Page:Women Wanted.djvu/172

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156
WOMEN WANTED

where the little old cracked looking-glass used to be. I think every government in Europe now has mirrors listed among "necessary supplies." I mention it as significant of the anxious effort to please the feminine fancy.

But the first most important thing that was done in making over industry, was opening the door from the inside for Mrs. Black's arrival. Every doorkeeper to-day has his instructions from higher up not to keep the lady knocking out in the cold. Her coming was in the first instance heralded in England, actually heralded with a flourish of trumpets. That procession of 40,000 women that Mrs. Pankhurst led down the Strand into industry, under the new standard, "For Men Must Fight and Women Must Work," had flags flying and bands playing. And the English Government paid for the bands. Parliament records show that this Suffrage procession was financed to the extent of 3,000 pounds, which is $15,000. Has there ever been a more revolutionary conversion than this to the Woman's Cause? For the first time in history, the woman movement is underwritten by Government. It is with this support that it's going strong all over the world to-day.

The place that is being made for Mrs. Black and her contemporaries is everywhere in the first instance at least, being arranged through Government intervention. With every new push on the front, the soldiers that go down in the awful battalions of death have to be replaced by others, which means that more and more men must be "combed out" of