ABSTRACT
Miss E. Roper, alluding to the Parliamentary candidate for Wigan (Mr. Sweeny), who is being put forward by the Women's Suffragists among the cotton operatives, said : " People sometimes forgot that of the actual workers in the cotton trade there were 300,000 women tq 200,000 men. In the cot~.: :c. trades union there were 96,000 women and 69,000 men. The Trades Disputes Bill and the question of gam· bling in cotton concerned women as much as men, and made the political franchise very important to them. In every town in Lancashire there was a large and growing body of women connected with the cotton and other trades who had banded themselves together to gain political power. When Mr. Gladstone came into Lancashire in 1862 he spoke of the cotton operatives as fully deserving the franchise, and at that time there were 202,000 women to 167,000 men working in the mills. Lord Brassey also spoke of the cotton operatives at the recent Trades' Union Conference at Manchester, without apparently realising that the great majority of them were women."
