less than man in relation to public life, ought to be given the vote
for _instructional purposes_.

The first of these appeals will, for instance, take the following
form:--"Consider the poor sweated East End woman worker. She knows
best where the shoe pinches. You men can't know. Give her a vote; and
you shall see that she will very soon better her condition."

When I hear that argument I consider:--We will suppose that woman was
ill. Should we go to her and say: "You know best, know better than any
man, what is wrong with you. Here are all the medicines and remedies.
Make your own selection, for that will assuredly provide what will be
the most likely to help."

If this would be both futile and inhuman, much more would it be so to
seek out this woman who is sick in fortune and say to her, "Go and
vote for the parliamentary candidate who will be likely to influence
the trend of legislation in a direction which will help."

What would really help the sweated woman labourer would, of course, be
to have the best intellect brought to bear, not specially upon the
problem of indigent woman, but upon the whole social problem.

But the aspect of the question which is, from our present point of
view, the fundamentally important one is the following: Granting that
the extension of the suffrage to woman would enable her, as the
suffragist contends, to bring pressure upon her parliamentary
representative, man, while anxious to do his very best for woman,
might very reasonably refuse to go about it in this particular way.