the White Slave Traffic will continue all over the world. Until by law
we can establish an equal moral code for men and women, women will
be fair game for the vicious section of the population inside Parliament
as well as outside it.With pathos in her voice, Emmeline went on to talk about other matters
with which voteless women, who had no power, had to contend, namely the
sexual exploitation of little girls who could be made pregnant, infected with
VD, and used as child prostitutes:
Even if we tolerated the degradation of the grown women, can we
tolerate the degradation of helpless little children? When I began this
militant campaign – (‘Bravo!’) – in the early days of the movement, I
was a Poor Law Guardian, and it was my duty to go through the work-
house infirmary, and never shall I forget seeing a little girl of thirteen
lying in bed playing with a doll, and when I asked what was her illness
I was told she was on the eve of becoming a mother, and she was
infected with a loathsome disease, and on the point of bringing, no
doubt, a diseased child into the world. Wasn’t that enough? (Cries of
‘Yes’). A little later, in a by-election campaign against the Government
candidate in Leeds I had occasion to visit a Salvation Army hotel in
that city, and in the matron’s room there was a little child, eleven years
of age. She didn’t look older than eight, and I said: ‘How was it she was
there? Why wasn’t she playing with other children?’ And they said to
me: ‘We dare not let her play with other children; she has been on the
streets for more than a year.’ These, women in this meeting, are facts.
These are not sensational stories taken from books.Emmeline argued that the only way to put an end to such horrible evil was to
join the women suffragists in their great moral mission of freeing half of the
human race by empowering women with the parliamentary vote. ‘Go and buy
your hammer.’ Thus she led to the main point of her talk, encouraging women
to engage in a range of militant acts and, in particular, her official endorsement
of secret attacks on public and private property:
Be militant in your own way. Those of you who can express your mili-
tancy by going to the House of Commons and refusing to leave without
satisfaction, as we did in the early days – do so. Those of you who can
express their militancy by facing party mobs at Cabinet Ministers’
meetings, and remind them of their unfaithfulness to principle – do so.
Those of you who can express your militancy by joining us in the anti-
Government by-election policy – do so. Those of you who can break
windows – (great applause) – those of you who can still further attack
the sacred idol of property so as to make the Government realise thatHONORARY TREASURER OF THE WSPU AND AGITATOR