intrusted to men with neither knowledge, heart nor experience, who by their corruption imperiled the public interest and by their blundering disgraced the national name.  In short, all the train of evils inseparable from government of any kind beset this unhappy people with tenfold power, together with hundreds of worse ones peculiar to their own faulty and unnatural system.  It was thought that their institutions would give them peace, yet in the first three-quarters of a century of their existence they fought three important wars:  one of revenge, one of aggression and one—­the bloodiest and most wasteful known up to that time—­among themselves.  And before a century and a half had passed they had the humiliation to see many of their seaport cities destroyed by the Emperor of Japan in a quarrel which they had themselves provoked by their greed of Oriental dominion.

By far the most important factor concerned in bringing about the dissolution of the republic and the incredible horrors that followed it was what was known as “the contest between capital and labor.”  This momentous struggle began in a rather singular way through an agitation set afoot by certain ambitious women who preached at first to inattentive and inhospitable ears, but with ever increasing acceptance, the doctrine of equality of the sexes, and demanded the “emancipation” of woman.  True, woman was already an object of worship and had, as noted before, the right to kill.  She was treated with profound and sincere deference, because of certain humble virtues, the product of her secluded life.  Men of that time appear to have felt for women, in addition to religious reverence, a certain sentiment known as “love.”  The nature of this feeling is not clearly known to us, and has been for ages a matter of controversy evolving more heat than light.  This much is plain:  it was largely composed of good will, and had its root in woman’s dependence.  Perhaps it had something of the character of the benevolence with which we regard our slaves, our children and our domestic animals—­everything, in fact, that is weak, helpless and inoffensive.

Woman was not satisfied; her superserviceable advocates taught her to demand the right to vote, to hold office, to own property, to enter into employment in competition with man.  Whatever she demanded she eventually got.  With the effect upon her we are not here concerned; the predicted gain to political purity did not ensue, nor did commercial integrity receive any stimulus from her participation in commercial pursuits.  What indubitably did ensue was a more sharp and bitter competition in the industrial world through this increase of more than thirty per cent, in its wage-earning population.  In no age nor country has there ever been sufficient employment for those requiring it.  The effect of so enormously increasing the already disproportionate number of workers in a single generation could be no other than disastrous.  Every woman