There are moments in the world's history when ideas that have been moving in the world of
thought, realised by a few and dreaded by many, enter into manifestation. This is such a
moment. When, in the future, the record of the twentieth century comes to be written, it
will be known as an era of unrest on the one hand and of great movements on the other.
Both
of these had their beginning in the thought of the last century, notably the two which are
playing so large a part in the political and economic life of the last few years, the
labour movement and the woman's movement, which have grown out of the common unrest... Both
women and labour are necessary to the world; both are dissatisfied; both have dimly felt
their power; both, half-consciously, are touched with the spiritual forces that are being
poured out; both are constructive.
In dealing with the woman's [sic] movement, we deal, unavoidably, with labour, for woman is
within - she forms a part of all the labour that is done under the sun. Without her great
primal industry, that of child-bearing and child-rearing, there would be no industry at all.
It is idle, then, to argue, as so many do, that the woman's [sic] movement is a strange
and unnatural thing, arising out of the general want of balance of the times... Looking
back into the political, social and intellectual history of the last century, we can see
more clearly, it may be, than in any other era, two opposing forces at work. The one was
material, the other spiritual.
As I consider the first of these I am often reminded of the Scriptural parable, the Tower
of Babel. Earth was to be so arranged as to defy Fate. Indefatigable research into the
hidden ways of life, brilliant invention, discovery of the latent powers possessed by
earth's products, when human industry and skill, working in combination, are brought to
bear upon them, marked the latter half of the 19th century. In all this, man was the
initiator.
He created the new machine, which, in its awful progress, has crushed so many men, women
and children under its wheels.
As was said by a writer in the New Age, Industry belongs to man. He has created it for
himself and he dominates it.
Woman, compelled by hunger, goes out into the labour-market. Because industry belongs to
man, because, in an earlier age, he removed it from the home to the factory, he is jealous
of her presence there. Man rules industry; man also dominates the legislation. This was
wrought out through the unisexual tendency of the last century and therefore woman, forced
into the labour-market, finds herself there on sufferance.
Generally, throughout the social, economic and political life of the last century, man has
been the dominant partner. Woman herself he has moulded to his will. The soft, delicate,
fragile girl of the mid-Victorian era, who faded into the pale and submissive housewife,
was his creation. She made a fine foil to his strength and she ministered to his glory...
There were, indeed, rebels even then. But a woman who rebelled stood alone: her
women-friends were against her, and in many cases, as in that of Mary Wollstonecraft, she
had to seek friendships with men to appease the hunger of the heart... Superiority in
physical force was the first weapon which was used by the opponent of Woman's [sic]
suffrage. He has in his hands the soldiery, the police-force, the courts of law.
He used
them all. Women, for slight infringements of police regulations, were arrested, tried, and
in spite of conflicting evidence, condemned to terms of imprisonment, varying in length and
severity depending on the malice of their accusers, or the caprice of the magistrates who
tried them. I remember how one old magistrate, in his curious simplicity, explained the
situation. Shaking his head after the infliction of a ridiculously severe sentence he said:
'It shall come to an end. It must come to an end. I will bring it to an end.'
In those words spoke impotent and bewildered masculinity. He spoke in vain, for every woman
who suffered in the cause of those early militant days held her suffering as a sacrament,
which hallowed and purified her.
In addition to all this, glimpses of the underworld of sorrow and humiliation which has
been and is the portion of so many, came to our women. Literally they saw. Seeing they went
out into the world again, armed with a new force, quickened by a fresh inspiration.
That force is at work now, and it will never cease to work until men as well as women
realise practically that there is no parting of the ways where men and women are concerned:
that what hurts one hurts the other: that the dual humanity to which, by the divine fiat,
authority over the visible universe was given, must work as one, if that universe of matter
is to be redeemed and sanctified.
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