et Fuller ran _The Dial_, in Boston, in 1840 and numbered
Emerson and William Channing among her contributors. From 1840 to 1849
the mill girls of Lowell edited the _Lowell Offering_. These are but a
few examples of what women have done in newspaper work. How very
influential they are to-day every one knows who is familiar with the
articles and editorial work appearing in newspapers and magazines; and
that women are very zealous reporters many people can attest with
considerable vigour.[414]

[Sidenote: Women in industry.]

The enormous part which women now play in industry and in all economic
production is a concomitant of the factory system, specialised industry,
and all that makes a highly elaborated and complex society. Before the
introduction of machine industry, and in the simple society of the
colonial days, women were no less a highly important factor in economic
production; but not as wage earners. Their importance lay in the fact
that spinning, weaving, brewing, cheese and butter making, and the like
were matters attended to by each household to supply its own wants; and
this was considered the peculiar sphere of the housewife. In 1840
Harriet Martineau found only seven employments open to women in the
United States, viz., teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, working in
cotton mills and in book binderies, type-setting, and household service.

I shall now present a series of fifty tables, by means of which the
reader may see at a glance the status of women in all the States to-day.
For convenience, I shall arrange the views alphabetically.

TABLES SHOWING THE PRESENT STATUS OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES.

The right of "dower," as used in these tables, refers to the widow's
right, under the Common Law, to the possession, for her life-time, of
one third of the real estate of which her husband was possessed in
fee-simple during the marriage.

"Curtesy" is the right of the husband after his wife's death to the life
use of his wife's real estate, sometimes dependent on the birth of
children, sometimes not; and usually the absolute right to her whole
personal estate.

It must be remembered that the enforcement Of certain laws,
particularly in regard to child labour, is extremely lax in many States.
It will be noted also that an unscrupulous employer could find loopholes
in some of the statutes. The reader can observe these things for himself
in his particular State.

_Alabama_

AGE OF LEGAL CONSEN