem would be as nothing to the bliss which will dawn on the women of England, and through them on the whole country. Every female worker will draw regularly men's wages, and the quartern

Miss Eva Gore-Booth's "reply" to Miss Stephen ("Nineteenth Century," March 1907, pp. 472-476), makes one ask, seriously, whether she believes, and leads poor ignorant working-women to believe, that the reason women are paid lower wages than men is that they have not the vote for Parliament and men have it. Surely the most elementary acquaintance with economics should teach her that

loaf will be double its present weight for a less price.'-Oh, but we don't stop short with the suffrage, insists a third cry. We don't shrink from-nay, we long for the sight of women judges upon the bench, pleaders (yes, in divorce cases if you will) in the courts of law, permanent officials in the Civil Service (you see they are already lettersorters and telegraph-clerks), perhaps. eventually even members of the House of Commons itself, Ministers of the Crown, ambassadresses to foreign powers, and so on. I have hardly made a caricature of the medley; and I put in a claim that significant facts are at the bottom of my banter.

For two things stand out clearly in the tumult of many counsels. First, it is, even upon the female suffrage claimants' own arguments, acknowledged an impossibility to reason strictly pari passu between men and women in the distribution of the rights and duties of life. Both sexes are undoubtedly reasoning human beings, and probably of about equal average intelligence; yet it is conceded that precisely similar functions in the commonwealth cannot, in the nature of things, be allotted to both. This admission made, the remaining point is, Where and upon what principle is distinction of functions to come in? The claimants of women's suffrage, it would seem, make a clear answer. Our principle of distinction, they reply in effect, is that of physical capacity. Women are by bodily constitution unfit for certain functions and occupations, and the normal demands of life upon their bodily energy emphasize and increase this unfitness. To claim such functions and occupations would there is no Parliamentary road to the general raising of women's wages. It is not (as she seems to think) a question of "bringing pressure through the House of Commons," for it is not, as with men, a simple issue of demanding better wages. It is a question of competition between the sexes: and that competition arises from causes which Parliament can no more control than the tides of the ocean.

be absurd; but neither the exercise of the franchise nor any other function of political activity is one of them.

Now to persons insisting upon the ability of women who already are matrons of hospitals, mistresses of schools and colleges, physicians in full practice, &c., to meet the demands made on the energy, not merely of voters at the poll, but of members of Parliament, party-leaders, ministers of the Crown, chiefs in diplomacy-to persons arguing thus, the kind of reply set forth above may seem forcible and conclusive. But it has, as I submit, one fatal flaw. It runs counter to the whole purport and teaching of modern knowledge of the laws of life, which even a humble outsider may discern. That purport and teaching is to the effect that the human being, man or woman, is by natural constitution a living unity, in which various powers and functions are bound up; that to deal with such powers and functions severally, without regard to the others, spells disaster; that, consequently, if a certain plan of life is strongly indicated in one department of this unity, the overwhelming probability is that such plan ought to rule it wholly. And it would follow that to separate in consideration one group of vital facts from others essentially bound up with them is unscientific, unphilosophical, indeed-in the strictest sense of the word-absurd. But this is precisely the position taken up by those who would isolate the obvious, absolute physical disabilities of women-e.g., to

5 As a concrete instance in support of what I have here advanced, I advert to the spectacle now presented by the leaders of the agitation for women's suffrage. I would speak with all respect for their public spirit, and in particular for their hearty desire to better the lot of the toiling "women-workers" of the country. But it is this group of leaders, their words and deeds- the disproportionate strength with which they insist upon some truths, the carelessness with which they shelve and ignore others- it is these clever LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXV. 1834

We

fight a battle or lay a line of railwayas having no bearing on the question of their fitness or unfitness for other activities also heretofore held appropriate only to men. Our contention, on the other hand, is that these obvious, absolute physical disabilities are not isolated facts, pointing to isolated exceptions to a general rule that all careers and functions in the community should be common to both sexes. hold that they point to the existence of kindred disabilities, not so obvious but not less real; that just as absolute and permanent disability bars women from (say) command of an army in the field or service in the rank and file, so it bars them from the efficient exercise of political, legislative, and judicial functions, and from those of the executive Government of the country. The disability is not equally salient in respect of all these vocations; but it is there. And we hold that all this follows on due consideration, not of one part of the natural constitution of women, but of that constitution as a whole.

