e" upon the community with
license to practise, they should, not only as a matter of justice to
themselves but of protection for the women and children whose lives they
would have in their hands, be properly qualified.

At the time in question, the medical profession took the ground that
women might enjoy the benefit of a little medical education but they
were denied the facilities for any thorough training or for any research
work. Mary Putnam secured her graduate degree from the great medical
school of the University of Paris, being the first woman who had been
admitted to the school since the fourteenth century. Returning after six
years of thorough training, she did much during the remaining years of
her life to secure and to maintain for women physicians the highest
possible standard of training and of practice. It was natural that with
this experience of the requirement of equal facilities for women in her
own work, she should always have been a believer in the extension of
equal facilities for any citizen's work for which, after experience,
women might be found qualified. She was, therefore, an ardent advocate
of equal suffrage.

One needs but recall the admirable intellectual work of women to-day to
wonder at the imbecility of those who assert that women are
intellectually the inferiors of men. Madame Curie in science, Miss
Tarbell in political and economic history, Miss Jane Addams in
sociological writings and practice, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw in the
ministry, Mrs. Hetty Green in business, are a few examples of women
whose mental ability ought to bring a blush to the Old Guard. Mrs.
Harriman and Mrs. Sage, who manage properties of many millions, are
denied the privilege of voting in regard to the expenditure of their
taxes; but every ignorant immigrant can cast a vote, thanks to the
doctrine that the political acumen of a man, however degraded, is
superior to that of a woman, however great her genius--an admirable
obedience to the saw in Ecclesiasticus that the badness of men is better
than the goodness of women. Let me quote again from Professor Thomas:
"The men have said that women are not intelligent enough to vote, but
the women have replied that more of honesty than of intelligence is
needed in politics at present, and that women certainly do not represent
the most ignorant portion of the population. They claim that voting is a
relatively simple matter anyway, that political freedom 'is nothing but
the