the work of a woman in her home is unproductive. Transfer it to another home; let her do domestic work next door, she is then paid wages for the same work, plus her necessities, plus hours of rest. Her labour is then recognised as productive. But the unrecorded increment of women's labour really goes to enrich the home, and thereby enrich the State, which denies them recognition. Women feel that in the lower grades of labour they are sweated without redress; in higher grades they are paid less than men for work of the same value, as, for instance, in County Council schools, and in Government post-offices. Professional women are handicapped in various ways. All intelligent workers among the poor are forced to see, sooner or later, that nothing can be done by women for women without the Suffrage. At the Tunbridge Wells Conference of Women Workers two years ago, Mrs. Creighton publicly confessed that, after long opposition, she had come to see Women's Suffrage a necessity. At the mass meeting of the Pan-Anglican Congress, in the Albert Hall, Mr. William Temple closed his brilliant speech by calling to the women to abolish "sweating"; they only could do it; but that as they only could do it through the Suffrage, "You Women must insist on having the Vote!" But the newspapers did not report that trumpet call to women workers. They rarely do. (3) Political women are becoming awake to their anomalous position. They had been called into existence to help in public work by canvassing for men (which I, for one, would like to put down as illegal). They had been told that after their party was safe it would find time to consider their interests. But they have found that their candidates' promises were chiefly those like pie-crust, made to be broken; so that the promises of those who really wished to fulfil them had not power to take effect. Other candidates they had worked for, who promised nothing, relegate them to the seclusion of home till the next election. (4) Perhaps above all present causes of excitement is the general friction caused in the very "homes" they are supposed to reign over, by the increasing interference with their freedom of conscience, and personal liberty there; by mandates issued by the emotional voices of those of the other sex, who, happening to be in power, invade these homes. on a superficial pretext of doing them good. Interference in the nature and in the hours that they work (for money); interference as to when, where, and how they shall work (whether thereby they lose the chance of work altogether or not); interference with what has hitherto been considered the sanctity of the home, in passing the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, without any mandate from the country, and without asking the opinion of either wives or sisters; interference with the education of their children; inter

ference in the nursing of them and laying them to sleep. It is true these questions are all important considerations, but that inexperienced men should attempt to determine the domestic life of collective women, without taking counsel of experienced women, is too ridiculous a waste of energy to be called statesmanship. It takes the best work, and the best thought of the two sexes, to make a happy home; and to make a happy and prosperous State it is necessary that the two sexes also co-operate. Women have come to realise this, hence the unrest, which will never now be quieted until justice be done, common sense recognised, women enfranchised, and the spirit of the British Constitution allowed to be true to itself.

IV.

In conclusion, one word of explanation as to why different " methods are pursued by different parties seeking the same end. We women who have worked for forty years on "the right and proper methods," which should have been sufficient had men been but wise, have egregiously failed. We sent in a majority of members in our favour. We have sent in the greatest number of petitions that have ever been collected for any purpose-the largest, over 257,000; we have sent deputation after deputation; we have appeared in the longest procession which was ever made for anything-10,000 of us, each one of whom represented 100 who could not come. And the Prime Minister said this was not sufficient pressure, and has done nothing! Poor, patient, plodding, persevering women have gained nothing by all their expenditure in time, energy, money, faith, and life!

So the other section, being politicians, referred to the practical side of the British Constitution. They learned that "The Government is a machine which can only act under pressure," and they asked it in which way it would like pressure to be applied. The reply was "by overwhelming signs that the women of the nation wanted a vote." They gave the largest peaceful demonstration that has ever been made in the country to demand the vote. The Government saw no cause to alter its decision; they had gone down to work against Government candidates, partly in propaganda, partly to show the power of women, and their tremendous success should have given a wise Government a significant hint. They found out by what methods various classes of male would-be electors demanded and secured their vote, and they formulated plans whereby, with marvellous self-restraint, while doing no wrong, they (1) The irresponsible breakage of two window panes is a negligible quantity, compared to the destruction recorded to have taken place by male methods.

should show that they were willing to suffer in order to secure their freedom. They have done that, and unexpectedly they have done more. They have proved there is no justice possible to women until they are enfranchised. They desired to place their petition in the Prime Minister's own hands, a step for which they had constitutional warrant in Parliamentary history, and they were prevented by the police. Though the inexactitudes and the suppressions of the Press have prevented the clear issues being laid before the country; to those who know the truth, a terrible lesson has been read to their sex of the causes and conditions of the injustice under which all women live.

