at the piano, Miss Renner looked up at a merry-faced girl, who began
singing to her rippling accompaniment a song of miraculous changes which
should have ensued upon woman's enfranchisement, and concluded with a
long chant, recounting some of the more notable achievements of the
voting woman, ranging all the way from joint ownership of children and
property, minimum salary laws, juvenile courts, medical inspection of
school children, State institutions built and endowed, equality in
inheritance and a host of other things, up to the adoption by her State
of the initiative and referendum.

After that, Miss Renner had her audience with her until she dropped the
last twist of paper on the table beside her. "You ask me why it took us
so many years to pass a good law regulating child labor, and why we have
failed in limiting the hours of woman's labor. As to the first, it is
true that our law was by no means equal to yours, but we had the means
to enforce it, and as a consequence we have little or no child labor.
You have a good statute, one of the best in the Union"--there was a
ripple of applause--"but in addition to this excellent law prohibiting
child labor," she went on evenly, "you have in this city alone over
twenty thousand child wage-earners.

"When we have gone to our legislatures asking for laws for the
protection of the weak, we have generally obtained them easily, when
they did not interfere with 'big business.' It took Illinois women nine
years to get a State Home for children. We passed such a law without
any effort whatever. In two-thirds of the States of the Union women are
trying to make mothers co-equal guardians of their children, and trying
in vain. That was the first law our enfranchised women wrote upon our
statute books. One only learns to understand these things by experience.
You may find it hard to see why railroads should go into a deal to
defeat an eight-hour law for women, but that statute was flagged by a
Pullman palace car towel and fell asleep at the switch, because that
company complained that it couldn't get a change of sheets unless
laundry girls could be compelled to work overtime. You don't dream when
you talk of 'big business' to what little business it will descend."

There was a sudden hush, and she flung out her hands with an impulsive
gesture, and there was a passionate earnestness in her voice that
gripped her hearers. "Let me tell you something you do not know when you
hold the