The Voteless Sex
By Meta L. Stern
(American contemporary journalist and speaker. From a leaflet on Suffrage.)
Thousands of women today are working under conditions unfit for human beings. At unguarded machinery they are risking their nimble fingers, the only source of income they possess. In firetrap buildings they are risking their lives. Badly ventilated workrooms, filled with particles of flying dust, weaken their lungs and make them susceptible to tuberculosis. Long working hours sap their strength and vitality. Dangerous occupations make them physical wrecks in a few years and render them unfit for wifehood and motherhood. In the case of married women workers an appalling infant mortality is a concomitant of women’s labor. But with all these sacrifices even the woman who performs a man’s work does not get a man’s wages. Everywhere we find unequal pay for equal work. The voteless sex is cheap.