J. Keir Hardie

“ Who can say better than a mother what age a child should have attained before it is compelled to attend school? Who can read the child mind like a mother? And who can say better at what age a child is fit to enter a factory, and when a factory is fit to receive a child? ”

“ With the incoming of the mother element into politics this would be gradually changed. Those who confuse women's character with effeminacy are strangely blind to facts. Strength and courage are by no means synonymous terms, and no one who knows anything of woman's qualities will dispute her possession of the very highest powers of courage and endurance. Whilst her influence in politics will be humanising it will also be strengthening, and much of the chicanery and knavery of political life will go down before her direct march upon the actual. ”

“ Recently the Trade Union movement has spread amongst the women workers with a rapidity for which I know of no recent parallel amongst men, and with the growth of trade unionism there is bound to be a growing demand for fresh protective legislation. So far as the industrial woman is concerned it is a fact that in those spheres of women's industry where legislation has had the most influence the wages and conditions generally are the best, and trade unionism the strongest. ”

“ The increasing number of women who are entering the industrial as distinguished from the domestic spheres of employment, and the disabilities under which they labour, make it certain that legislation affecting women's employment will become more general. ”

“ As a consequence, Woman's Suffrage is again a leading question in practical politics. On this occasion it is not complicated by any demand for an extension of the franchise to men, but is raised as a clear and distinct issue which will have to be dealt with on its own merits. ”

“ Hitherto, measures affecting industrial women which have passed Parliament have classed them with children as being too helpless to look after their own interests and therefore requiring special legislation. ”

“ The working classes for a quarter of a century after their enfranchisement used their new-found power to return their masters to Parliament. In like manner it is probable that women would, for a time at least, vote pretty much after the fashion of their men folk. ”

“ But in the end their influence would begin to assert itself in an ever-increasing degree, and that influence would be, I believe, wholly on the side of good. We witness on every hand the effect of unchallenged male dominance, arrogant armaments, harsh and unfeeling administration of law, industrial conditions which are proving fatal to the race. ”

“ This goes to show that legislation which limits the working hours, fixes a standard of sanitation, &c, increases the self-reliance of the women affected and does not, as some affirm, sap their independence. ”

“ No one, in any way, disputes the advantage which these Acts have been to the women workers of the great textile industries, but women have all along resented the idea of being classed with children for this purpose. ”

“ The satisfying of the men's demands in 1884 left the women's claims unrecognised, and many of them foolishly deserted their own movement and became mere party politicians. The Primrose League on the one other, absorbed many of the active women politicians and, as a consequence, their claim for enfranchisement disappeared almost entirely from the political arena. ”

“ As a rule, however, such men are practically helpless in the terrific struggle which continually goes on in Parliament to obtain priority for this, that, or the other reform, or to prevent reforms being made. ”

“ Recently, however, a number of women who had received their political training in the Independent Labour Party adopted the militant tactics of that body and applied them to their own particular object. ”