Woman's Voice

by Unknown

The Working Woman Speaks

By Emily Taplin Royle

(In “The Woman’s Journal.” Mrs. John Martin, speaking at an anti-suffrage meeting in New York, says that women normally need a great deal of solitude, quiet and sleep and they suffer physically, mentally and morally, if they do not get it.)

“Solitude, quiet and sleep!”

I stand by the roaring loom

And watch the growth of the silken threads,

That glow in the bare, gray room.

I hurry through darkling streets

In the chill of the wintry day,

That women who talk from their cloistered ease

May rustle in colors gay.

“Solitude, quiet and sleep!”

In the dripping, humid air

I whiten the flimsy laces

That women may be fair;

I clothe my orphan children

With the price my bare hands yield,

That the idle women may walk as fair

As the lilies of the field.

“Solitude, quiet and sleep!”

Is it given to me today,

When I march in the ranks with those who fight

To keep the wolf at bay?

Do my daughters rest in peace

Where a myriad needles yield

Their bitter bread or a sheet of flame,

And the rest of the Potter’s Field?

“Solitude, quiet and sleep!”

To factory, shop and mill,

The feet of the working women go,

While their leisure sisters still

Boast of the home they have never earned,

Of the ease we can never share,

And bid us go back to the depths again,

Like Lazarus to his lair.