There are, moreover, the indirect effects of the possession of the vote. The politician who is also a statesman should know that Acts of Parliament only work well with the intelligent co-operation of the people. Who can expect the women to co-operate intelligently in working Acts about which they were never consulted, and which no one ever takes the trouble to explain to them? Men say they were never consulted about the Insurance Act. But it was their own fault if they allowed themselves to be overridden. The women could not help themselves. In addition to the certainty of better co-operation, there is the increased sense of responsibility, the stimulus to thought and organisation, the fact that politicians and reformers all concentrate on educating the voter or the potential voter. We all know the candidate who will only answer questions from electors, and any woman who has not been permitted to ask her own question, but has been compelled to put men up to ask it, knows with what pathetic ease such men are fobbed off. Men are not educated in women’s questions as they should be, and the women themselves are not educated and independent. In his fine speech in the House on 6th May 1913, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald said: “I share the opinion of those who say that the mere granting of the votes to women would not directly increase wages, and so on. But the difficulty we have got is that when we try to increase women’s wages there is a sort of subordinate frame of mind in which women approach all these points. They are careless. They will not organise. They will not take pains and trouble to look after themselves. What is the reason? The reason is that they have always been accustomed to shuffle responsibility for their own actions upon somebody else’s shoulders. The very argument which the Prime Minister used this afternoon, that we were doing so well for women, was the most humiliating argument that any Liberal could use against such a reform as we are asking for. We want women to do these things for themselves, because they can do them a great deal better than men can do them. We want to get them into the frame of mind of independent and self-respecting citizens who will co-operate with us, and not merely ask us to do things for them, when they can do them much better for themselves. What would happen if the franchise were given would be this: Women would take a far keener interest in such questions as wages, a far keener interest in their place in the factory or workshop. Women as enfranchised citizens would join the unions, would make their economic demands with far more advantage, with far more spirit, with a much more rigid backbone than they do now. Up would go wages as an indirect consequence of the vote having been given to them.” So we come back to status after all as the most important of all the effects of enfranchisement. I hope to return later on to this matter of low status, and show how it has been responsible for other