suffragist, and it is most certainly not true of me.

My home life and relations have been as nearly ideal as possible in this imperfect world. About a year after my marriage my daughter Christabel was born, and in another eighteen months my second daughter Sylvia came. Three other children followed, and for some years I was rather deeply immersed in my domestic. affairs.

I was never so absorbed with home and children, however, that I lost interest in community affairs. Dr. Pankhurst did not desire that I should turn myself into a household machine. It was his firm belief that society as well as the family stands in need of women's services. So while my children were still in their cradles I was serving on the executive committee of the Women's Suffrage Society, and also on the executive board of the committee which was working to secure the Married Women's Property Act. This act having passed in 1882, I threw myself into the suffrage work with renewed energy. A new Reform Act, known as the County Franchise Bill, extending the suffrage to farm laborers, was under discussion, and we believed that our years of educational propaganda work had prepared the country to support us in a demand for a woman-suffrage amendment to the bill. For several years we had been holding the most splendid meetings in cities all over the kingdom. The crowds, the enthusiasm, the generous response to appeals for support, all these seemed to justify us in our belief that woman suffrage was near. In fact, in 1884, when the County Franchise Bill came before the country, we had an actual majority in favor of suffrage in the House of Commons.

The Beginning of Rebuffs

But a favorable majority in the House of Commons by no means insures the success of any measure. I shall explain this at length when I come to our work of opposing candidates who have avowed themselves suffragists, a course which has greatly puzzled our American friends. The Liberal party was in power in 1884, and a great memorial was sent to the prime minister, the Right Honorable William E. Gladstone, asking that a woman-suffrage amendment to the County Franchise Bill be submitted to the free and unbiased consideration of the House. Mr. Gladstone curtly refused, declaring that if a woman-suffrage amend

ment should be carried, the government would disclaim responsibility for the bill. The amendment was submitted nevertheless, but Mr. Gladstone would not allow it to be freely discussed, and he ordered. Liberal members to vote against it. What we call a whip was sent out against it, a note virtually commanding party members to be on hand at a certain hour to vote against the women's amendment. Undismayed, the women tried to have an independent suffrage bill introduced, but Mr. Gladstone so arranged Parliamentary business that the bill never even came up for discussion.

How Gladstone Side-tracked Suffrage

I am not going to write a history of the woman-suffrage movement in England prior to 1903, when the Woman's Social and Political Union was organized. That history is full of repetitions of just such stories as the one I have related. Gladstone was an implacable foe of woman suffrage. He believed that women's work and politics lay in service to men's parties. One of the shrewdest acts of Mr. Gladstone's career was his disruption of the suffrage organization in England. He accomplished this by substituting "something just as good," that something being Women's Liberal Associations. Beginning in 1881 in Bristol, these associations spread rapidly through the country and, in 1887, became a National Women's Liberal Federation. The promise of the Federation was that by allying themselves with men in party politics, women would soon earn the right to vote. The avidity with which the women swallowed this promise, left off working for themselves, and threw themselves into the men's work was amazing.

The Women's Liberal Federation is an organization of women who believe in the principles of the Liberal party. (The somewhat older Primrose League is a similar organization of women who adhere to Conservative party principles.) Neither of these organizations had woman suffrage for its object. They came into existence to uphold party ideas and to work for the election of party candidates.

I am told that women in America have recently allied themselves with political parties, believing, just as we did, that such action would break down opposition to suffrage by showing the men that women possess political ability, and that

Christabel Pankhurst, editor of "The Suffragette" and author of "Plain Facts About a Great Evil"

politics is work for women as well as men. Let them not

be deceived. I can. assure the American women that our long alliance with the great parties, our devotion to party programs, our faithful work at elections, never advanced the suffrage cause one step. The men accepted the services of the women, but they never offered any kind of payment.

As far as I am concerned, I did not delude myself with any false hopes in the matter. I was present when the Women's Liberal Federation came into existence. Mrs. Gladstone presided, offering the meeting many consolatory words for the absence of "our great

leader," Mr. Gladstone, who of course

had no time to waste on a gathering of women. At Mrs. Jacob Bright's request I joined

the Federation. At this stage of my development

12

Society, and I had considerable faith in the permeating powers of its mild socialism. But I was already fairly convinced of the futility of trusting to political parties. Even as a child I had begun to wonder at the naïve faith of party members in the promises of their leaders. I well remember my father returning home from political meetings, his face aglow with enthusiasm. "What happened, father?" I would ask, and he would reply triumphantly, "Ah! We passed the resolution."

