earnest the establishment of practical ready-money systems closely fitted to varying local needs and customs. Out of this work the desire for the Parliamentary vote has arisen naturally. Co-operation has never been merely a plan for making a little extra money for co-operators, and if it is not now as idealist as in the hungry years, it has got to the more modest and elderly stage of knowing its own limitations and holding out hands to trades unionism and politics.
Women co-operators have naturally turned their thoughts to the Factory Acts, and amendments have repeatedly been urged in all the ways open to the voteless. The Public Health Acts, the land question, and housing are studied, and persevering attempts are made to support reform. It would amaze the educated people who are bored with almost everything to see with what eagerness hard-worked housewives of Lancashire, the West Riding, and scores of towns, great and small, will fasten on these economic and social questions, so dull and meaningless to women whose easy lives they do not touch. The "branches" take part in local elections, and co-operative women have done excellent work as guardians. In opposing Protection they have been fully as active as their husbands. They showed the effect of the sugar tax in a series of domestic budgets, and at their meeting of three thousand women in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, a resolution was passed strongly condemning Protection and regretting that without votes they could not make their protest effective.
