business. The
middle-class women, who were thrust out into the arena of life, were
still the women who best preserved the pure idea of marriage. They
were not subjected to the temptations which assailed those in the
higher and the lower ranks of society, and, being less affected by
tradition, they wrought out for themselves independent ideals. The
marriage of convenience of the higher ranks and the marriage of
necessity of the lower were not the forms which were common to the
middle-class women. Unaffected by either of these influences, they
regarded well the character of the men to whom they were to plight
their troth, and were not disposed to pass over the weaknesses of
suitors. Marriages were no longer contracted at the early ages
of fifteen and sixteen years, which had been commonly the case
heretofore. A bride under twenty-one was thought very youthful.

The entrance of woman into the ranks of labor has not been
uncontested, for she has been charged with taking the bread out of
the mouths of husbands and fathers; and, by working for much less wage
than is given the men, she has been thought dangerously to affect the
standard of payment for men's work. Just what will be the effect of
the innovation of woman in industry cannot at present be stated, as
she has not as yet gotten into normal and recognized relationship to
men as a sharer of their work. One effect, however, of woman's contact
with the other sex in the brusque business world has been to reduce
her claim to special consideration in the way of the amenities which
were accorded her at a time when she was not nearly so sincerely
respected as she has become in recent years. A modern writer has
summed up the matter in the following words: "Not the least among
the changes is that effected by the fuller and freer life led by all
women. A greater companionship and friendship is permitted them with
the other sex; there is a larger sharing of interest, and women are
expected to have a higher standard of education and to conceal their
knowledge and culture with tasteful skill. Their interest in the
political life of the country, and their acknowledged usefulness in
their place in the working out of the political machine, the works,
philanthropical and social, which are admitted by all to be within
their sphere, have broadened and deepened the stream of life which is
common to both sexes, and brought the social life on to a different
level."

This broadening influe