stifies to the martyr-like nature of her spirit, that she even
rallied from the disappointment consequent upon the financial failure
of the book. The dedication of the work reads as follows: "This book
has been a labor of love, and it is lovingly dedicated to the
Twentieth Century Woman by one who has seen and shared in the
struggles of the Woman of the Nineteenth Century." But nothing that is
good is lost, and the book testifies to the illimitable ideas, the
trust in eternal goodness, and the strength of purpose of one who had
a glorified estimate of latent feminine forces that require to be
developed.

Essays and Addresses by Jane Cunningham Croly

Beginnings of Organization[1]

Women in Religious Organization

When the history of the Nineteenth Century comes to be written, women
will appear for the first time in the history of the world as
organizers, and leaders of great organized movements among their own
sex.

[Footnote 1: _History of the Woman's Club Movement in America._]

The world of to-day, both for men and women, is a different world from
that which furnished the outlook for the men and women of a hundred
years ago. Science, invention, have changed its material aspects; and
while retiring some individual activities and occupations, they have
created new fields of industry that are rapidly changing the face of
the world, and making new demands upon strength and energy.

The world which man has conquered, and is still conquering, is no
longer the purely physical. He is working now toward the discovery and
control of the powers of the air, and has already harnessed some of
them to do his bidding. The succession of great events and discoveries
will mark this century as an epoch in the world's history, and is
responsible for economic changes which create social disturbance, and
to which both men and women must adjust themselves, often without
knowing the why or wherefore of that which is so different from what
has been. It is one of the paradoxes in human nature that women, while
being made responsible for human conditions, have been condemned to
individual isolation. It has been largely the result of general
physical differentiation and the dependence that grew out of it, and,
secondarily, the long ages required to produce settled social
conditions and a reversal of that great unwritten law of kings and
men--that might made right.

It is true that there was a time, some traditions of whic