"Women have not the brains," said a boy.
I made no reply, I lifted his last exam. paper, and showed the class his 21 per cent, then I showed him Violet Brown's 93 per cent. But I was careful to add that the illustration was not conclusive.
I went on to tell them that the vote was of little use to men, and that I did not consider it worth striving for. But I tried to show them that the Women's Movement was a much bigger thing than a fight for political power. It was a protest against the system that made sons doctors and ministers, and daughters typists and shopgirls, that made girls black their idle brothers' boots, that offered £60 to a lady teacher who was doing as good work as the man in the next room with his £130. I did not take them to the deeper topics of Marriage, Inheritance, the economic dependence of women on men that makes so many marry for a home. But I tried to show that owing to woman's being voteless the laws are on the man's side, and I instanced the Corporation Baths in the neighbouring city. There only one day a week is set aside for women. Then it struck me that perhaps the women of the city have municipal votes, and I suggested that if this were the case, women are less interested in cold water than men, a circumstance that goes to show that women have a greater need of freedom than I thought they had.
On the whole it was a disappointing discussion.
* * *
I went up to see Lawson of Rinsley School to-night. I talked away gaily about having scrapped my Readers and Rural Arithmetic. He was amused; I know that he considers me a cheerful idiot. But he grew serious when I talked about my Socialism.
"You blooming Socialists," he said, with a dry laugh, "are the most cocky people I have yet struck. You think you are the salt of the earth and that all the others are fatheads."
"Quite right, Lawson," I said with a laugh. And I added seriously: "You see, my boy, that if you have a theory, you've simply got to think the other fellow an idiot. I believe in Socialism—the Guild Socialism of The New Age, and naturally I think that Lloyd George and Bonar Law and the Cecils, and all that lot are hopelessly wrong."
"Do you mean to tell me that you are a greater thinker than Arthur James Balfour?" Lawson sat back in his chair and watched the effect of this shot.