not women were the judges), but in no sense invested with the rights of an independent adult person.

It was, of course, inevitable that the doctrine of the rights of man should come at last to include the rights of woman, just as it was inevitable that the rights of white men should come at last to include the rights of black and yellow and brown men. The great eighteenth century struggle in human progress was for the recognition of what Charles Sumner called "That equality of rights which is the first of rights." It was for a scheme and practice of political organization which should deny special privileges to any, which should secure fuller liberty and greater justice in all the relations of life to all the different classes of men than had before been known. Although the winning of such measure of democracy in government as we have attained does not bring in the millennium, and has not yet been applied perfectly enough even to men to fully measure its influence for good, any student of history can challenge the most pessimistic observer of American life to furnish an example of any more aristocratic form of government which has resulted in as high an average of physical, mental and moral well-being for the majority of the people as even such a partial democracy as our own. Since Abigail Adams demanded of the framers of the Constitution some recognition of the rights of women in their deliberations, many have seen that there is no argument that can be framed for equality before the law for all classes of men that does not also apply with equal force to both sexes. The woman suffrage movement, however, is only as old

as the immortal Seneca Falls meeting of 1848. That was a "Woman's Rights Meeting," and only incidentally and with hesitation pledged to a demand for the ballot; its chief stress being laid upon higher education for women, better industrial conditions, more just professional opportunity for qualified women, and larger social freedom; together with a strong appeal for the legal right of adult women to have and to hold property and to secure that "contract power" that marks the dividing line between a responsible person and a child or an imbecile."

There are two arguments, and only two, that can possibly be brought against the application of the general principles of democracy to law-abiding and mentally competent women: one is that women are not human beings; the other that they are a kind of human being so different from men that general principles of right and wrong proved expedient as a basis of action in the development of men do not apply to them.

Few now subscribe to the ancient belief that "women have neither souls nor minds," but are a "delusion and a snare," invented for practical purposes of life, but not to be counted in when the real life of humanity is under consideration. Are then women of such a different sort of humanity that they do not need individual protection of the law, do not require the mental and moral discipline of freedom and personal responsibility for the development of character, are justly

'See Declaration of Rights of this meeting in The History of Woman Suffrage, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper.

and fully provided for through the political arrangements of men, by men and for men, and therefore should be forcibly restrained from complete citizenship? Some, many, seem thus to believe.

The fact that women as a sex, not the favored few of a privileged class but women as a sex, have suffered every form of exploitation at the hands of men and without redress until very recently (an incontestable and easily demonstrated fact, attested by every law book of all Christendom) is sufficient answer to that. The further fact that until women initiated and carried through a great struggle, which although bloodless and pacific on their part, lacked no element of martyrdom, no woman could learn anything but the most elementary scraps of knowledge or develop her vocational power or attain industrial opportunity of any sort commensurate with her needs, is a further proof that women's interests are not fully cared for by men. Women are not so different from men that they can be educated without a chance to go to school, be able to protect themselves against prostitution or ignoble dependence through self-support without the legal right to earn their own living or the legal right to hold and manage their property. Women are not so different from men as to become strong in character without having the discipline of moral responsibility or to become broad-minded and socially serviceable without the opportunity to "learn by doing" the duty of a citizen. Men and women are different, but not so unlike that they can become fully developed human beings in circumstances totally different.

The political democracy fought for in the eighteenth century, and partially obtained, led inevitably to the educational democracy struggled for and partially obtained in the nineteenth century, and most strikingly illustrated in the American public school. The industrial democracy now striving toward realization must follow the sharing of political rights and duties and the educational preparation for good and wise citizenship which we have in such large measure already atttained. The democratizing of the family and of the social life is an inevitable and more and more conscious demand in order that we may have a home in which real and not sham, full-orbed and not partial, democracy may be nurtured and developed. Unless women are made a vital and a responsible part of democracy in education, and democracy in political service, and democracy in industrial organization, they cannot bear and rear fit citizens for a genuine and a matured democratic State. Therefore, unless you repudiate democracy, you must finally include in its range all classes and both sexes.

The second element in the significance in the woman suffrage movement is the social response to the new demands of citizenship made by the new type of State which has been developed in this latter stage of human progress. The family and the Church used to take care of education; industry used to be a personal concern of domestic handicraft. Now all the functions of social order have been differentiated and started on separate and inter-related careers. The Church is not now a legal power; the school has become a func

tion of the State; the new industrial order has necessitated legal protection of the weak and ignorant against the strong and shrewd. The State has gradually, and in these later days with astonishing celerity, taken over not only education, but charity and constructive social effort toward the common welfare. A thousand details of truly spiritual activity, which once were held solely within the sphere of domestic and religious life, are now concerns of government. Government has ceased to be military and static, it has already become social and dynamic. As Woodrow Wilson says, it has large "ministrant as well as constituent functions."

What are the great functions of social service for which "human beings of the mother sex" have been held chiefly responsible since society began? The care, the nurture, the development of child life; the care of the sick, the aged and the infirm; the relief of. the unfortunate; the protection and care of the defective; the general ministry of strength to weakness. These are the functions that the modern State has taken over from the home and from the Church. These are the functions the modern State cannot perform without the direct and varied aid of women. These are the modern State activities that make the largest army of public employees the teachers, of which ninety per cent. are women; and the next largest army, the caretakers of the sick and insane and unfortunate of every kind, of which at least three-fourths are women. "Yes," the anti-suffragist says, "women should work for society as subordinates through State employment,