He gave in the Review of Reviews his reasons for introducing the Bill that bore his name:—
"It is because in all my public work I aim at making the people self-reliant, able to think and act for themselves, that I want women to have the power and the responsibility that the possession of the vote gives. It is by this rather than by any consideration of how their votes would be used that I ask for woman's suffrage. At the same time I believe that the cause of progress has nothing to fear from this reform. We entrust to women as teachers and as mothers the all-important work of educating the future citizens. How absurd, then, to hesitate to give to women the rights of a citizen. As regards the women of the working-class, I point out constantly that all the many social questions that are pressing for settlement affect these women as much as, if not more than, they affect their husbands. We must give women a share in settling such questions."
He went on, in the course of further remarks in the same magazine, to lay great stress on the importance of organisation and of agitation in order to secure the vote for women. There should be local workers in every constituency. Every member of the House of Commons should have strong pressure brought to bear upon him. No woman, he urged, should work for any candidate who is not a supporter of women's franchise. If the candidate put forward by her own political party cannot support this, she should work for the candidate who can, no matter to what party he belonged.
"If women are in earnest on this question," he added, "they must prove it by putting principle before party, and making the enfranchisement of their sex the first object of all their political work."
On political platforms he often mentioned an incident that arose in connection with a protest he made against the low wages paid to women in the Government's Victualling Yard at Deptford.
"It's starvation," he told one of the responsible officials, "to pay widows with families 14s. a week."
"But it's constant," said the amazed official.
"So, you see," Crooks adds in telling the incident, "that Government officials think starvation's all right so long as it's constant. Do you think this system of constant starvation would be tolerated for a day if women had the vote?"
Before Mr. Balfour's Government came to an end, Crooks had become one of the popular speakers of the House. He brought into Parliament a lively conversational style rarely found in that assembly. His quaint witticisms, his telling illustrations from the every-day life of the people, together with his downright sincerity, his tolerance and restraint, won him the good-will of both sides of the House. Whether pleading for underfed school children, for the unemployed, or speaking against the taxation of the people's food, he was generally admitted to be bright and forceful. He never spoke without bringing a new point of view to the debate. "Jehu Junior," writing in Vanity Fair, said of him:—