"Well. I don’t mean Ann. She’s an exception. No, she isn’t either. I mean her, too. Nowadays we think of things socially. It doesn’t matter so much whether I’m free, whether I get justice, it’s the others—the race—we must work for. Ann’s wonderful. You know how much I love her. But she don’t look at things the way we do.
"We must think not only of the few women, here and there, the giants like Ann, who are strong enough to stand alone, but of all the women—and the children. That’s just the point. We’re trying to learn how not to stand alone—how to stand together. We’ve got to ignore our own preferences and rights and learn to fight for woman’s rights.
"Doesn’t most of the prostitution come from the free love of weak girls? Even when the cadets go after them just to make money, isn’t it love on the girl’s part? What they think is love? We must fight and fight and fight to make women realize that they mustn’t love just for themselves. That it isn’t right towards the race for them to love blindly—that it’s a sin, a social sin, for us to love until we’re sure of ourselves, sure of the man, sure for the children. It’s a sin for a woman to sacrifice herself to a man just because she loves him—a sin even to take risks.
"Somehow, until we’ve won freedom and equality and independence, we’ve got to insist on guarantees. I don’t see how we can get them except through laws, through old-fashioned marriages. We women who are stronger, and better educated and able to support ourselves and children, we must always think of the others who are less fortunate. And as long as you men take advantage of any of our sisters, we won’t listen to your free love talk. So there!"
"Daddy," she said after she had rested her cheek against mine for a while. "I’ll tell you a secret. Ssh! Don’t you ever breathe it! Do you know whom we suffragists have to fight? It’s women! If it was only you men, we’d have won long ago. It isn’t the men who enslave us. It’s tradition and habit. Long training had made us selfish—divided—weak.
"Just take the worst case. It’s mother’s story all over again—all the time. She tried to get away. Half a dozen men, instinctively, acted together, for their common interest—and were strong. They didn’t reason it out. Blackie did not have to say to them, you help me beat my girl, and I’ll help you beat yours and so we’ll keep them all scared. It’s a long inherited tradition with men to act together like that, second nature—almost an instinct. But when a cadet beats a girl, do the other girls rush together like that and fight for their common interest? No. Each one for herself sneaks off and tries to placate her man. It’s just the same with ’respectable’ people. If a woman tries to be free, the men are all against her with their legislatures and courts and all that. Do the other women stand together to help her? Oh, no. They cut her. Just like the prostitutes, they try to ingratiate themselves with their husbands by spitting at the one who tried to be free.