Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/107

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Woman and the State
91

Commissions; but they may not sit in Parliament.

Women are now permitted in small numbers to serve the State in a variety of useful ways not enumerated in the foregoing chapter. There are women Sanitary Inspectors, women Education Inspectors, and women Factory Inspectors. In the interests of women directly, and of the community indirectly, this should be; and to a far greater extent. Ten women Factory Inspectors is not a sufficiently large number to look after the interests of a vast army of women workers in factories, estimated in 1901 to be 650,142, besides 36,511 children working half-time. Women Sanitary Inspectors in greater numbers would help to remove the dense ignorance of the masses upon matters of health; and more women Inspectors of Schools would be of great benefit to women teachers, who would not be fearful of consulting one of their own sex.

It is not possible to suggest what form local and national government will take under Socialism. There will certainly be no Boards of Guardians, as we know them at present, for compulsory and thriftless