All the more need, then, for concentration, and the fact that these Englishwomen have, on a very moderate estimate, raised and spent in twelve months a sum of £100,000 in working for the vote alone, may be taken as some evidence of the intensity of their demand and of the wantonness of infliction upon them of further delay and further sacrifice.[1]
I have said that in England women have made great progress on the lines of personal and social effort. There are reactionaries so consistent as to deny that there has been any progress at all, and in almost every direction of change it is possible to find people who think it was bad. The change in the lives of Englishwomen has been so rapid, however, that it stares us all in the face and cries out for recognition. Vainly we wail about the dedicated ways of womanhood, when scarcely a living woman is to be found there.
Much of the great change has been due to deliberate and devoted effort on the part of men as well as women, who, at any rate, thought they were making for progress. The great impulse towards the education of the people which characterised the nineteenth century made a far greater revolution in the lives of women than of men. Not only did
- ↑ The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in twelve months raised, at headquarters and among its affiliated societies, £42,000. I have assumed that the Women's Social and Political Union raised as much. It seems likely that if we add together all the other societies (thirty odd), and also reckon the immense amount of money spent in travelling and so forth by voluntary workers, the total of £100,000 is well within the mark.
