ys
held; but because of the greater incentive among the women of the South
these were in the van in the new movement until that movement became so
general that there was no longer front or rear thereto. That time was
not long in coming; revolutionary as were its theories, the country had
long unconsciously been prepared for them, and when they were set up
they were almost universally acknowledged as the proper standard. There
still remained some whose prejudices in this respect were irrefragable,
but they gradually found themselves in a constantly weakening minority.
The worker in the hive of humanity found herself not only tolerated, as
she had hoped as the best possible, but honored, even more than the
queen bees; she found herself, though originally forced there by
circumstances, in an environment which was in all ways congenial to the
best of her nature. Not a little of this result, it must be proudly
admitted, was owing to the chivalry of the American man. With all
respect, as all courtesy, he welcomed to participation in his pursuits
the woman whom he had looked upon as by training and even nature cut off
from such participation, and he gladly embraced the opportunity to prove
to the women of the land that his deference for their sex was not
limited to the bounds of the drawing room, but was a thing which was
unlimited in application. With their contact with the world of affairs
thus made easy for them by those upon whose hitherto exclusive territory
they were intruding, the women of America found their new life not only
tolerable but pleasant.

That "the ages call and heroes come" has risen to the dignity of an
apothegm; but if "inventions" were substituted for "heroes" in the
saying it would be at least as true and perhaps of more practical value
and meaning. It does not appear that the typewriter has ever been
mentioned as one of the determining factors of our present feminine
status, but that it deserves such credit does not admit of a doubt. That
invention, whose use is now so nearly universal that it is difficult to
remember that it has been with us but a scant twenty years, came at the
psychological moment in the history of American womanhood. It opened, as
nothing else, an avenue for the direction of feminine effort in the
struggle for existence; and it displayed its possibilities just at the
period when the supply of women workers began far to exceed the demand.
There were still recognized limitations to