Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/65

Social barriers are growing less and less amongst men, since the working men have become the ruling political force in the nation, but still, you will find that a Foreign Office clerk, without any Trade Union at all, is able to get a higher rate of pay for his work than an engine-driver or skilled engineer, however valuable his services may be to the community, and in spite of the fact that he belongs to one of the strongest Trade Unions in England. A Government clerk may be a very valuable member of society, but the proportion of his salary to the wages of the engineer is hardly accounted for by a correspondingly lower rate of utility in the engineer's highly skilled work. If you want to increase a person's industrial value, you must increase his importance, you must make it worth somebody's while to please him. A hundred years ago the working men had no political importance, and they suffered from fining and low wages exactly in the same way that women do now. It is not one party or the other party that has improved their position, it is the pressure of the working men's votes on all parties. In practical life, these things are not doubted by working men. "My opinion should have some weight," said the Weavers' Secretary at a Lancashire Trade Council meeting, "for I represent by far the biggest Union in the town." "What's the good of your Union?" said the Engineers' Secretary, "why, it's all women; mine mayn't be large, but, at all events, they're voters." One vote more or less may be a matter of small importance, but an organised industrial Union of voters is a weapon of real political force, and the possession of this