unconsciously left out of the count. The chief reason for this inconsistency was, of course, the fact that they were not at the time considered human beings as needing or of right possessed of the same relationship as men to the body politic.

The first voting privileges given to women as human beings and on the democratic suffrage basis was, as was natural, in matters connected with education, and to those women who "had no man to represent them"; as when in Kentucky in 1838 "widows with children” were given a voice in "school suffrage." This limited franchise in educational matters was extended to all women in Kansas in 1861 and later to the women of many other States. Tax and Bond Suffrage has been given in several States and the women of New Orleans, Louisiana, made splendid use of it to make their city healthy in a notable struggle for drainage and sanitary measures of various sorts. Kansas, now in a campaign for full suffrage, has had municipal suffrage for women since 1887, and many women have served as high officers of municipalities in that State, among them several women mayors. Full suffrage has been used by women in Wyoming since 1869 without causing the social fabric of the American Republic to dissolve into chaos, and with such dignity and usefulness that the following resolution was passed in 1893: "Be it resolved by the Second Legislature of the State of Wyoming: That the possession and exercise of suffrage by the women of Wyoming for the past quarter of a century has wrought no harm, and has done great good in many ways; that it has largely aided in ban

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ishing crime, pauperism, and vice from this State and that without any violent and oppressive legislation."

It is common knowledge that six sovereign States of our Union now have women voters on the same terms as men; and that five others are at present engaged in active campaigns to wipe out sex-discrimination at the ballot box; and that in every State there is going on an agitation for equality of political rights. between men and women unparalleled by any other movement for a social change. It is also known, if not often remembered by the politicians, that the largest petitions ever presented to the National Congress or to the several State legislatures have been those by women for their political enfranchisement. These petitions have been headed by the most distinguished women of the country, not alone noted, like Lucy Stone and Mrs. Cady Stanton, for their interest in this matter, but for their devotion to other concerns of the public weal: such women as Clara Barton, the heroine of the Red Cross work; as Julia Ward Howe, who at her death was pronounced the "leading lady of the land"; as Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe, known the world around for their services to humanity through the pen; as Frances Willard, best beloved of women leaders in the great organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union; as the Doctors Blackwell, who opened the medical profession to women; and, in more recent days, Jane Addams of Hull House, and Mary McDowell of University Settlement; Mrs. Raymond Robbins, leader of the Women's Trade Union movement; President Woolley

and many other college women of distinction; and a host of social workers and writers and professional women of every sort. It is also in evidence in the public press, the magazine and book world, that this movement for the enfranchisement of women encircles the globe. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the world leader of the movement, as president of the Inter-. national Woman Suffrage Alliance, is going around the world to meet and help the women of every nation, even the peoples of the Orient, in this new effort to "free" sex, "like ethnography, from political application." It is too late in the day, therefore, for any student of social or political science to ignore the matter; and too late in the day for women who prefer a "lord" of their own to the justice of the body politic, and special class privileges to the social conscience, to stem the tide of this increasing humanizing of gov

ernment.

In 1821 a "Lady of Distinction," writing to a "Relation shortly after Marriage," urges upon her to "have the most perfect and implicit faith in the superiority of her husband's judgment and the most absolute obedience to his desires, as giving the greatest success and most entire satisfaction in her wedded life," and also "relieving her from a weight of thought that would be very painful and in no way profitable.” Now, at this late date, we have the Anti-Suffragists desiring to be relieved of the political "weight of thought

See The Modern Woman's Rights Movement, Dr. Kaettie Schirmacher, trans. by C. C. Echhardt, Ph.D.; also, Eugene A. Hecker, A Short History of Woman's Rights, and Alice Zimmern, Women's Suffrage in Many Lands.

most painful and not profitable." A new proof, if one were needed, of the cramping effect of the past subjection of women. The chief argument of the AntiSuffragists is that "Government is force" and women. neither can nor should have force or exercise it. Let us quote Woodrow Wilson again: "The force which the democratic States embody is not the direct force of a dominant dynasty, nor of a prevalent minority, but the force of an agreeing majority." That force of an agreeing majority when in execution is always delegated force, representatively embodied in chosen agents. It wipes out of existence all actual basing of the suffrage upon physical force. It makes its fundamental appeal to public opinion. It is easily expressed by the choice of men alone, by the choice of women alone, or by the choice of men and women. Whatever class most embodies and best expresses the major opinion of society can fitly choose its agents. The mechanism of the vote is devised expressly for the purpose of enabling "an agreeing majority" to execute its decisions without an appeal to force, physical or military. That women cannot fight, therefore, or should not do so, is, it is obvious, no more a proper disqualification for the suffrage than would be a rule that men over a certain age or under a certain standard of physical strength should be deprived of their vote. By proxy, and by substitute, and by representative, and by chosen officers, the forceful business of the State is now carried Some time, if war is not outlawed for good and all, the nations will be wise and humane enough to

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choose one pugilist to settle disputes instead of bearing the economic burden of standing armies, great navies and millions of idle men! Some such course will have to be pursued if the common people persist in their aversion to serving as food for cannon or to supporting men who stand idly ready to be such food in case of war. Sensible people cannot much longer mistake the true nature of the actual "force" of the modern democratic State.

The significance of the woman suffrage movement is twofold: it is a response to the general movement of democracy toward the individuation of all members of all previously subjected or submerged classes of society; and it is also a social response to the new demands of citizenship which have followed inevitably the new and varied increase in the functions of gov

ernment.

The response to the general movement toward democracy has in less than one hundred years changed the condition of woman in the chief centres of so-called Christian civilization from that of "status" to that of "contract"; from that condition in which the married woman while her husband lived could not hold property, make a business contract, receive wages in her own right for her own work even outside the home, acquire legal power over her own children, act as guardian for a minor child, her own or another's, or

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any manner acquire the rights of an adult individual under the law. During her marriage she was, as a perpetual minor, protected in some manner against "abuse" (of which in quantity and in quality men and