Above the laughter, a rich groggy voice was heard, 'Them that's against yer are all drunk, miss' (hiccup). 'D--don't mind 'em!'
Ernestine just gave them time to appreciate that, and then went on--
'Men and women were never meant to fight except side by side. You've been told by one of the other speakers how the men suffer by the women more and more underselling them in the Labour market----'
'Do you know how that has come about? I'll tell you. It's come about through your keeping the women out of your Unions. You never would have done that if they'd had votes. You saw the important people ignored them. You thought it was safe for you to do the same. But I tell you it _isn't ever_ safe to ignore the women!'
High over the groans and laughter the voice went on, 'You men have got to realize that if our battle against the common enemy is to be won, you've got to bring the women into line.'
'What _has_ become of chivalry?' she retorted; and no one seemed to have an answer ready, but the crowd fell silent, like people determined to puzzle out a conundrum.
'Don't you know that there are girls and women in this very city who are working early and late for rich men, and who are expected by those same employers to live on six shillings a week? Perhaps I'm wrong in saying the men expect the women to live on that. It may be they _know_ that no girl can--it may be the men know how that struggle ends. But do they care? Do _they_ bother about chivalry? Yet they and all of you are dreadfully exercised for fear having a vote would unsex women. We are too delicate--women are such fragile flowers.' The little face was ablaze with scorn. 'I saw some of those fragile flowers last week--and I'll tell you where. Not a very good place for gardening. It was a back street in Liverpool. The "flowers"' (oh, the contempt with which she loaded the innocent word!)--'the flowers looked pretty dusty--but they weren't quite dead. I stood and looked at them! hundreds of worn women coming down steep stairs and pouring out into the street. What had they all been doing there in that--garden, I was going to say!--that big grimy building? They had been making cigars!--spending the best years of their lives, spending all their youth in that grim dirty street making cigars for men. Whose chivalry prevents that? Why were they coming out at that hour of the day? Because their poor little wages were going to be lowered, and with the courage of despair they were going on strike. No chivalry prevents men from getting women at the very lowest possible wage--(I want you to notice the low wage is the main consideration in all this)--men get these women, that they say are so tender and delicate, to undertake the almost intolerable toil of the rope-walk. They get women to make bricks. Girls are driven--when they are not driven to worse--they are driven to being lodging-house slaveys or over-worked scullions. _That's_ all right! Women are graciously permitted to sweat over other people's washing, when they should be caring for their own babies. In Birmingham'--she raised the clear voice and bent her flushed face over the crowd--'in Birmingham those same "fragile flowers" make bicycles to keep alive! At Cradley Heath we make chains. At the pit brows we sort coal. But a vote would soil our hands! You may wear out women's lives in factories, you may sweat them in the slums, you may drive them to the streets. You _do_. But a vote would unsex them.'