ng hand, and grateful to people
who've held out helping hands to you. Well, and women have been trained
for hundreds of years to see things in that private and personal way,
and to exalt the private and personal virtues. Just as they've been
trained to stick to rule of thumb methods that more or less work, rather
than to try experiments. So, on the whole, I think their getting the
vote will mean that politics will be crookeder and more reactionary than
they've been in a good many years. All the same I'm for it, because it's
a part of democracy, and I'm for democracy all the way. Not because you
get good government out of it; you don't. You get as good as you
deserve, and in the long run I think a society that has to deserve as
good a government as it gets, grows stronger and healthier than one that
gets a better government than it deserves."

"That old tory radical over there," said Jane, with a nod at Rodney,
"has been grinning away for half an hour without saying a word. I'd like
to know what you think about it."

"'Tory radical'?" questioned Rose.

"That's what Barry calls him," Jane explained. "He's so conservative
about the law that he calls Blackstone an upstart and a faker, but the
things he'd do, when it comes, down to cases--on good old common law
principles, of course, would make the average Progressive's hair curl.
Why, when people were getting excited over Roosevelt's recall of
judicial decisions--remember?--Rodney was for abolishing the Bill of
Rights altogether."

"What's the Bill of Rights?" asked Rose.

Jane headed Rodney off. "Oh, life, liberty and property without due
process of law," she said. "Neither of these men has any opinion of
rights. The only natural inalienable right you've got, they say, is to
take what you can get and keep it until somebody stronger than you, that
you can't run away from, catches you. What you call your individual
rights are just what society has made and doesn't for the moment need,
to keep itself going. If it does need them, it takes them back. Only, of
course, it has got to keep itself going. If it doesn't, people get up
and kick it to bits and start again." She turned to Rodney. "But what do
you think about it, really? What Barry's been talking about, I mean. Are
you for it?"

"For what?" Rodney wanted to know.

"For what women want," said Jane. "Economic independence, equality, easy
divorce--all the new stuff."

"I'm not against it," Rodney said, "any more th