n went on--

'Men and women were never meant to fight except side by side. You've
been told by one of the other speakers how the men suffer by the women
more and more underselling them in the Labour market----'

'Don't need no tellin'.'

'Bloody black-legs!'

'Do you know how that has come about? I'll tell you. It's come about
through your keeping the women out of your Unions. You never would have
done that if they'd had votes. You saw the important people ignored
them. You thought it was safe for you to do the same. But I tell you it
_isn't ever_ safe to ignore the women!'

High over the groans and laughter the voice went on, 'You men have got
to realize that if our battle against the common enemy is to be won,
you've got to bring the women into line.'

'What's to become of chivalry?'

'What _has_ become of chivalry?' she retorted; and no one seemed to have
an answer ready, but the crowd fell silent, like people determined to
puzzle out a conundrum.

'Don't you know that there are girls and women in this very city who are
working early and late for rich men, and who are expected by those same
employers to live on six shillings a week? Perhaps I'm wrong in saying
the men expect the women to live on that. It may be they _know_ that no
girl can--it may be the men know how that struggle ends. But do they
care? Do _they_ bother about chivalry? Yet they and all of you are
dreadfully exercised for fear having a vote would unsex women. We are
too delicate--women are such fragile flowers.' The little face was
ablaze with scorn. 'I saw some of those fragile flowers last week--and
I'll tell you where. Not a very good place for gardening. It was a back
street in Liverpool. The "flowers"' (oh, the contempt with which she
loaded the innocent word!)--'the flowers looked pretty dusty--but they
weren't quite dead. I stood and looked at them! hundreds of worn women
coming down steep stairs and pouring out into the street. What had they
all been doing there in that--garden, I was going to say!--that big
grimy building? They had been making cigars!--spending the best years of
their lives, spending all their youth in that grim dirty street making
cigars for men. Whose chivalry prevents that? Why were they coming out
at that hour of the day? Because their poor little wages were going to
be lowered, and with the courage of despair they were going on strike.
No chivalry prevents men from getting women at the very lowest possible
wag