ee."

The tortured girl children of China did not rise in overwhelming
majority to demand free feet; yet surely no one would refuse to lift
these burdens because only a minority of progressive women insisted on
justice.

It is a sociological impossibility that a majority of an unorganized
class should unite in concerted demand for a right, a duty, which they
have never known.

The point to be decided is whether political equality is to the
advantage of women and of the state--not whether either, as a body, is
asking for it.

Now for the "society" theory. There is a venerable fiction to the
effect that women make--and manage, "society." No careful student of
comparative history can hold this belief for a moment. Whatever the
conditions of the age or place; industrial, financial, religious,
political, educational; these conditions are in the hands of men; and
these conditions dictate the "society" of that age or place.

"Society" in a constitutional monarchy is one thing; in a primitive
despotism another; among millionaires a third; but women do not make the
despotism, the monarchy, or the millions. They take social conditions
as provided by men, precisely as they take all other conditions at
their hands. They do not even modify an existing society to their own
interests, being powerless to do so. The "double standard of morals,"
ruling everywhere in "society," proves this; as does the comparative
helplessness of women to enjoy even social entertainments, without the
constant attendance and invitation of men.

Even in its great function of exhibition leading to marriage, it is the
girls who are trained and exhibited, under closest surveillance; while
the men stroll in and out, to chose at will, under no surveillance
whatever.

That women, otherwise powerful, may use "society" to further their ends,
is as true as that men do; and in England, where women, through their
titled and landed position, have always had more political power than
here, "society" is a very useful vehicle for the activities of both
sexes.

But, in the main, the opportunities of "society" to women, are merely
opportunities to use their "feminine influence" in extra domestic
lines--a very questionable advantage to the home and family, to
motherhood, to women, or to the state.

In religion women have always filled and more than filled the place
allowed them. Needless to say it was a low one. The power of the church,
its whole management and