With the rapid development of higher education, these women found themselves associated with large groups of independent women who could create a society of their own in advanced centers of population.  There was still much to be done in securing opportunity for women; but they could go on establishing the type of life that free women were to live.  Their problems were, however, even more complex than those which confronted their predecessors.  What line of education should women pursue?  What lines of work could they best undertake?  How could they combine an independent professional or industrial career with the life of a home and the responsibilities of a mother?  How far must older social restraints be modified in the interest of intellectual and industrial freedom?  It was a time for constructive statesmanship, rather than for revolution; and each woman knew she was under criticism, and that her success or failure was vastly more than her own personal concern.  In her all free women were being judged.

To the third generation belongs the host of women who are to-day filling our college halls, managing the women’s clubs, teaching the state schools, and competing with men in every industrial calling.  Theirs is the task of completing woman’s social and political emancipation, and of educating them to meet their newfound liberties.  It is possible that this present generation has a keener sense of rights than of duties; and the young women of to-day must be led to realize that the delicate adjustments still to be worked out require devotion equal to that of the earlier generations, if the toll of wasted life is not to be excessive.

What now is the relation of women to the range of political activity described in the last chapter?  Have they need of the protection which government gives?  Are they able to form political judgments?  Have they knowledge of the working of political machinery; or, lacking it, are they prepared to obtain it?  Are they able to make a wise selection of people to represent them in political action?  Have they need of the training which participation in political life gives?  Have they the preliminary preparation to take up that training to advantage, and can they undertake these duties without serious loss of qualities desirable in women?

Women certainly have need of protection; each has a life dear to her, and honor which is dearer to her than life.  In this respect she has a greater need than men.  Most women, also, have property of some kind, and we are increasingly recognizing their right to control this for themselves; hence they need property protection the same as men.  We do not need to think of Mrs. Sage, Mrs. Harriman, Miss Gould or Mrs. Green, in this connection, for in every community we now have many women who are immediately responsible for large property interests which new legislation might affect most seriously.