rights on their return? If anyone can imagine this, let him consider the reasons for this double labour given in Clause 8 of the protest referred to:

That as mothers have no means of claiming a sufficient share of the father's wages for the family support, and have rights only over their own earnings, if mothers may not earn the children will suffer, it being a fact well known to inspectors that women devote their wages more exclusively to the benefit of their children than do men.

We beg leave to point out that no complaint is made as to the way in which the father of a family distributes or withholds his earnings; it is merely calmly stated that he cannot be relied upon nor forced to take his due place in providing food and shelter.

Yet we are told to be content that Nature has appointed him guardian. If Nature had ensured the carrying out of her beneficent intentions, or if the march of civilisation always enabled elementary duties to be performed more highly and thoroughly, instead of frequently putting such difficulties in the way that they are apt to be shirked or very partially performed, we might, indeed, be more than content, whether in a primal Paradise or in a latter-day Utopia. But in a world where economic facts bear sway, such as the surplus number of women; the minus amount of wages, even where the whole of it is devoted to the needs of the family; dislocation of labour; besides the natural facts of sickness and death, we cannot have our Utopia, or even decent conditions of life, without hard work, hard thinking, and political power.

The Influence Argument. This, as less tangible and definite, is more difficult to answer. It is also difficult to see exactly what the argument is. Is it meant (a) that only women have influence ? Surely everyone, man, woman and child, has influence. Or (b) that when women have direct influence through the vote they will lose indirect influence, viz. the impalpable influence of character? But the stronger a character is, the more influence does it exert; and we value advice and argument in proportion to our respect for those from whom it comes. How can political freedom lessen respect and consideration for women? We maintain that it will have a contrary effect. And that this is not a mere matter of opinion is already evident, for the women who are most free at present, those who have profited by the advantages of higher education and those who are taking part in local government, are habitually looked up to both by other women and by men.

Next comes, perhaps, the strongest, certainly the most plausible and the most frequently alleged, plea of our opponents, the Home or Sphere Argument. We are reminded that in the earliest days of our race the division of work between Adam and Eve was decided. Perhaps, though it is not certain that the helpmeet was always so busy spinning that she never helped in the garden. In any case, work has constantly been

re-decided, and differently. That which is distinctively woman's work, and even jealously guarded by her, in some communities and some ages, is man's work with other peoples and in other times. Take the economic revolution of the last century or so only. Brewing, baking, distilling, and more recently jam-making, pickling, and laundry work, all of which had for centuries been indoor or home work, are now carried on and will be increasingly carried on, in breweries, factories, and other large establishments. It would seem only fair that, if men have found they can do 'women's work,' women should not only, as is the case, go out from the home to do in the factory work needed for the home, but should also be allowed to find out what other work they are fitted to do; and they should also have their say, through legislative enactments, as to the conditions under which all this work for the home is done and the quality of it when done.

It must be repeated that it is necessary, under modern conditions of life and the ever-increasing division of labour, that women should follow much work, which can no longer be done in the home, to the factory. We may regret this, but we must accept facts as they are before we proceed to improve them. Division of labour, if logically carried out, points to the employment of each person, whether man or woman, according to his or her talents and tastes; and in order to obtain the best from each for the good of all 'equality of opportunity' must be granted. And this freedom of choice can only be attained by the full freedom, political and social, of each member of the nation. It is becoming more and more recognised-witness the mistaken attempt discussed above-that the conditions under which a woman's special work, the production and rearing of the younger generation, is performed should no longer be left to chance, but should be carefully considered and provided for; and then, as one of our foremost reformers says, it must be much better done than in the present haphazard fashion. I can hardly imagine anyone asserting that legislation in this direction, with its concomitants of due inspection and overseeing, is more fitly the work of men for women than of women for each other.

I am tempted to call to the mind of my readers a small but strong argument in favour of granting freedom in the choice of work to women. Gardening, I think, most will admit to have been the first work of the first man, whether the Bible Adam or another of the same name.' Will not half as many willingly admit that we are finding out that modern gardening is just as suitable as a profession for women who have to earn their own living, as it is for a pleasure to those women whose home work, baking, washing, &c., being done for them leaves them time and leisure ?

But the article I am feebly attempting to review and refute next goes over unblushingly to the enemy, viz. to our side. Its writer speaks with great approval of new departures, such as Boards

of Guardians and District and Town Councils being open to women, and remarks that this is but a larger form of housekeeping. Precisely. That is exactly what we Suffragists maintain. Society is composed of a number of concentric circles. The baby, the hope of the future, is the centre; then the family, first in its lesser, then in its larger sense; then the village or town, till we come to the nation and its council. At which circle can a line be drawn declaring a difference in kind as to the way in which affairs should be carried on? Can the War Office exist without its Commissariat? Does war not affect women? Is commerce different in kind, or only different in degree, from the age when it was decreed to be one of the special works of the virtuous woman? 'She perceiveth that her merchandise is good.'

