ereon, to induce
women to group themselves in women's trade-unions, by means of which
they will hold up trades, and when they are strong enough, hold up
society itself.

I enunciate these views with full sympathy, which can hardly be refused
when one realizes that the sweated trades are almost entirely in the
hands of women,--laundry, box-making, toys, artificial flowers, and the
like. The fact that the underpaid trades are women's trades, and that
the British Government has been compelled to institute wage-boards to
bring up women's pay from four cents an hour to the imposing figure of
six cents, and the recent white-slavery investigations in America, are
evidence enough that public opinion should hesitate before blaming any
industrial steps women may choose to take. For it should not be
forgotten that woman risks more than comfort and health, and that the
underpayment of her sex often forces her to degradation.

Conscious of the temporary inferiority of woman, an inferiority
traceable to centuries of neglect and belittling patronage, the
Feminists propose to increase woman's power by making her fitter for
power. They are well aware that the enormous majority of women receive
but an inferior education, that in their own homes, especially in the
South of England, they are not encouraged to read the newspaper (which I
believe to be a more powerful instrument of intellectual development
than the average serious book), and that any attempt on their part to
acquire more information, to attend lectures, to join debating clubs,
tends to lower their "charm value" in the eyes of men. That point of
view they are determined to alter in the male. They propose to kill the
prejudice by the homoeopathic method: that is to say, to educate woman
more because man thinks she is already too educated. Briefly, to kill
poison by more poison. For this purpose they intend to throw open
education of all grades to women as well as to men, to remove such
differences as exist in England, where a woman cannot obtain an Oxford
or Cambridge degree. They propose to raise the school age of both sexes,
and to not less than sixteen. The object of this, so far as women are
concerned, is to prevent the exploitation of little girls of fourteen,
notably as domestic servants.

Some Feminists favor co-education, on the plea that it enables the sexes
to understand each other, and these build principally on the success of
American schools. A more violent sec