movement. On the horizon everywhere are signs that woman
will soon receive the right to exercise political power, and it is
believed that she will show her efficiency most conspicuously in finding
means for enhancing and preserving human life, if only as the result of
her age-long experiences. That primitive maternal instinct, which has
always been as ready to defend as it has been to nurture, will doubtless
promptly grapple with certain crimes connected with the white slave
traffic; women with political power would not brook that men should live
upon the wages of captured victims, should openly hire youths to ruin
and debase young girls, should be permitted to transmit poison to unborn
children. Life is full of hidden remedial powers which society has not
yet utilized, but perhaps nowhere is the waste more flagrant than in the
matured deductions and judgments of the women, who are constantly forced
to share the social injustices which they have no recognized power to
alter. If political rights were once given to women, if the situation
were theirs to deal with as a matter of civic responsibility, one cannot
imagine that the existence of the social evil would remain unchallenged
in its semi-legal protection. Those women who are already possessed of
political power have in many ways registered their conscience in regard
to it. The Norwegian women, for instance, have guaranteed to every
illegitimate child the right of inheritance to its father's name and
property by a law which also provides for the care of its mother. This
is in marked contrast to the usual treatment of the mother of an
illegitimate child, who even when the paternity of her child is
acknowledged receives from the father but a pitiful sum for its support;
moreover, if the child dies before birth and the mother conceals this
fact, although perfectly guiltless of its death, she can be sent to jail
for a year.

The age of consent is eighteen years in all of the states in which women
have had the ballot, although in only eight of the others is it so high.
In the majority of the latter the age of consent is between fourteen and
sixteen, and in some of them it is as low as ten. These legal
regulations persist in spite of the well-known fact that the mass of
girls enter a disreputable life below the age of eighteen. In equal
suffrage states important issues regarding women and children, whether
of the sweat-shop or the brothel, have always brought out the women