The wealthy and intelligent Englishwoman, Frances Wright, who came to this country in 1818 to attack slavery, found herself doubly opposed because she was a woman speaking in public.  Had not St. Paul declared:  “It is a shame for women to speak in the church”?  Lucretia Mott, born in the Society of Friends in Nantucket, had escaped the full force of this injunction, but even she found, when she attacked slavery in public, that she had invaded a world sacred to men, and she was sternly warned back.  Miss Susan B. Anthony also began her public life as a teacher and a temperance reformer.  It was only when she found herself helpless, in presence of the prejudices against her sex, that she turned her attention to freeing women from all purely sex limitation in public life.

When the Civil War broke out, the women were ready to do their part.  It is quite possible that the names of Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix may be remembered when Grant and Sherman are forgotten.  With the establishing of new human values the historian of the future may consider the saving of life and the preventing of misery as more worthy of lasting record than even military genius.  These women and their millions of helpers had not the resources of organized government at their disposal; but, instead, they had oftentimes to work against the jealousy of those in authority.  At the close of the war, the Sanitary Commission comprised seven thousand aid societies scattered over the country, and it had raised over fifteen millions of dollars.  Those women who remained at home, in the absence of fathers and sons for four years, faced all the problems of practical life.  Who can estimate the value of training in cooeperative work and organization which the Civil War gave to the American women?

In the Civil War, women directly served men; but in the great industrial reorganization which came afterward they served mainly women and children.  Here the victories have been won in the press, in the legislative halls, and in courts of law.  Working with men, or alone, they have perfected organization, agitated, raised money, printed appeals, and carried cases through the courts, until factories and stores have been made safer, excessive working hours have been cut down, young children have been exempted from labor, many sweat-shops have been closed, and women workers have begun to be organized to care for their own needs.  Much has been done; more remains to be done; but the training of the women has gone steadily forward.

These, then, are the forces which have pushed women forward in America:  European political and religious persecution, the forest necessities of colonial life, the American Revolution, the struggle with slavery and intemperance, the Civil War, the industrial struggle and the need to protect women and children from capitalistic exploitation.  Possibly women have now reached a point in their development where they can turn to public service and to a full realization of their powers