to military service.  The State constitutions of many States, among them Illinois, have provided that a woman is entitled to all ordinary rights of property and contract “the same as” a man.  Under this provision, when laws were passed for the protection of women, forbidding them to work more than a certain number of hours per day, they were originally held unconstitutional.  The so-called women’s-rights people (one could wish that there were a better or more respectful word) seem themselves to be divided on this point.  The more radical resent any enforced inequality, industrial or social, between the sexes.  For instance, many States have statutes forbidding women or girls to serve liquor in saloons or to wait upon table in restaurants where liquor is served.  Such statutes, obviously moral, are nevertheless resented.  On the other hand, the Supreme Court of the United States has taken the conservative view, that there is a difference both in physique and character between the sexes, as well as different responsibilities and a different social interest, so that it is still possible, as It has been possible in the past, to impose by law special restrictions on the contracts of women.  The law of Oregon, therefore, not permitting them to make personal contract for more than eight hours per day was sustained both in the State and the Federal Supreme Courts; and a similar law by the highest court of Illinois, reversing its own prior decision.[2] This matter is of such interest and of such importance that it is frequently placed in State constitutions, and it seems worth while to summarize their provisions.  The advanced position is now squarely put only in the constitution of California, which provides that no person shall on account of sex be disqualified from entering upon or pursuing any lawful business, vocation, or profession.  Such a constitution as this would, of course, make it impossible even to pass such laws as the ones just mentioned forbidding them to serve in restaurants, such employment being lawful as to men.  But no other State follows that extreme provision, and, indeed, the clause in the constitution of Illinois seems now to have been repealed.

[Footnote 1:  Minor v.  Happersett, 21 Wallace 166.]

[Footnote 2:  See above, p. 227.]

As to property matters it may be broadly stated that they have in general precisely the same rights that men have, and in several States more; that is to say, a woman frequently has a larger interest in the property of a man at his death, than the man has in hers, should she predecease him; and universally she is given a share of the husband’s property in case of divorce, either outright or by way of alimony, which, so far as I know, is never awarded to the man even if he be the innocent party.  In New Jersey and some other States, a married woman is not permitted to guarantee or endorse the notes or debts of her husband.  Many of the Southwestern States, from Louisiana to California, recognize or adopt the French idea of community property.  By the Mississippi constitution “the legislature shall never create by law any distinction between the rights of men and women to acquire, own, enjoy, and dispose of property of all kinds, or other power of contract in reference thereto.”  But this does not prevent laws regulating contracts between husband and wife.