rk spending good money to chase a man
whom it does not want as a citizen, and whom it can only punish by
sending to jail for a short period. The State is better off without such
a man. To bring him back would not even benefit his deserted family.

Women, far more law abiding than men, insist that a system which evolved
out of feudal conditions, and has for its very basis the assumption of
the weakness, ignorance, and dependence of women, has no place in
twentieth century civilization.

American women are no longer weak, ignorant, dependent. The present
social order, in which military force is subordinated to industry and
commerce, narrows the gulf between them, and places men and women
physically on much the same plane. As for women's intellectual ability
to decide their own legal status, they are, taken the country over,
rather better educated than men. There are more girls than boys in the
high schools of the United States; more girls than boys in the higher
grammar grades. Fewer women than men are numbered among illiterate. As
for the great middle class of women, it is obvious that they are better
read than their men. Their specific knowledge of affairs may be less,
but their general intelligence is not less than men's.

Increasingly women are ceasing to depend on men for physical support.
Increasingly even married women are beginning to think of themselves as
independent human beings. Their work of bearing and rearing children, of
managing the household, begins to assume a new dignity, a real value,
in their eyes.

In New Zealand at the present time statutes are proposed which shall
determine exactly the share a wife may legally claim in her husband's
income. American women may not need such a law, but they insist that
they need something to take the place of that one which in eleven States
makes it possible for a husband to claim all of his wife's income.

CHAPTER V

WOMEN'S DEMANDS ON THE RULERS OF INDUSTRY

The big elevator, crowded with shoppers to the point of actual
discomfort, contained only one man. He wore a white-duck uniform, and
recited rapidly and monotonously, as the car shot upward: "Corsets,
millinery, muslin underwear, shirt-waists, coats and suits, infants'
wear, and ladies' shoes, second floor; no ma'am, carpets and rugs on the
third floor; this car don't go to the restaurant; take the other side;
groceries, harness, sporting goods, musical instruments, phonographs,
men's shoes,