Laws to-day affect the interests of women just as deeply as they do the interests of men.  Some laws—­many laws—­affect them more gravely and intimately; and I do not believe you can trust the welfare of a class or a sex entirely to another class or sex.  It is not that their interests are not identical, but that their point of view is different.  Take the housing problem.  A working man leaves home in the morning within half an hour after he wakes.  He is not there all day.  He turns up in the evening and does not always remain there.  If the house is a poor, uncomfortable, dismal one, he very often seeks consolation in the glare and warmth of the nearest public-house, but he takes very good care that the wife shall not do as he does.  She has got to stay at home all day, however wretched her surroundings.  Who can say that her experience, her point of view, is not much better worth consulting than her husband’s on the housing problem?  Up to the present the only and the whole share of women in the housing question has been suffering.  Slums are often the punishment of the man.  They are almost always the martyrdom of the woman.  Give women the vote, give them an effective part in the framing and administration of the laws which touch not merely their own lives but the lives of their children, and they will soon, I believe, cleanse the land of these foul dens.

All sorts of women’s interests were affected by the National Insurance Act, and all sorts of questions sprang up in connection with it on which women alone could speak with real authority.  But, being voteless, there was no way in which their views could be authoritatively set forth.  Four million women workers and seven million married women have come under the operation of the Act, yet not one of them was given the opportunity of making their opinions known and felt through a representative in the House of Commons.  It was the experience of every friendly society official I consulted that had it not been for the women and their splendid self-sacrifice, the subscriptions of the men would have lapsed long ago.  Yet these women who had thus kept the societies going were not considered worth consulting as to their status under the Act.  The House of Commons itself insisted on there being at least one woman Commissioner.  But if a woman is fit to be a Commissioner—­a very heavy and difficult position involving enormous responsibilities and demanding great skill and judgment and experience—­how can she be said to be unfit to have a vote?

What is the meaning of democracy?  It is that the citizens who are expected to obey the law are those who make the law.  But that is not true of Great Britain.  At least half the adult citizens whose lives are deeply affected by every law that is carried on the statute-books have absolutely no voice in making that law.  They have no more influence in the matter than the horses that drag their lords and masters to the polling-booth.