The Daily News SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. VOTES FOR WOMEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 124, 3 September 1910, Page 4

The Daily News SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. VOTES FOR WOMEN.

The persistent endeavor of a section of the women of Britain to obtain what their Australasian sisters have achieved —the franchise —makes the subject one of the most fascinating of the Old Land. Reforms are slower in arriving in Britain than in new countries, mainly for the reason that most institutions are hoary with antiquity. The British Conservative estimate of the question is based on the truth that women are able to wield the greatest of all powers without political status, and that the extra machinery necessary to give women the franchise would be costly and would possibly not be used to the extent indicated by the demand for it. The Woman's Suffrage Bill was introduced into the House of Commons by Mr David Shackleton, the Labor member for the Clitheroe Division, and seeks to grant the Parliamentary franchise to women who have a household qualification or a £lO occupation qualification. If the Bill becomes law, it will give the vote to over 1,000,000 women. The Bill has found a considerable amount of support amongst leading politicians on both sides of the House, and amongst those who are in favor of it are Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Haldane, Mr. Churchill, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Lyttelton, Mr. John Burns, Mr. Healy and Mr. Philip Snowden. The Prime Minister and Mr. Harcourt are opposed, and so, also, are Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Mr. F. E. Smith, Mr. McKenna, Lord Morley, Mr. Walter Long, and the Attorney-Gen-eral, so that there is a strong fighting force on both sides of the question, apart from the great army of influential women who are in arms. Sir Charles ! McLaren was responsible for the women's j charter, and one of the most notable 1 figures in the fight for' the "suffragette" is his wife, Lady McLaren, who, in a recent interview, said that the Bill

"is the only practicable Bill before the public at the present moment. I have canvassed in many towns, and I have never found any objection on the part of men to the enfranchisemet of the woman householder. Working men naturally associate the vote with the possession of a house, and, when they see women facing the world alone and paying rates and taxes and discharging all the duties of a citizen, they fail to see any reason why these women should not have the privilege and the protection of the vote. On the question of married women there is much greater diversity of opinion and greater difficulties in commending to the public mind the policy of giving at once a franchise so extended that it would include a majority of women, both married and single. The ebjection on the part of some members of the Liberal Party to the present Bill is based, I believe, almost entirely upon the hastilyformed opinion that it would act adversely to the interests of their party. I say hastily-formed opinion because when we" come to examine the grounds of this objection we find that they are based on the faljacious argument that, because some women householders vote Conservative at municipal elections, they will vote Conservative in Parliamentary contests. There has been a tendency in the masculine mind to blame women for everything,! that goes wrong, ever since the time when Adam laid the blame upon Eve for his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. And the fact that old Adam still sur-l vives in men is proved by the fact that both Conservatives and Liberals often] blame women for the lossee they have sustained at municipal elections. Fur-j ther, it should be remembered that when| the woman householder votes for the •Moderate party at these elections she is very often consulting her own 'Undoubted interests. These women are usually the widows of working men, and many of them have a hard struggle to make both ends meet. They are naturally averse to any local council which wishes to spend' large sums of money in luxuries such as new town halls, baths and bathing establishments that are designed chiefly to meet the needs of men and boys. When it comes to larger measures of reform directed <to the needs of the whole community the Liberal party will have a much better chance of appealing to the sympathies of this class of woman. In Parliamentary elections the problems are very different. Legislation which tends to raise the cost of any of the necessaries of life has always aroused hostility not only among women householders, but among all classes of women in the country. Women, for instance, are opposed to any taxes upon bread; and I have never heard any of them profess to see any advantage to themselves in the doctrines of Tariff Reform. On the other hand, they appreciate to the full the great benefit they have gained by the repeal in the tax on limited incomes, and the reduction of the sugar duties has been of marked advantage to them in their households. All those measures which the Liberal Government have passed for the benefit of children and for the general uplifting of the po'orer classes have been welcomed with deep sympathy by women, while • those speeches toy Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd-George, in which hopes have been held out of great soeial reforms in the future, have been followed with keen interest and hope by women in all of the community."

As an indication of the seriousness of a section of British women on the question of the suffrage, it has only to be mentioned that in the recent demonstration in Trafalgar Square there were 10,000 women present, and this, of course, only represented those who had leisure to attend. The work • in Britain is in the hands of women of, culture, refinement and education—welT equipped to <fight a war of.wit with men. One of the lady leaders said the other day; "Let no woman vote for ever, rather than tamper with the elements of the.Tepresentatiye principle. W,e till know perfectly well that the whole history of the franchise has been the history of 'privileged classes' 1 ; that in every class of males to-day there are

and non-voters. How fine it is to hear that only perfect equality can be borne where women are concerned! Another makes a strong point: "The Empire is not composed of men only, and the sooner the papers cease to look at every subject solely from the man's point of view the better it will be for them and for .us all." The inevitability of votes for women in Britain must strike anyone who watches, even from afar, the determined efforts of the women and their fighting organisations at Home. It s certain that in time they will achieve vhat they fight for, even if they do not /alue it when it is gained.