Women’s present aim she declares to be the “reassumption of their share in human life.”  This is, of course, a modern putting of the List of Grievances with which the militant campaign started in this country in the 40’s, reenforced by the important point that women “back of history” enjoyed the privileges which the earlier militants declared that man, “having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her,” had always usurped.

Just how the lady knows that “back of history” women and men were more perfect comrades than to-day, I do not know.  Her proofs would be interesting.  If this is true, it reverses the laws which have governed all other human relations.  Certainly, since history began, the only period where I can pretend to judge what has happened, the records show that comradeship between men and women has risen and fallen with the rise and fall of cultivation and of virtue.  The general level is probably higher to-day than ever before.

Moreover, from these same records one might support as plausibly—­and as falsely—­the theory of a Woman-made World as the popular one of a Man-made World.  There has been many a teacher and philosopher who has sustained some form of this former thesis, disclaiming against the excessive power of women in shaping human affairs.  The teachings of the Christian Church in regard to women, the charge that she keep silent, that she obey, that she be meek and lowly—­all grew out of the fear of the power she exercised at the period these teachings were given—­a power which the saints believed prejudicial to good order and good morals.  There is more than one profound thinker of our own period who has arraigned her influence—­Strindberg and Nietzsche among them.  You cannot turn a page of history that the woman is not on it or behind it.  She is the most subtle and binding thread in the pattern of Human Life!

For the American Woman of to-day to allow woman’s part in the making of this nation to be belittled is particularly unjust and cowardly.  The American nation in its good and evil is what it is, as much because of its women as because of its men.  The truth of the matter is, there has never been any country, at any time, whatever may have been their social limitations or political disbarments, that women have not ranked with the men in actual capacity and achievement; that is, men and women have risen and fallen together, whatever the apparent conditions.  The failure to recognize this is due either to ignorance of facts or to a willful disregard of them; usually it is the former.  For instance, one constantly hears to-day the exultant cry that women finally are beginning to take an interest and a part in political and radical discussions.  But there has never been a time in this country’s history when they were not active factors in such discussion.  The women of the American Revolutionary Period certainly challenge sharply the women of to-day, both by their intelligent understanding of political