LEADERS OF WOMEN.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1443, 18 May 1912, Page 11

LEADERS OF WOMEN.

Most of the leaders of tho woman's movoment in England, says an English correspondent of tho "Age," aro women whose lot was cast in pleasant places, and wflio might have drifted into the conventional round of aimless pleasu.ro and empty social duties; but the spirit of tho ago has worked within them, and has led them to lake up tho fight for oppressed women and children.

Somo of tho suffragists, however, have come out of the ranks of manual workers, and can speak wiitli the conviction of personal experience of the harsh treatment and the inadequate protection which the English law gives to the working woman. The most striking figure in this group is Miss Annie Komiey. At tlio age of fourteen she began to work as a mill hand in Lancashire, and long after England was ringing with the name of the girls Christabel Pankliurst and Annie Kcnney, who had dared to ask a question after the meeting of a Cabinet Minister, just as if they were electors, she continued to earn her living in this mannor. Now sho is the organiser of the Women's Social and Political Union in the West of England, and the chief speaker when the interests of the pitbrow lassies or. of other woman workers are threatened by Radical legislation. One evening I met her at a friend's house. There had been a much advertised anti-demonstraticn that afternoon in Trafalgar Square, and tho suffragists, as usual, had been briskly selling literature to the crowd. Miss Kenney, who had wouud up a heavy week's public speaking by selling papers, was tired out in body, but jubilant in spirit. ''It was a splendid demonstration for us: ire never do so much proI paga-nda as at an antt-raeettns," said, in her unassuming manner.' She looks sb>- awd vetmwg, owe would take her for a home-keeping daughter who had been carefully sheltered from the stern realities of life. And yet this quiet, modest woman can hold an audience of ten thousand at the Albert Hall in tenso silence, broken only by rapturous applause. , One of the fino things about tho woman's | movement is to see a girl such as this, ' who "has risen from the ranks solely by 1 force of character, or some working man's wife, who lives the ordinary life of her class, standing side b.v side in sympathy and comradeship with women such as Lady Constance Lytton. If humanity could but follow the example of tho suffragists in this respect, class jealousies, class oppression, and class hatred would become things of the past. Lady Constance Lytton is in appearance and manner a typical English aristocrat; tall,

slender, and dignified. Even the .most impartial of magistrates has a proper respect for a lady with a title; both in the police court and in prison she has usually been treated with a leniency not extended to her fellow lawbreakers. She vainly asks why others with a criminal record no worse titan hers get much longer sentences. but the Majesty of the law makes no reply. On one occasion she pertinently inquired: "Can it be that English justice has two, codes—one for the sister of a peer, tho other for the wife of a working man?" Once she went to prison under an assumed name, and her experiences o-n that occasion are said to have been the means of changing Lord Lytton from a fceblo supporter into an ardent believer and an untiring worker in the cause of woman suffrage.

Great Britain exports one of every three tons of coal produced. About 327,000 tons of coal are burned every week in London. Thero aro !!(iO,OOO miles of submarine telegraph cables'in the world, of which moro than 100,000 miles have been laid in tho last ten years. In many districts of China pigtails cut off after the revolution aro being preserved for burial with the owner, reports an American Consul.