That skilled workman, cap in hand, going down the steps of the Government House, met Gabrielle Duchene coming up. At least her message to the Government has been carried right to the War Office by the feminists in all lands. In England, after Mrs. Pankhurst's great triumphal procession, little Sylvia Pankhurst, feminist, led another which served as it were as a postscript to the first: it is in a postscript, you know, that a woman always put the really important thing she has to say. On the banner that Sylvia carried in London's East End was inscribed the feminist message: "We are willing to work for a fair wage!"
Gabrielle Duchene stopped the skilled workman and showed him the message, which enunciates the demand: For equal work, equal pay. "It's your only protection," she urged. But he only grinned. And he pulled from his pocket a scrap of paper: "See," he said, "my government agreement that woman's admission into industry is for the duration of the war only." And it is true, he has that agreement. It is the basis on which all over the world the bargain was made: "Teach the woman how. It is a necessary but temporary expedient. When you return from the front, you shall have the job back. And the woman will go home again." But will she?
The message that went up to the Government House asking equal pay for equal work is one of the most significant measures in the new woman movement. Ever since women began to be in industry