and responsibilities without the goading necessity of a great wrong.  If not, there are sufficient wrongs still calling to lead them for many years.  Intemperance is not yet banished; the negro is not yet freed from the effects of his slavery; working women and children are not yet fairly protected; disease reaps needlessly large harvests; Lazarus still begs at the table of Dives; our public education leaves much to be desired; criminals are badly handled; millions of European refugees come marching into our land needing guidance.  Meantime, millions of women are content, because themselves comfortable, and there are some even willing to aid the powers of obstruction.

In these later years, marvelous changes have taken place all over the world.  Even in China, official attempts are now being made to leave women free to walk by abolishing the bandaging of infants’ feet.  In Turkey, women are going out from the harem to participate in public life.  In Germany, they are escaping from the exclusive service of the home.  In England, they are repeating the cries of the men of 1776 and of 1789:  “All men and women are born free and equal.”  “No taxation without representation.”  “One person, one vote.”  In Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden, women have all the essential civic and political rights of men.

But, as in all human progress, first the ideas of a few leaders change; they shape legislation; and the new organization slowly makes over the practices and then the deep-seated mental and moral habits, which constitute popular prejudices.  These old unreasoning feelings still largely dominate us, blinding us to the facts of life and blocking each new advance by which women might pass into the world of free choice and adjustment of their lives as co-workers with men.  In the next chapters we must study these present-day conditions in detail.

III

Women in Education

In discussing woman’s relation to formal education we are really examining her ability to master and teach certain intellectual exercises, for in our modern industrial democracies our efforts are confined almost exclusively to training the mind and to stocking it with information.  Each year we talk more and more about physical, moral, political, social and industrial education; but requirements for entrance into schools, promotions in them, and graduation from their courses, still rest almost entirely on information acquired; and in a less degree, on intellectual ability displayed.

Even in selecting and certifying teachers, the emphasis is all laid on intellectual equipment.  On the physical, moral, or social sides we at most demand that the candidates shall not be too bad; on the political side we do not demand even this, since nearly 80 per cent. of our whole teaching force is declared legally unfit to vote or hold office, and is yet employed to train our future citizens.  But on the intellectual side we demand positive proof of fitness.  Thus it is fair to say that our modern education deals almost exclusively with knowledge.