uffrage in a few
states. Has that purified our political life, as many well-meaning
advocates have predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally it is really time
that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about
corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone. Corruption of politics
has nothing to do with the morals or the laxity of morals of various
political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one.
Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottoes
of which are: "to take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and
sell dear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope that
even woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is, she
can choose her own profession and trade, but as her past and present
physical training have not equipped her with the necessary strength to
compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all her energy, use
up her vitality and strain every nerve in order to reach the market
value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that women doctors,
lawyers, architects and engineers are neither met with the same
confidence, nor do they receive the same remuneration. And those that do
reach that enticing equality generally do so at the expense of their
physical and psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls
and women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of
freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom
of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In addition is
the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a "home, sweet
home"--cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting--after a day's hard work.
Glorious independence! No wonder that hundreds of girls are so willing
to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and tired of their
independence behind the counter, or at the sewing or typewriting
machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of middle class people
who long to throw off the yoke of parental dependence. A so-called
independence which leads only to earning the merest subsistence is not
so enticing, not so ideal that one can expect woman to sacrifice
everything for it. Our highly praised independence is, after all, but a
slow process of dulling and stifling woman's nature, her love instinct
and her mother instinct.

Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far mo