Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/34

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18
The Woman Socialist

The brave women who are taking so prominent a part in the present great agitation for Parliamentary votes are to be highly congratulated, not only upon their courage, but also upon their wisdom.

They know of numberless other evils which afflict their sex in particular; and of unhappy conditions which women and men have in common. They yearn unspeakably to alter these conditions. They want work for the workless. They would have food given to the children. They want an old-age pension for every aged man and woman. They desire to see accomplished a vast number of reforms of a similar character. But for the present they are concentrating upon this one question, to the unthinking a question of minor importance; and they are wise in so doing.

This question is so foundational in its character that upon its satisfactory solution depends the satisfactory solution, ultimately, of all other problems, and in particular, of those bearing intimately and exclusively upon women. If women realised more completely and in greater numbers the real significance of their voteless condition, and the real nature of the opposition to