the
higher instincts of women, and in numbers of cases must affect their
moral tone. The amount of mischief done by these public organisations
for purposes of political combat is not confined to women alone. The
overwhelming influence exercised by mothers on the minds of children
is notorious; and that influence is not so likely to be for good where
the mother's mind is contaminated by a knowledge of, and sometimes by
practising, the shady tricks of electioneering.

The present tendency to create a greater number of openings in trade
and industry for women is not to be dismissed as pernicious because of
its evil effect in multiplying female crime. After all, an enlarged
industrial career for women may be the lesser of two evils. According
to the present industrial constitution of society a very large number
of females must earn a living in the sweat of their brow, and until
some higher social development supersedes the existing order of things
it is only right that as wide a career as possible should be opened
out for the activities of women who must work to live. At the same
time it would be an infinitely superior state of things if society did
not require women's work beyond the confines of the home and the
primary school. In these two spheres there is ample occupation of the
very highest character for the energies of women; in them their work
is immeasurably superior to men's; and it is because the work required
in the home and the school is at the present moment so improperly
performed that our existing civilisation is such a hot-bed of physical
degeneracy, pauperism, and crime. One thing at least is certain, that
crime will never permanently decrease till the material conditions of
existence are such that women will not be called upon to fight the
battle of life as men are, but will be able to concentrate their
influence on the nurture and education of the young, after having
themselves been educated mainly with a view to that great end.
European society at the present moment is moving away from this ideal
of woman's functions in the world; she is getting to be regarded in
the light of a mere intellectual or industrial unit; and the flower of
womankind is being more and more drafted into commercial and other
enterprises. Some affect to look upon this condition, of things as
being in the line of progress; it may be, and to all appearance is, in
the line of material necessity, but it is unquestionably opposed to
th