erests of men. Some laws--many laws--affect them more gravely and
intimately; and I do not believe you can trust the welfare of a class
or a sex entirely to another class or sex. It is not that their
interests are not identical, but that their point of view is different.
Take the housing problem. A working man leaves home in the morning
within half an hour after he wakes. He is not there all day. He turns
up in the evening and does not always remain there. If the house is a
poor, uncomfortable, dismal one, he very often seeks consolation in the
glare and warmth of the nearest public-house, but he takes very good
care that the wife shall not do as he does. She has got to stay at home
all day, however wretched her surroundings. Who can say that her
experience, her point of view, is not much better worth consulting than
her husband's on the housing problem? Up to the present the only and
the whole share of women in the housing question has been suffering.
Slums are often the punishment of the man. They are almost always the
martyrdom of the woman. Give women the vote, give them an effective
part in the framing and administration of the laws which touch not
merely their own lives but the lives of their children, and they will
soon, I believe, cleanse the land of these foul dens.

All sorts of women's interests were affected by the National Insurance
Act, and all sorts of questions sprang up in connection with it on
which women alone could speak with real authority. But, being voteless,
there was no way in which their views could be authoritatively set
forth. Four million women workers and seven million married women have
come under the operation of the Act, yet not one of them was given the
opportunity of making their opinions known and felt through a
representative in the House of Commons. It was the experience of every
friendly society official I consulted that had it not been for the
women and their splendid self-sacrifice, the subscriptions of the men
would have lapsed long ago. Yet these women who had thus kept the
societies going were not considered worth consulting as to their status
under the Act. The House of Commons itself insisted on there being at
least one woman Commissioner. But if a woman is fit to be a
Commissioner--a very heavy and difficult position involving enormous
responsibilities and demanding great skill and judgment and
experience--how can she be said to be unfit to have a vote?

What is the meanin