Letter to women

In this long letter suffragist Mary Lee welcomes the formation of the Working Women's Trades Union but declares that it must be accompanied by women's suffrage.

On the subject of women's suffrage she wrote:

If a candidate goes to the hustings unprepared to give an opinion on a subject which interests over 1,700 intelligent women, his fellow subjects, he is certainly unfit, either from ignorance or indifference, to legislate for women...It is a well established fact that with individuals, as with nations, long subjection eats away the nobler instincts and aspirations and develops their worst opposites. What wonder, then, that there are to be found women in whom grinding poverty and habitual humiliation have effaced all which ennobles and beautifies womanhood?...Methinks it speaks well for woman that her nature has so resisted the debasing effects of centuries of subjection...It must encourage all workers in the cause of woman suffrage to find that their most persistent opponents are amongst those who never trouble themselves to think on any subject, and those so fossilised in their own ideas that they can only think in a groove, and the dawn of a new thought can find no chink to enter at in their sealed-up souls; but such reluctance to receive the light will not retard the dawn of brighter days for those who toil in despair and in darkness not self imposed.

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