What, then (it may of course be asked)-what, then, is the "plan of life" which you contend is indicated on "consideration of the natural constitution of women as a whole"?

We reply, The plan which the practice of all past ages of human progress has followed, and which the whole tendency of biological teaching at the present day endorses; in few words, the ancient distribution of functions, still obtaining amongst us, which allots the direction

and eager persons and their ways that seem to us to demonstrate most forcibly the natural, unchangeable incapacity of women for dealing with and deciding in the greater issues of life. Again, certain recent ebullitions of illtemper and indecorum are doubtless but the follies of a few among many; nevertheless they are symptomatic, they indicate a temperament; they are as straws showing the way the wind would blow in the great gale to be raised when women as a sex shall be added to our electorate.

undreamt of in the past, together with their excellent fulfilment of the new demands, are often alleged as valid arguments for the concession to them of political powers and functions. But there is not one of the responsible public posts and offices newly open to women that does not come under the category of domesticity—paradoxical though it may seem at first to say so. They are in nature home offices and functions, albeit on the extended scale made necessary by the immense volume and complexity of modern social life. Women-physicians and hospital matrons care for the sick, mistresses of schools and colleges educate children and young people, members of boards of guardians care for the poor; and these are the very functions which from of old have been held appropriate to women. They are purely administrative, and they demand the personal element, the individual care for individuals, which is the characteristic excellence of women's activity; but for these very reasons they are essentially distinct from political activities, and can furnish no argument for the concession of the latter.

(2) By far the most serious aspect of the claim advanced for women's suffrage is presented by the great meetings, the "manifestos," petitions and appeals of thousands of workingwomen, who urgently demand the franchise, both as their "right" and as the one thing of prime necessity for bettering their conditions of life. We cannot doubt that great numbers of this class are fully convinced, first that they suffer wrong and loss by lack of the franchise, and next, that its attainment is the only thing that can right them, and that it would be certain to do so. 1 am not in the least surprised that they should be thus minded, and I regard their endeavor to give effect to their conviction with the greatest sympathy and respect. I do not, I own, believe

their demand to be spontaneous; but it is genuine, it is in ready response to the promptings of the able and determined women who lead them, and who, from a very different vantage-ground, direct the campaign in which they are the obedient rank and file. Their own lot is known to be one of the hardest upon earth; they themselves know little beyond it, and it is in no wise blameworthy, but the reverse, that they should seize ardently on an enterprise which, they are taught, will infallibly lighten burthens and increase comforts, in this toilsome world, for themselves and their daughters. But it by no means follows from all this that their claim should and must be conceded; that it is wise and practical, having regard to all the considerations involved; that the volume and unanimity of a class demand should put us upon that which would be literally the most momentous revolution in its affairs that this country could undertake. If, indeed, the impossible were possible; if it could be demonstrated that the only means for any great and lasting betterment of the conditions of life among our toiling women is the concession to them of a vote for Parliament, and, further, that the concession would infallibly effect this betterment; then, indeed, we might be driven to the concession of the vote as a lesser evil than the permanence of the present state of things with working-women. But to say this is to state a platitude. There is no political machinery which can bring about the vast changes we all long for in that vast field; they must come about by changes in the habits of life, in the social conditions, the interaction of various classes throughout the country. If the much longed-for vote were attained, and working-women could dictate to Parliament (which by no means necessarily follows), the result would, according to present appearances, be much hasty and short-sighted