Finally, I sorrowfully plead guilty for many of my fellow-women to the argument that the majority are indifferent to, and many even against, their own enfranchisement. But I deny that this argument has weight; it is largely a matter of ignorance, and this obstacle is being removed by free discussion in private and in the Press. Also, one of the inscrutable mysteries of this present world is fear of progress. But when progress has been made, the results are never so terrible as a gloomy imagination has foreboded. It is a minority which sees ahead and presses for reforms. Even when a reform is granted by a majority, that majority has had its opinions and feelings gradually changed and formed. And even those who oppose reforms are apt to accept the advantages they bring. Even if they did not, the world cannot be held back. Eppur si muove.

JESSIE PAYNE MARGOLIOUTH.

SUFFRAGISTS, PEERS, AND THE CROWD

THE theory of representative government, commonly held at the time when the various Reform Bills were being passed in the middle of the nineteenth century, was very different from that which has tacitly taken its place in the popular mind of the present day. Then it was supposed that the members of a truly representative body would consist not of delegates, but of men having opinions and a policy of their own. It was supposed that the electors would arrive at a reasoned judgment on political questions, each man for himself, and that the process of a contested election would be educational. It was supposed that election oratory would teach politics. It was supposed that newspaper and platform discussion would inform the minds and develop the judgment of voters, and that the opinion of the majority, thus educated, would be the opinion of a number of reasonable and reasoning human beings.

It was further conceived that an elected member would carry to the Legislature an actively critical and enlightened mind. He was to place that mind at the service of his constituents and his party, not slavishly following the dictates of his leaders, but, while generally in sympathy with them, retaining the power and the duty to use his own judgment. The elected Chamber of a Legislature was held to be a deliberative assembly, where the minds of members had relatively free play, and where the purpose of debate was to inform and clear the opinions of those taking part in it.

All this is now changed. We know that popularly elected representative bodies never have been and never can be assemblies of that character. The process of election and the elected body itself are of very different sort from what the reformers pictured. All the educational schemes they promoted to educate our masters,' all the mechanics' institutes they founded, the University Extension schemes they fostered, the local universities they brought into being, have had no effect whatever and can have no effect upon the voting masses, because men do not as a matter of fact vote as sane individuals considering their interests, but as a crowd, moved by the passions of a crowd.

VOL. LXIII-No. 375

1

The present purpose of the organisers of a contested election is, on each side, to form the supporters of a party as quickly as possible into a crowd and, having so formed them, to inflame the passions and enthusiasm of that crowd to a white heat. The stronger the crowd formation can be made and the more the crowd's passions can be excited the more effective does it become as a crystallising force. Just as a band of music going down a street-one of the most efficient of crowd formers draws people together and infects them with a common spirit for the moment, so an excited crowd, eager in its unintellectual fashion about some idea, attracts adherents to itself, and infects them with its ideal as with a disease. This is not accomplished by any intellectual process. They are not converted by reason, they are not appealed to by argument. It is a simple process of infection. They catch the new idea as they might catch the measles, and with as little understanding as to how and why they catch it, or even what it is they have caught.

It is not necessary, surely, at the present day to prove that a crowd is not a reasoning entity, or to show that a crowd is altogether different in nature from the sum of the individuals that compose it. A crowd of men is wholly different in character, in idea, in cast of mind, in mode of thought or action from an individual man. The foolishest man in the affairs of his own life acts in accordance with so much of reason and experience as he may be endowed with. But a crowd does nothing of the sort. It does not and cannot reason. It has no brain. It cannot speak, save to utter the inarticulate cries of passion. It has little experience, little memory, little self-restraint. Its virtues and its vices are all emotional. It is made up of emotions, and emotional exhortations alone appeal to it strongly. It is a beast, extrahuman, incomparably stronger than man in passion, incomparably weaker than man in reason.

As a matter of evidently visible fact members of the House of Commons, and of all bodies chosen by a large number of voters, where the elections are accompanied by a keen struggle, are chosen by crowds. Every member represents, not a number of individuals who have chosen him, one by one, each for a thought-out reason of his own, good or bad; every member represents a crowd, and has been hoisted into his seat as the result of a carefully worked-up crowd movement, in the development of which individual opinion has not been formed, but submerged.

The crowd that produces a member of Parliament does not want him to act as an individual. Having itself no intellect, it has no desire to see him exercising any right of private judgment. Passionate and sentimental itself, it desires him only to represent and voice its passions and sentiments. It wishes him to be itself incarnate; and as all its affinities are with other creatures of its own sort-crowds, not men-it desires him to have the like associations, to speak the crowd