A further- stage in the freeing of women Wes reached
in the Commons on Friday week, when the Women's Emancipation Bill Was-mead a second time without a: division. Its.aim is 'to enable women to .hold- any civil or judicial office; to hold the -franchise -.and to cote-'on' the _same terms as men; -and to sit and vote in the Lords. Dr. Addison explained that -the ,Government could not undertake to extend the franchise 'to women between twenty-one and thirty -so soon after the 'Reform Act. They had no intention of dissolving Parliament, which would be the necessary result of the new Bill. One Labour Member explained that before women could beadmitted to the Trade Unions-theymust receive equal pay for equal work; another referred the exclusion of women 'to the respect Trade Unionists have for them. Captain Elliot, in a lively speech, soundly-belaboured the Mandarins, in Parliament anti the.Trade Unions, who had been unable or unwilling to see ten years-ago that war was inevitable unless they took means to scare the dieturherofEurope into pacificism. In thewar, he said, women were the most grievous tufferers—" those whose lives were wasted because of men .who had died."
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