CHAPTER III.
I turned eagerly toward Mr. Justin Lister, as soon as our companion had left us. He was about my age, and there was a certain sympathetic friendliness in the glance of his frank blue eye that established a kind of magnetic rapport between us at once. It was therefore an easy matter for me to ask the privilege of accompanying him wherever he was going in order that I might have an opportunity to talk with him. He assented to my request readily and added that he was going to his own house, and if I could put up with such awkward hospitality as a man unassisted by woman could give, he would be pleased to entertain me. I accepted his offer with pleasure, and as we walked leisurely along the well-paved and shaded street, I lost no time in begging him to acquaint me with the beginning of this astounding Woman’s Strike. “How did it come about?”
“Why,” said Mr. Lister, “it came about in the most simple way in the world, so simple in fact that it reminds one of Artemus Ward’s story about the man who was confined for sixteen years in a loathsome dungeon without food or drink. A bright idea struck him and he opened the window and got out. You remember what an eye-opener the great Strike of the London dockmen was; the whole world suddenly realized, as by an electric shock, that Labour, instead of being the footstool or fawning slave of Capital as it had stupidly been assumed to be, was easily its master. Through its enormous power for combination, Labour was King, and could dictate terms to Capital which it could enforce whenever it pleased. This discovery, for it was as really a discovery as if a new continent had been found, illumined the whole civilised globe. All classes of people in the world who were suffering from oppression began to look carefully about them to see if the weapons for their deliverance were not lying unperceived and rusting in their own hands. Like a flash of lightning the women of this country saw that they possessed as great an advantage as the London dockmen did. They saw that by combining as a sex into one solid mass they could place such limitations and embargoes upon man, as would wrest from him at one master-stroke the tardy rights for which they had been cringing and suing for wearisome years. Why, good Heavens! the very perpetuity of the race was in their hands. About this time also there was much earnest talk in many periodicals which sprang up, about the ‘Brotherhood of Man.’ Strange as it may appear, the women suddenly took up the notion that if all men were brothers, all women were none the less sisters, and as such should minister to each other like sisters, and protect each other from all harm. This great idea of the Sisterhood of Women, joined with woman’s discovery of her real power when in combination, led to the Great Woman’s Strike which you see now in progress.”
“And this,” I said, a sudden light breaking in upon my mind, “is, of course, the cause of the utter lack of taste and neatness which I see everywhere, in the persons of men as well as in the keeping of the dwellings. And can it also be the reason,” I added musingly, “that I see no buttons on the garments of any one rich or poor?”
“Oh, the buttons!” said Mr. Lister, with the first genuine laugh that I had heard that day; “one of the first things that the women did after the strike began, was to send word to the tailors, that inasmuch as the sewing of buttons on to garments had from time immemorial been the chief high prerogative which man had grandly conceded to woman, they did not propose to allow any one to take it from them. Small and poor as woman’s privileges had been in the world’s great history she could not part with a single one of them. They made the poor tailors quake in their shoes by threatening that they should never know the smile of a woman again if they sewed a single button on to a garment of any kind. The tailors hastened to send a delegation to the Women’s Executive Committee, meekly promising to obey. They even offered to take the buttons off from all the garments they had on hand, if any such propitiation was needed.”
“This regulation in regard to buttons, must have been rather hard on the button manufacturers?” I suggested, with an effort at jocularity which I had not deemed possible under the circumstances.
“Yes,” said Mr. Lister, “it has completely extinguished that industry for the present. I understand that the Button Manufacturers have a delegation now on its knees before the Woman’s Executive Committee imploring them to rescue them from gaping ruin. But the young woman who is chairwoman of that committee is a person of great spirit, a regular Jeanne d’Arc. She will never yield,” and Mr. Justin Lister sighed so deeply that I suddenly remembered that the Strike had summarily deprived him of a prospective bride.
We walked along in silence for a few moments when all at once it occurred to my mind that I had not made any inquiry as to the nature of the rights for which woman was contending.
In fact, I had assumed, so completely as a matter of course, that the rights she was asking for were simply those which I had seen from time to time sarcastically enumerated in some scoffing newspaper, that it seemed unnecessary for me to say as I did to Mr. Lister:
“These rights which women are asking in such an imperious fashion are doubtless the old ones with which I am familiar: greater security in the holding of property, the right to vote, and to be eligible for all civil offices, including, perhaps, the Presidency, to be placed on an equal footing with man, as regards wages and all material advantages. These, doubtless cover all the things that they are contending for?”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Lister, “every one of the things which you mention were granted to women within two weeks after the strike began. So far as they are concerned, woman is to-day the full equal of man. Those rights were all included in one great Omnibus Bill, which was passed as quickly as the most expert legislation could accomplish it. I assure you that such was the awful completeness of the Great Woman’s Strike that it did not take man three days to discover that life was not worth living without her. If it had been simply the withdrawal of a single class of women and their absence from a few scattered households the effect would not have been so absolutely terrifying. But to have woman forsake man as a whole, completely withdrawing her graces and softening influences from his environment, created a monstrous chasm, a void, at which angels might shudder. It was like the divorce of Heaven and Earth, or as if the lamp of civilization had suddenly been turned down, and men appeared to each other in the twilight which ensued like strange, wolfish animals.”
“I can readily understand that,” I said with a slight shudder, “but if all the rights I mentioned have been granted to woman, I cannot conceive of any further occasion for the Strike. Why is it not at an end?”
“It is not at an end,” said Mr. Lister, “because since woman has discovered her power, she has greatly enlarged the category of her rights, and it includes one now beside which all those you have named are trivial indeed. She has fitly named this great right her Magna Charta, nor could she have ever made such an unprecedented stand as she is now making on a less vital principal of justice than that of Habeas Corpus. It is a striking evidence of the tremendous attachment that exists between the sexes, that man, eager for the restoration of the cheering sunshine of his natural companion, was disposed to grant this final great concession as precipitately as he did the right to political equality, but it could not be done so lightly. It called for the most serious, philosophical consideration on the part of every individual man, and therefore some time has unavoidably elapsed. But the frightful contingency of allowing the race to lapse from the earth admits of but little delay. The granting of Woman’s Magna Charta is to be decided by the ballot. To-day is Friday and on Monday next the fate of the world will be decided.”
“What is this Magna Charta?” I said in awe, for the picture which my companion’s words brought to my mind of a desolated planet reeling through space, made me feel strangely weak. I could scarcely persuade myself that I was not dreaming.
“The Woman’s Magna Charta,” replied Mr. Lister, “is--”
But at this moment a passing newsboy shouted, “Extra Hue and Cry! Rejection of the Button Manufacturers’ Petition! Complete collapse of the Corset Industry! Great failures among the Ladies’ Tailors!”
My friend bought a copy of the paper and leading the way up the steps of a handsome residence, at which we had now arrived, said:
“You are heartily welcome to my home, but I must again remind you that the soul of all delicate and artistic hospitality has vanished from it. It does not contain a woman.”
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