out the ones who
have no husbands--the girls, the widows, the abandoned? Isn't it better
to give them a trade than to force them to take a lover? Some of them
want to leave off being obliged to beg for the help of a man. Can't you
see that for a lot of women work means freedom? Can you blame them for
demanding the right to work? That's the victory they're fighting for.

DELEGATE. I'm not at all sure that that victory is a desirable one.
Indeed, I'm sure it is not. When you've succeeded in giving the woman
complete independence through hard work; when you have taken her
children from her and handed them over to a creche; when you've severed
her from her domestic duties and also from all domestic happiness and
joy, how d'you know she won't turn round and demand to have her old
slavery back again? The quietness and peace of her own home? The right
to care for her own husband and nurse her own child?

THERESE. But can't you see that it's just that that the immense majority
of women are demanding now? We want the women to stay at home just as
much as you do. But how are you going to make that possible? At present
the money spent on drink equals the total of the salaries paid to women.
So the problem is to get rid of drunkenness. But the middle classes
refuse to meet this evil straightforwardly because the votes which keep
them in power are in the pockets of the publicans; and you socialist
leaders refuse just as much as the middle classes really to tackle the
drink question because you're as keen for votes as they are. You've got
to look the situation in the face. We're on the threshold of a new era.
In every civilized country, in the towns and in the rural districts,
from the destitute and from the poor, from every home that a man has
deserted for drink or left empty because men have no longer the courage
to marry, a woman will appear, who comes out from that home and will sit
down by your side in the workshop, in the factory, at the office, in the
counting house. You don't want her as housewife; and as she refuses to
be a prostitute, she will become a woman-worker, a competitor; and
finally, because she has more energy than you have, and because _she_
is not a drunkard, she will take your places.

DELEGATE [_brutally_] Well, before another hour's gone over our heads
you'll find that she won't start that game here.

_Monsieur Feliat comes in._

FELIAT [_to the delegate_] My dear sir, a thousand pardons for
interru