gic to perceive the inconsistency of such a
position....

The changed position of women in the world of labor was sketched; the
old divisions were obliterated; a great army of women were now
competing with men in the open market and there were found not only
women but little children. Everywhere was cruel injustice to women,
barred out from the higher places, working for half the pay of men in
others, and discriminated against even by the labor unions. "They are
utterly at the mercy of selfish employers, of hard economic conditions
and unfair legislation," she said. "The only logical conclusion is to
give votes to working women that they may defend their own wages,
hours and conditions. We have worked to gain the suffrage because the
principle is just. We must work for it now because this great army of
wage-earning women are crying to us for help, immediate help.... You
and I must know no sleep or rest or hesitation so long as a single
civilized land has failed to recognize equal rights for men and women,
in the workshop and the factory, at the ballot box and in the
Parliament, in the home and in the church."

Here as at all meetings of the Alliance one of the most valuable
features was the reports from the various countries, reaching almost
from "the Arctic Circle to the equator," of the progress in the
movement for suffrage, juster laws for women, better industrial
conditions. Printed in fifty-seven pages of the Minutes they formed a
storehouse of information nowhere else to be found. As the struggle of
the "militants" in Great Britain was attracting world-wide attention
to the exclusion of the many years of persistent work by the original
association in educating not only women themselves but also public
opinion to see the necessity for woman suffrage, the report of its
president, Mrs. Fawcett, had a special interest:

The year which has just closed is the most strenuous and active
we have ever known since women's suffrage has been before the
country. The number of societies which combine to form the
National Union has more than doubled. The membership in several
societies has more than doubled and in others has largely
increased; in one important society it has been multiplied by
five. The number of meetings held throughout the year in
connection with the National Union alone has been unprecedented,
an average of at least four a day. The experience gained at