DELEGATE. But that's precisely what we want: "The man in the workshop, the woman in the home." THERESE. If the mother is not at home nowadays, it's because the man is in the saloon. DELEGATE. The men go to the saloons because they're tired of finding the place badly kept and the supper not ready when they go home, and instead of a wife a tired-out factory hand. THERESE. D'you think it's to amuse themselves the women go to work? Don't you suppose they prefer a quiet life in their own homes? DELEGATE. They've only got to stay there. THERESE. And who's to support them? DELEGATE. Their husbands! THERESE. First they've got to have husbands. What about the ones who have no husbands--the girls, the widows, the abandoned? Isn't it better to give them a trade than to force them to take a lover? Some of them want to leave off being obliged to beg for the help of a man. Can't you see that for a lot of women work means freedom? Can you blame them for demanding the right to work? That's the victory they're fighting for. DELEGATE. I'm not at all sure that that victory is a desirable one. Indeed, I'm sure it is not. When you've succeeded in giving the woman complete independence through hard work; when you have taken her children from her and handed them over to a creche; when you've severed her from her domestic duties and also from all domestic happiness and joy, how d'you know she won't turn round and demand to have her old slavery back again? The quietness and peace of her own home? The right to care for her own husband and nurse her own child? THERESE. But can't you see that it's just that that the immense majority of women are demanding now? We want the women to stay at home just as much as you do. But how are you going to make that possible? At present the money spent on drink equals the total of the salaries paid to women. So the problem is to get rid of drunkenness. But the middle classes refuse to meet this evil straightforwardly because the votes which keep them in power are in the pockets of the publicans; and you socialist leaders refuse just as much as the middle classes really to tackle the drink question because you're as keen for votes as they are. You've got to look the situation in the face. We're on the threshold of a new era. In every civilized country, in the towns and in the rural districts, from the destitute and from the poor, from every home that a man has deserted for drink or left empty because men have no longer the courage to marry, a woman will appear, who comes out from that home and will sit down by your side in the workshop, in the factory, at the office, in the counting house. You don't want her as housewife; and as she refuses to be a prostitute, she will become a woman-worker, a competitor; and finally, because she has more energy than you have, and because _she_ is not a drunkard, she will take your places.