The first time he was only bored with the story, because he did not see how he could use it for his own purposes—therefore he had forgotten the details.
She told him the sad story of woman's wrongs, which go unredressed while their sisters clamor for female suffrage and make school boards intolerable by their squabbles. The women do but copy the men; therefore, while the men neglect the things that lie ready to their hand and hope for things impossible, under new forms of government, what wonder if the women do the like?
This time Dick listened, because he now understood that a practical use might be made out of the information. He was not a man of highly sensitive organization, nor did he feel any indignation at the things Angela told him, seeing that he had grown up among these things all his life, and regarded the inequalities of wages and work as part of the bad luck of being born a woman. But he took note of all, and asked shrewd questions and made suggestions.
"If," he said, "there's a hundred women asking for ten places, of course the governor'll give them to the cheapest."
"That," replied Angela, "is a matter of course as things now are. But there is another way of considering the question. If we had a Woman's Trade Union, as we shall have before long, where there are ten places only ten women should be allowed to apply, and just wages be demanded."
"How is that to be done?"
"My friend, you have yet a great deal to learn."
Dick reddened and replied rudely, that if he had, he did not expect to learn it from a woman.
"A great deal to learn," she repeated gently. "Above all, you have got to learn the lesson which your cousin began to teach you the other night, the great lesson of finding out what you want and then getting it for yourselves. Governments are nothing; you must help yourselves; you must combine."
He was silent. The girl made him angry, yet he was afraid of her because no other woman he had ever met spoke as she did or knew so much.