Emily Davison knew France, had travelled there, and had planned to go to France after

women and food recalls the central role women play in the family and in the state.

Sir, –In your comments in this week’s issue of your paper upon the Dear Food Riots in

France, after scathing allusions to the capital made out of the riots by Free Traders, you go

out of your way to have a smack at Suffragettes. The passage which you criticise is one in

Votes for Women on these riots: ‘When a country becomes civilised enough to grant votes

to its women, and they learn how to use them, methods of riot and pillage will no longer be

resorted to.’

This you interpret as offering ‘votes as a substitute for food.’ You, however, in your

desire to have a jeer at Suffragettes have entirely missed the gist of the matter. What was

meant was that if women had votes they might use them to get a satisfactory state of affairs

in the conduct of taxation and customs, instead of having to groan and suffer under them

until at last, goaded to desperation, they rise up in mutiny and revolt. It is the women who

feel the food prices most, and in France they are politically dumb. They, therefore, become

publicly vociferous. The octrois and douanerie [tolls, toll collection and custom-tax systems]

of France are enough to make the weakest woman rise, and it is the women who pay them chiefly,

and who therefore feel the most. So it is in England. It is the women who feel the effects of

taxation on food, as well as having to pay the taxes. They have, however, had enough of the ‘pay up

and shut up’ regime, and mean to have a political voice. Yours, &c.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31 Coram Street, W.C.

September 15, 1911