"Listen now. That statement in the _Sentinel_ has set the town talking, of course, and stirred up a lot of feeling, for and against suffrage. But what it would be worth as an issue to go to the mat with on election day, is exactly nothing at all. You go out and ask a voter to vote against a candidate for district attorney because he's an anti-suffragist, and he'll say, 'What difference does it make? It isn't up to him to give women the vote. It doesn't matter to me what his private opinions are, as long as he makes a good district attorney!' But there is an issue that we _can_ go to the mat with, and so far it hasn't been raised at all. There hasn't been a peep." She reached over and laid a hand on Betty's arm. "Do you know what the fire protection laws for factories are? And do you know that it's against the law for women to work in factories at night? Well, and do you know what the conditions are in every big mill in this town? With this boom in war orders, they've simply taken off the lid. Anything goes. The fire and building ordinances are disregarded, and for six months the mills have been running a night shift as well as a day shift, on Sundays and week-days, and three-quarters of their operatives are women. Those women go to work at seven o'clock at night, and quit at six in the morning; and they have an hour off from twelve to one in the middle of the night. "Now do you see? It's up to the district attorney to enforce the law. Isn't it fair to ask this defender of the home whether he believes that women should be home at night or not, and if he does, what he's going to do about it? Talk about slogans! The situation bristles with them! We could placard this town with a lot of big black-faced questions that would make it the hottest place for George Remington that he ever found himself in. "Well, it would be pretty good campaign work if he was the hypocrite I took him to be, from his stuff in the _Sentinel_. But if he's on the level, as you think he is, there's a chance--don't you see there's a chance that he'd come out flat-footed for the enforcement of the law? And if he did!... Child, can you see what would happen if he _did_?" Betty's eyes were shining like a pair of big sapphires. When she spoke, it was in a whisper like an excited child. "I can see a little," she said. "I think I can see. But tell me." "In the first place," said E. Eliot, "see whom he'd have against him. There'd be the best people, to start with. Most of them are stockholders in the mills. Why, you must be, yourself, in the Jaffry-Bradshaw Company! Your father was, anyway." Betty nodded. "You want to be sure you know what it means," the older woman went on. "This thing might cut into your dividends, if it went through."