Furthermore, as has been shown, there are to-day millions of women, in
hundreds of pursuits, all of them with a lively personal interest in the
manner that our laws are shaped. Questions concerning the hours of work;
night, Sunday and child-labor; payment of wages and notice of discharge;
safety appliances in factory and shop; etc.--all are political questions
that concern them as well as the men. Workingmen know little or nothing
about conditions in many branches of industry, where women are mainly,
or exclusively, engaged. Employers have all the interest in the world to
hush up evils that they are responsible for. Factory inspection
frequently does not extend to branches of industry in which women are
exclusively employed: such as it is, it is utterly inadequate: and yet
these are the very branches in which protective measures frequently are
most needed. It suffices to mention the workshops in which seamstresses,
dressmakers, milliners, etc., are crowded together in our larger cities.
From thence, hardly a complaint issues; thither no investigation has as
yet penetrated. Finally, as a trader, woman is also interested in laws
on commerce and tariffs. There can, accordingly, be no doubt that woman
has an interest and a right to demand a hand in the shaping of things by
legislation, as well as man. Her participation in public life would
impart a strong stimulus thereto, and open manifold new vistas.
Such demands, however, are met with the curt rebuff: "Women know nothing
of politics, and most of them don't want to, either; neither do they
know how to use the ballot." True, and not true. True enough, until now,
very few women, in Germany at least, have ventured to demand political
equality also. The first woman, who, as a writer, came out in its favor
in Germany was, as far as we know, Frau Hedwig Dohm. More recently, it
is mainly the Socialist working-women, who are vigorously agitating for
the idea; and their number is ever larger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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