t actively employed in
attempting to readjust the relations of the mass of labouring males to
the new conditions of life, are sometimes precisely those males who
are most bitterly opposed to woman in her attempt to readjust her
own position. Not even by the members of those professions, generally
regarded as the strongholds of obstructionism and prejudice, has a more
short-sighted opposition often been made to the attempts of woman to
enter new fields of labour, than have again and again been made by male
hand-workers, whether as isolated individuals or in their corporate
capacity as trade unions. They have, at least in some certain instances,
endeavoured to exclude women, not merely from new fields of intellectual
and social labour, but even from those ancient fields of textile
manufacture and handicraft, which have through all generations of the
past been woman's. The patent and undeniable fact, that where the male
labour movement flourishes the woman movement also flourishes, rises
not from the fact that they are identical, but that the same healthy and
virile condition in a race or society gives rise to both.

As two streams rising from one fountain-head and running a parallel
course through long reaches may yet remain wholly distinct, one finding
its way satisfactorily to the sea, while the other loses itself in sand
or becomes a stagnant marsh, so our modern male and female movements,
taking their rise from the same material conditions in modern
civilisation, and presenting endless and close analogies with one
another in their cause of development, yet remain fundamentally
distinct. By both movements the future of the race must be profoundly
modified for good or evil; both touch the race in a manner absolutely
vital; but both will have to be fought out on their own ground,
and independently: and it can be only by determined, conscious, and
persistent action on the part of woman that the solution of her own
labour problems will proceed co-extensively with that of the other.

How distinct, though similar, is the underlying motive of the two
movements, is manifested most clearly by this fact, that, while the male
labour movement takes its rise mainly among the poor and hand-labouring
classes, where the material pressure of the modern conditions of life
fall heaviest, and where the danger of physical suffering and even
extinction under that pressure is most felt; the Woman Labour Movement
has taken its rise almost as