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If an orderly group of men had entered Palace Yard, with the legal intention of presenting a petition to the Prime Minister, one of three things would have happened. He would either have yielded to receive it, and promised them consideration; or he might have refused. Then the men would have been told to move on," and, if they objected to do so, might or might not have been arrested. If arrested, they would either have received nominal or short sentences as disturbers of the peace, or longer sentences, as political prisoners; but then they would have been made first-class misdemeanants. But the women, for mere technical breaches of the law, have been awarded excessive sentences, and classed with the lowest criminals. It is the burning sense of the unconstitutional injustice which has been meted out to the Suffragettes which has roused the heart of the true womanhood of the country. Our forty years' wandering in the wilderness has given one good result it has taught women, who have all been placed in one class by their legislators, the solidarity and sisterhood of woman, and it has brought them together in a way that nothing else could have done. Every illegal arrest, and every excessive sentence, makes the dry bones live, and awakes hundreds of women to action; and that is why the Societies for Women's Suffrage, who do not work with the militant section, must admire their enthusiasm, and respect their political acumen, which has advanced the cause further in four years than our patient work has done in forty.

C. C. STOPES.

MARK RUTHERFORD: AN APPRECIATION.

THE work of an imaginative writer of genius may be dealt with in two ways. The estimate may be of the most comprehensive character, impersonal in its nature in which the critic seeks to discover the place of his subject in the age and country in which he writes, and his relationship to literature in general, and to thought that is universal, as well as contemporary. For the achievement of this undertaking synthetical powers of a high order are essential, and to its success it is almost equally essential that there should be the background of time, so that phenomena assuming undue importance in the eyes of a contemporary should regain their proper significance and proportion. Or the literary estimate may take the form of a critical and descriptive essay, the object of which is to show mainly the source of the writer's powers over men's sympathies, and incidentally to justify the critic's faith and preference and homage; and it must necessarily be largely coloured by feelings and sentiments of a personal nature. The more modest task (or privilege, as I conceive it to be), to seek to show the reasons entertained by some amongst us that "Mark Rutherford" is the profoundest writer of fiction of his day, may be viewed by many to whom his books have become a precious possession as an almost superfluous one. It will be said with perfect accuracy that at least two volumes of the series of books which have been given to the world by this writer, Mark Rutherford and Mark Rutherford's Deliverance, have had a very large circulation, and have attained what is usually regarded as an incontestable proof of popularity, publication in the form of a cheap shilling edition. Yet how far "Mark Rutherford" is from obtaining the recognition that his genius merits is strikingly shown by an incident which has occurred within the last twelve months in the pages of the Morning Post. It will be, I think, unanimously conceded that the literary quality of the Morning Post attains a fairly high level, several of its reviewers and critics being well-known litterateurs. A reader, himself a man with some literary pretensions, drew up a list of writers who were likely, in his opinion, to survive contemporary favour. His list. was challenged and criticised, and various well-known literary men, including some of the literary contributors to the Morning Post, produced opposition lists. I submitted them to most careful examination. Not one contained the name of the writer who chooses to be known by his pseudonym of "Mark Rutherford,"

the title also of his first imaginative work. Similar non-recognition is discernible elsewhere. Wishing to ascertain the views of contemporary critics-it will be remembered the Autobiography appeared in March, 1881-I made an exhaustive examination of the catalogues of Periodical Literature to be found in the British Museum, only to learn that but one essay has appeared in either literary review or magazine, and that of too slight and inadequate a nature to justify the title of essay. I have sought to account for this non-recognition, and I am of the opinion that it is mainly, or at least largely, due to the mistaken impression prevailing in some quarters that this series of striking and profoundly personal books are "religious" novels, concerned with some phase of orthodox unorthodoxy, which, interesting and even exciting at the moment, having had its day, has lost its interest, and given place to newer polemical fiction.

I have seen Mark Rutherford carelessly classified with a wellknown novel, the main purpose of which was to demonstrate and justify the departure of the hero, a clergyman, from the tenets of the Established Church. Round this novel acute controversy, it will be recalled, has raged. Statesmen with a strong liking for contested theological problems reviewed it and became its partisans or critics and its outcome has been a definite separation from the creeds and dogmas of the Church. No one of these conditions applies to Mark Rutherford or Mark Rutherford's Deliverance (which was published four years later), or to The Revolution in Tanner's Lane. (It is true that the purpose of all the books is a search, a heart-searching quest for the "Universal,' and their final import-thus they interpret themselves to me, though I will not deny others have otherwise translated them--is an acceptance of God. This is the "message" and meaning under various circumstances of all the books, the achievement of Mark Rutherford, and his Deliverance; the Schooling of Miriam, in Miriam's Schooling; the "Saving," after much anguish of soul and travail of spirit, of "Catherine Furze" and Clara Hopgood. But the books are philosophical rather than theological; and if we derive from them, as we do, the "message that the writer never fails to deliver in his books, and interpret its import as a real philosophy of life, as significant and vital to-day as it will be a hundred years to come, and has been a hundred years ago, it is gained from our knowledge of the people with whom he has made us familiar, of their feelings, passions, thoughts, and activities, as our philosophy in real life is derived. Mark Rutherford is too great an artist to make this obtrusive, or to dedicate any book, or even page, to this or that religious or unorthodox theory. He tells us of certain people, of certain things that