their children; they also must protect themselves. Every law that has to do with education, sanitation, food, drink, housing, social questions, sexual relations, has to do directly with the wives and mothers who must obey such laws, and they are entitled to a direct voice in such matters just as much as any man. It cannot be too much insisted upon that motherhood is the strongest force in existence that makes for altruism, and altruism is the most essential factor in the wise and beneficial ordering of the State. The mother will not be biassed in favour of laws that press unduly on the male; for the welfare of her sons is as important to her as the welfare of her daughters; she is naturally in favour of all conditions that help to their moral strengthening and wholesome living, and because of the gift of motherhood she will feel most poignantly on all laws that touch upon the health and happiness of the children. Men know this; even those who jeer at women keep the saving grace of reverence for the mother who bore and nurtured them.
It may be said that I have a tendency to idealise women; that all mothers are not wise, nor tender, nor unselfish; that I forget, moreover, the wisdom and responsibility of the father. But I am not pleading that he should be disenfranchised, I only say that all fathers and husbands with a certain economic qualification have a vote. I would point out that the wives and mothers have an equal stake in the nation and contribute equally to its health and well-being.
But comes the cry of the frivolity of woman's interests; and her indifference to political, and her
