their husbands should be serving in the army. ‘It seems to me that the scheme
would be practical on the London tramways, too – and, of course, we don’t want
it to stop at tramways.’ Women could become lift operators, clerks or cashiers,
indeed, serve as a reserve source of labour. ‘Sex has nothing to do with patrio-
tism or with the spirit of service. Women are just as eager to work for the nation
as men are’, she explained. ‘Why should all their splendid energy go to waste or
turn to bitterness because they are expected merely to look on in the national
struggle and to soothe their feelings by petting the soldiers instead of doing the
really hard work of which they are quite capable?’^28
As Butler comments, this was not the language of the platform agitator and
certainly not that of the woman who, only a few years earlier, had responded to
a government rebuff by throwing stones through the windows of the official
residence of the prime minister.^29 But Emmeline knew that the battle for
women’s suffrage could not be indefinitely delayed; and she was conscious of the
anti-suffragist argument that women could not be given full citizenship since
they did not fulfil some of the crucial duties of citizens, including defence of the
nation. She wanted to make sure that women, through their war effort, won the
respect of the nation, a view that was supported by news conveyed to her by
Ethel Smyth. ‘By the way’, confided the musician, writing from her Woking
cottage on Christmas Day, ‘did I tell you that Mr. Asquith informed Lady
Cunard that we shd. have the vote in 3 years – that he much regretted it
because he thought it a mistake but ... it had to be!’^30 Confident that victory
was assured sometime in the future, Emmeline became during these war years,
‘something of an elder stateswoman ... regarded with no little respect and even
with something like affection’.^31 Both the national and international press
commented on this. With the headline ‘England cheers Pankhurst; once
despised, now loved as most gracious woman’, the Minneapolis Daily News
reported in March 1915:
Every night Mrs. Pankhurst speaks at the Pavilion, the identical
theater from which, every Monday afternoon two years ago, she was
spirited away to prevent her from being mobbed. ... She appears in
various gowns, mostly black, all of exquisite cut. She invariably wears a
lace shawl and from her neck hangs a lorgnet [sic], which she is never
seen to use. There is elegance, poise and restraint in her appearance
and in her speech. She is a changed Mrs. Pankhurst. And the England
that once hooted her now greets her with cheers of welcome.^32Emmeline’s demand for women’s right to engage in war work, however, did
not endear her to industrialists and trade unionists who opposed the entry of
unskilled women into jobs traditionally held by men; in particular, since women
usually earned less that half the wages of men, trade unionists feared that
women employees would undermine their own wages which were predicated on
the notion of the male breadwinner. Despite these problems, her efforts and
WAR WORK AND A SECOND FAMILY