er of the big interests come behind
the big brother and say to him, 'If you grant the request of these
working women you die politically.'

"It is because the working women have seen this that they now demand
the ballot. In New York and in every other State, we plead for shorter
hours. When the legislators learn that women today in every industry
are being overspeeded and overworked, most of them would, if they
dared, vote protective legislation. Why do they neglect the women? We
answer, because those who have the votes have the power to take the
legislator's political ladder away from him, a power that we, who have
no votes, do not have.... While the doors of the colleges have been
opened to the fortunate women of our country, only one woman in a
thousand goes into our colleges, while one woman in five must go into
industry to earn her living. And it is for the protection of this one
woman in every five that I speak...."

Mrs. Jean Nelson Penfield, chairman of the Woman Suffrage Party of New
York numbering 60,000 members, said in part:

In the few moments given me I will confine myself to the handicap
women have found disfranchisement to be in social-service work.
It is supposed by many that because our so-called leisure women
have been able to do so much apparently good community betterment
work without the ballot we do not need it. I should like to ask
you to remember that the important thing is not that women
succeed in this kind of work but that where they do succeed it is
at tremendous and needless expenditure of energy and vital
strength and at the cost of dignity and self-respect.

The dominant thought in the world today is that of conservation;
the tendency of the whole business world is toward economy. How
to lessen the cost of production; how to improve the machinery of
business so as to reduce friction--these are the questions that
are being asked not only in the business world but in the affairs
of state. No intelligent man in this scientific day would try to
do anything by an indirect and wasteful method if he could
accomplish his purpose by a direct and economic method. Even the
bricklayer is taught how to handle his bricks so that the best
results may be secured at the least possible expenditure of time
and energy. Women alone seem to represent a great body of energy,
vitality and talent which is