“Why,” said Mr. Lister, “it came about in the most simple way in the world, so simple in fact that it reminds one of Artemus Ward’s story about the man who was confined for sixteen years in a loathsome dungeon without food or drink. A bright idea struck him and he opened the window and got out. You remember what an eye-opener the great Strike of the London dockmen was; the whole world suddenly realized, as by an electric shock, that Labour, instead of being the footstool or fawning slave of Capital as it had stupidly been assumed to be, was easily its master. Through its enormous power for combination, Labour was King, and could dictate terms to Capital which it could enforce whenever it pleased. This discovery, for it was as really a discovery as if a new continent had been found, illumined the whole civilised globe. All classes of people in the world who were suffering from oppression began to look carefully about them to see if the weapons for their deliverance were not lying unperceived and rusting in their own hands. Like a flash of lightning the women of this country saw that they possessed as great an advantage as the London dockmen did. They saw that by combining as a sex into one solid mass they could place such limitations and embargoes upon man, as would wrest from him at one master-stroke the tardy rights for which they had been cringing and suing for wearisome years. Why, good Heavens! the very perpetuity of the race was in their hands. About this time also there was much earnest talk in many periodicals which sprang up, about the ‘Brotherhood of Man.’ Strange as it may appear, the women suddenly took up the notion that if all men were brothers, all women were none the less sisters, and as such should minister to each other like sisters, and protect each other from all harm. This great idea of the Sisterhood of Women, joined with woman’s discovery of her real power when in combination, led to the Great Woman’s Strike which you see now in progress.” “And this,” I said, a sudden light breaking in upon my mind, “is, of course, the cause of the utter lack of taste and neatness which I see everywhere, in the persons of men as well as in the keeping of the dwellings. And can it also be the reason,” I added musingly, “that I see no buttons on the garments of any one rich or poor?”