887 the German Woman Suffrage Association was formed, with the demand
for absolute equality with men. Two remarkable women, Minna Cauer and
Anita Augsberg, the latter unmarried and a doctor of laws, were the
moving spirits in the first woman suffrage agitation, which has since
extended throughout the empire until there is hardly a small town
without its suffrage club.

Now the woman suffragist in Germany differs from the American suffragist
in that she is always a member of a political party. She is a silent
member to be sure, but she adheres to her party, because, through
tradition or conviction, she believes in its policies. Usually the
suffragist is a member of the Social Democratic Party, allied to the
International Socialist Party. She is a suffragist because she is a
Socialist, because woman suffrage, and, indeed, the full equalization of
the laws governing men and women are a part of the Socialist platform in
every country in the world. The woman member of the Social Democratic
party is not working primarily for woman suffrage. She is working for a
complete overturning of the present economic system, and she advocates
_universal adult suffrage_ as a means of bringing about the social and
economic changes demanded by the Socialists.

These German Socialist women are often very advanced spirits, who hold
university degrees, who have entered the professions, and are generally
emancipated from strictly conventional lives. Others, in large numbers,
belong to the intellectual proletarian classes. Their American
prototypes are to be found in the Women's Trade Union League, described
in a later chapter.

The other German suffragists are members of the radical, the moderate
(we should say conservative), and the clerical parties. These women are
middle class, average, intelligent wives and mothers. They correspond
fairly well with the women of the General Federation of Clubs in the
United States, and like the American club women they are affiliated with
the International Council of Women. Locally they are working for the
social reforms demanded by the first American suffrage convention, held
in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. They are demanding the higher
education, married women's property rights, free speech, and the right
to choose a trade or profession. They are demanding other rights, from
lack of which the American woman never suffered. The right to attend a
political meeting was until recently denied to German wo