"Then you'll get your measure through the next session," I predicted.

"I won't say that," was the usual reply. "Things don't always move as quickly as that. But we passed the resolution." Well, the suffra

gists, when they

"Often I have heard women who normal outlet for their soured and disappointed not true of any suffranot true of me. My been as nearly ideal as

Women's Liberal Federation must have felt that they had passed their resolution. They settled down to work for the party and to prove that they were as capable of voting as the recently enfranchised farm laborers. Of course a few women remained loyal to suffrage. They began again on the old educational lines to work for the cause. Not one woman took counsel with herself as to how and why the agricultural laborers won their franchise. They had won it, as a matter of fact, by burning hay-ricks, rioting, and otherwise demonstrating their strength in the only way that English politicians can understand. The threat to march a hundred thousand men to the House of Commons unless the bill

the taunt that suffragists have failed to find any emotions, and are therefore beings. This is probably gist, and it is most certainly home life and relations have possible in this imperfect world"

These pic

tures of Mrs. Pankhurst and Christabel are typical. Just like you and

when about their daily business, they are tremendously in earnest when on the firing line" in the suffrage battle

no

was passed played its part also in securing the agricultural laborer his political freedom. But no woman suffragist ticed that. As for myself, I was too young politically to learn the lesson then. I had to go through years of public work before I acquired the experience and the wisdom to know how to wring concessions from the English government. I had to hold public office. I had to go behind the scenes in the government schools, in the workhouses and other charitable institutions; I had to get a closehand view of the misery and unhappiness of a man-made world, before I reached the point where I could successfully revolt against it. was almost immediately after the collapse of the woman-suffrage movement in 1884 that I entered upon this new phase of my career.

A

RDEN is a little village in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mere eddy of brown weather-beaten cottages around the open Square, as if long ago some strong wind of destiny whirled the human sediment of the valley together in that place.

The inhabitants are divided strictly into two classes, both by their gender and by their character. The women are good, industrious, and shrewishly unhappy. The men are not good nor industrious, but they enjoy life. There are many children, all ragged, barefooted, and healthy. The stranger wonders how they are fed, how any of the people subsist without visible means of support.

A very large hotel standing upon the sides of the mountain above the town is the answer to this question. From the first of June to the end of October it is filled with summer boarders, rich people from the cities North and South, who are drawn to this place because of the keen frosty air, a certain mineral spring, and because the troutfishing is remarkably good.

The women of Arden find a ready sale for their butter, eggs, chickens, and "garden-truck" at the back door of the hotel. The front veranda is also a market where they dispose of "crochet," knitted coverlets, and every kind of needlework. The men of Arden become guides, taking camping parties to hunt or fish. They furnish wildcat whiskey and perform all the doubtful services which respectable citizens require when they are away on their vacations. Pinkerton Britt, the one attorney in the village, gives entertainments in the parlor, and earns more money mimicking the whanging eloquence of mountain preachers than he does from the practice of his pro

fession. Tom Bowman knows every fishing-hole for twenty miles, and neglects his cornfield for the more profitable business of guiding foreign guests on fishing trips. Oliver Beasley, the old, fat, baldheaded, whisker-hidden merchant of Arden, keeps an assortment of deadly sweetmeats. which he sells at an enormous profit. And Berryman Agnew is the secret agent for Logan Hawk's still. Any cocktail-drinking son of the city might walk out upon the veranda, whistle twice, wink at the courthouse, and immediately Berryman would descend from some dark corner of it and deliver a quart of "dew."

Such a community never produces a great man, rarely a good one. But almost without fail, every village of this character in the Southern mountains has its “bad” man, a man in whom evil has become a power and a distinction. Logan Hawk was this man in Arden County. If there had been a contest to determine by popular vote who was the most lawless citizen, he would have been chosen without a dissenting voice. The fact is, no man would have dared cast a vote against him, for he was proud of his fame and determined to maintain it.

He was a bachelor, nearly forty years of age, and appeared to be barely thirty. He was very tall, with broad shoulders and saddle-bowed legs. His head was heroic, his face long, dark, and keen, sardonic, as if he carried a lifted sword in his smile. His hair was black, thick, and straight as an Indian's. His nose sneered, being lifted at the corners of each nostril by the smile. He was always clean shaven, and his chin pressed forward to meet you. When he regarded you with his deep-set, humorous eyes, you inferred at once that if this man had