sulted by her contemporaries, she went under after
trying ordeals. Before the Revolution it was the encyclopedist Condorcet
who principally took the field for the equal rights of both sexes.

To-day, matters lie somewhat differently. Since then, conditions have
changed mightily,--the position of woman along with them. Whether
married or unmarried, more than ever before woman now has a deep
interest in social and political conditions. It can not be a matter of
indifference to her whether the Government chains every year to the army
hundreds of thousands of vigorous, healthy men; whether a policy is in
force that favors wars, or does not; whether the necessaries of life are
made dearer by taxes, that promote, besides, the adulteration of food,
and are all the harder upon a family in the measure of its size, at a
time, at that, in which the means of life are most stingily measured for
the large majority. Moreover, woman pays direct and indirect taxes out
of her support and her income. Again, the system of education is of
highest interest to her: it goes far towards determining the position of
her sex: as a mother, she has a double interest therein.

Furthermore, as has been shown, there are to-day millions of women, in
hundreds of pursuits, all of them with a lively personal interest in the
manner that our laws are shaped. Questions concerning the hours of work;
night, Sunday and child-labor; payment of wages and notice of discharge;
safety appliances in factory and shop; etc.--all are political questions
that concern them as well as the men. Workingmen know little or nothing
about conditions in many branches of industry, where women are mainly,
or exclusively, engaged. Employers have all the interest in the world to
hush up evils that they are responsible for. Factory inspection
frequently does not extend to branches of industry in which women are
exclusively employed: such as it is, it is utterly inadequate: and yet
these are the very branches in which protective measures frequently are
most needed. It suffices to mention the workshops in which seamstresses,
dressmakers, milliners, etc., are crowded together in our larger cities.
From thence, hardly a complaint issues; thither no investigation has as
yet penetrated. Finally, as a trader, woman is also interested in laws
on commerce and tariffs. There can, accordingly, be no doubt that woman
has an interest and a right to demand a hand in the shaping of things by
legislat