Thus, instead of 8,000,000 women in industry who are alleged to "need the ballot," we have only about 2,500,000 women of voting age employed in industries that can reasonably be said to come within the category of those properly subject to remedial labor legislation; and of these women a very large percentage are aliens and would not be entitled to use the ballot if woman suffrage were granted. By itself, of course, this fact does not dispose of the argument that the industrial woman needs the ballot, but it does reveal how comparatively few are the women who could possibly try to improve their working conditions by means of the vote, and how hopelessly outnumbered they would be if reduced to the necessity of fighting for their rights at the ballot box. The premise of the suffrage argument that the woman in industry needs the ballot in order to get fair treatment is the assumption that she now fails to get as fair treatment as is given the industrial man, and that this is due to the fact that she has no vote. This arbitrary assumption is without justification either in fact or reason. Every law placed upon the statute-books of any state for the benefit of the working man is a blanket law and covers men and women engaged in the same industry. All the benefits that have accrued to the working man through legislation are enjoyed equally by his sister in industry. In addition she has the advantage of special protective laws which have been enacted simply because she is a woman--because she is weaker physically than man and because she is a potential mother and must be protected in the interest of the race. I am not arguing, of course, that the working woman has all the protection she needs, but I am arguing that she is not unfairly treated as compared with her industrial brother, who has the ballot, and that whatever hardships she may now suffer are as likely to be removed without woman suffrage as they are with it. If she is being unfairly treated, I think it will be found that she is so treated in common with all industrial workers--simply because she is a worker and not at all because she is a woman. And in taking this ground I am by no means forced to depend upon theory; for, after all, the best answer to the dogma that the woman in industry needs the ballot in order to obtain fair wages and fair working conditions is the fact that in states where women have voted anywhere from 4 to 46 years the laws for the working woman are no better than they are in male suffrage states. Indeed, it is pretty generally agreed that the states which have been first and most progressive in enacting laws for the benefit of women and children in industry are states that have refused to give women the vote.