Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - From Fireside to Factory (c. 1916).djvu/68

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woman question as have been expressed by some leading statesmen, educators and scientists.

The mutual relation of men and women in industry has been such that they were bound to understand each other's needs. The man who works in a factory side by side with women, who sees them driven by foremen, and knows that they depend upon the toil of their hands, like him, will not prate idly about the weakness of woman, the chivalry of men, and the home being woman's place, like the man who only associates with well-to-do women, not obliged to earn their bread.

Historically, too, there is a powerful link between workingmen and women, because the women and the male workers of the world have borne a common lot through the ages. The women and the workers have always supplied the material wants of society, and have always been exploited and oppressed. Therefore, it is not mere chance, but an inevitable result of social and industrial evolution that the workers and the women awoke to a consciousness of their wrongs almost simultaneously, that the labor movement and the woman movement began at about the same time. At present the labor movement and the woman movement are developing side by side in every country where the industrial revolution has been accomplished, and in many respects they are closely linked. Hand in hand, the oppressed class and the subjected sex are arising from bondage, and hand in hand they will go on to full recognition in human society, to the making of a better, juster, happier, more humane civilization.

THE END.

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