It is true men considered women intruders when they sought employment in the skilled industries and professions, but women as a whole were a little more emphatic than the men in the expression of this opinion.
Time is a forceful element in the crystallization of ideas and in giving stability to activities. Public opinion has accepted many of the radical movements of women of the eighteenth century as a matter of fact, and is becoming ever weaker in its opposition to the extension of the political and industrial rights of women.
The movement for the political enfranchisement of women has taken two aspects—the one industrial and the other social.
Of the industrial movement the most striking example at the present time is that in England. They are asking for the suffrage on the ground that they as industrial workers have a serious need for it.
It may seem at first a minor matter as to whether women should vote for the members of parliament since they have the municipal franchise, but it is really of vital importance to the working women. It is parliament which enacts labor laws and legislates for the people in general. Whatever protection the laboring people get through the enactment of laws depends upon the philanthrophy of the wealthy classes, or upon their own representatives. This state of affairs is one of the factors encouraging them to make every possible effort to increase their representation in parliament.
The working women—especially union workers—appreciate this fact and demand the right to vote for the members of Parliament on the ground of their economic well being. It is an economic question with them, and they are evidently willing to fight for this privilege just as the men were at the time of ‘Chartism.’ Ideas of sex propriety have been cast aside, and the working women are standing as a class, who appreciate their economic relation to society without any regard for the prevalent conception of a ‘woman’s sphere’ which long ago became a myth to them.
It is true that many of their leaders are women of the higher social classes but this same phenomenon has characterized, though not to the same degree, the movements of working men to conquer political rights.
“What in England and America has been the movement of a whole sex, has, in Germany under Social Democracy been merged in the movement of the working class. Women are to have their rights not as a sex, but as workers.”[113]
In France as in Germany the woman’s movement goes hand in-hand with socialism. “There are no distinguished persons to head the movement. It springs from the middle and lower classes and is the outcome of the efforts of a group of enlightened women who, having freed themselves from the prejudices that hedge about their sex, have crowned their emancipation by claiming the vote.”[114]
Europe presents a somewhat different industrial situation from newly settled countries. Class lines are sharply drawn and the element of chance has been largely eliminated in the industrial field. There is little shifting from the lower to the higher classes, so characteristic of newly settled countries. This apparent fixity in social and economic life fosters the development of class consciousness.