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THE

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N this year of grace 1900, a year claimed so fiercely by both the past and the coming centuries that it might well be held to be neutral ground, we are constantly invited to pause and consider the progress of the world during the last hundred years. And each time that we accept this invitation, from whatever point of view it is made, we are more deeply impressed with the wondrous change that has been worked in every department of life and in all relations of society.

If any phase in this progress can claim to be more remarkable than another, it is surely that which has wholly altered the position held by women from that which they occupied in the year 1800. This revolution, which has been making itself felt in a greater or less degree in every country of the globe, is so often spoken of as if it affected women only, and as if it were the outcome of a movement initiated by aggressive beings desirous of asserting their own rights at the expense of those of men, that it is well to inquire what these changes really mean, and how they affect the world at large.

It is a wide subject on which we are entering, but we shall find valuable sources of information ready to hand in the seven volumes published by Mr. Fisher Unwin, of London, containing the Transactions of the International Congress of Women held in London in 1900. It is only by a close examination of the papers contributed to that Congress that the significance of that gathering is grasped.

The object of the Congress was largely misunderstood at the time, for it seemed impossible for the general public to comprehend that women workers from all over the world should think it worth while to come together from such distances and at so much personal expense and inconvenience without seeking to advance some special movement or movements. And when we succeeded in convincing a few here and there that such was the case, we 1 Suggested by the International Congress of Women.

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then found ourselves labeled as hopelessly unpractical. A Congress convened simply for the purpose of enabling its members to meet one another in the flesh, to exchange views, and to give information regarding matters of common interest to the workers assembled from different countries! This apparently was held to be puerile and useless to a degree. And yet it would seem that all Congresses are apt to share this weakness. We do not hear complaints of the learned and scientific societies when they meet in conference because they do not come together with the definite object of combining in a crusade to popularize some new discovery. And the promoters of the Women's Congress steadfastly declined to be led away from the object they had set before them by the enticing prospect of being able to use the Congress an opportunity for forwarding the special reforms aimed at by any section of workers, at the expense, perhaps, of the opinions held by other sections.

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The business of the Congress was to promote the aims of the International Council of Women, under whose auspices it was held, and whose main end and object it is to bring women of all countries who profess to work for the good of humanity into friendly relations with one another, no matter what their race, their party, or their creed. To be in a position to form such ties of mutual understanding and confidence, the leading women workers of different countries must be brought into personal contact with one another, and correct information regarding the workers and their work must be disseminated. The Women's Congress of 1899 marked long strides made in pursuit of these ends. The writers of the papers collected in these volumes were by no means self-elected exponents of their themes, but were recommended by the Women's Council in each country in conference with a committee of experts at headquarters on the particular subject to be discussed. Thus it comes about

that those who attended this Congress had a right to speak on behalf of the women of their own country and in virtue of personal work or experience, and we can accept the greater part of the facts stated, as facts attested by those who have borne some share of the heat of the day.

What, then, does this advance, this revolution in the position and opportunities of women, amount to? And whither is it tending?

As to the change, only a few illustrations will suffice, and I must ask to be excused if they are taken from England.

Professions. In 1859 a society was formed in London for " Promoting the Employment of Women." Classes for teaching typewriting and law-copying were started, and an address to tradesmen was issued urging the employment of women in trades suitable to them. An outcry was raised at tactics which would "take women out of their proper sphere." No other professions except teaching music, literature, and the drama were considered suitable. At the Congress of 1899 papers were read on the work done by women as doctors, journalists, inspectors, librarians, artists, musicians, dramatists, clerks, nurses, agriculturists, local government officials, architects, horticulturists, and also in the fields of scientific research, including astronomy, biology, and geology, and in various handicrafts such as jewelry, carving, bookbinding, technical and decorative designing, etc.

Nursing. It is difficult to believe that in 1847, when Sir Edward Fry published an invitation to women to come and be trained in the Haslar Naval Hospital, there was not a single response, and that at the time of the Crimean War there was no regular hospital training-school for nurses either in Great Britain or America. We have no statistics at hand of the number of nursing training-schools now existing, but they form so much a part of what we regard as the necessities of life that we can scarcely understand a condition of things under which no nurses save Sarah Gamps could be obtained. And yet this was actually the case in the time of our own mothers and grandmothers.

Medicine. Women were allowed to prac tice medicine in several countries in Europe before either the United States or Great Britain would sanction the necessary

training. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to obtain her medical diploma in the United States, in 1849, after many struggles, but it was not till nearly thirty years later that women were admitted to any medical degree in Great Britain. Now a considerable number of women qualify every year both for practice in their own country and for work in Oriental countries, where, if women are to have the aid of medical advice at all, they must have it through women.

The census of next year will reveal much as to the number of women now engaged in professional, educational, and industrial work. Already in 1891 it was found that 17,859 women were entered as commercial clerks, accountants, etc., in Great Britain and Ireland, as against 404 in 1861; 8,546 were employed in the Civil Service, as against 1,931 in 1861; 4,527 women printers, as against 419; 1,340 women chemists and druggists, as against 388; 3,032 painters and artists, as against 853; and 53,044 trained nurses where none were thus entered thirty years previously.

Education. The Section on "Education" at the Women's Congress by itself reveals changes so vast in the attitude generally adopted towards the education. of women during the last fifty years that it is difficult to imagine the period when a smattering of accomplishments was considered the best preparation for life and life's duties. A hundred years ago even Hannah More thought that teaching poor children to write would lift them out of their proper station, and fifty years ago Miss Frances Power Cobbe could say of the education given at the most expensive boarding-school at Brighton, "Nobody dreamed that any of us could, in later life, be more or less than an ornament in society. That a pupil in that school should become an artist or authoress would have been regarded as a dereliction." Contrast periods and conditions when such statements could be made with the present, when educationists from all over the world can meet and discuss the results of the various methods used to develop the girls under their care to their very utmost -Kindergarten, the Primary School, the Secondary School, the University, the Technical College, the system of Coeducation--these and a hundred more

subjects were canvassed and compared with the interest bred of experience and a conception of what may be.

Industrial Life. Or take the industrial life of women, and inquire into the numbers of women in all countries earning their livelihood at trades and factories, and consider what these papers have to tell us of the condition of things which has been created by the great influx of women workers. Consider the labor legislation and the factory acts passed in various countries, and the two schools of thought which argue for and against such legislation. We can no more than mention these sides of women's life, nor, again, the organized social and public work now being carried on in large part by women, of which work there was barely a trace one hundred years ago. Only one or two of our great missionary societies had then begun their operations; and certainly of women's work, such as we know it, there was absolutely nothing before the days of Elizabeth Fry, outside the convents or among the Quakers.

When Hannah More wanted to hold her Sunday-school under an apple-tree, having been refused the use of a building, the occupier of the land begged her to go elsewhere, for fear of her hymn-singing blighting the tree. And now, supposing we were to remove the women workers from their labors in prisons and work houses and hospitals, from the causes of temperance and purity, from church work and charity organization, from Sunday-schools, from clubs and associations for women and girls, where should we be?

These and many other thoughts will be aroused in our minds by the perusal of the thoughtful and well-informed papers read at the International Women's Congress, and we shall be left meditating as to what indeed will be the result to the world of

these vast changes in the position, education, opportunities, and work of women.

It is surely a false notion to look at such matters from the point of view of the women only, and not to recognize that the great changes which have been effected have radically altered the outlook of the whole human race. How could it be otherwise when it has been conceded in a greater or less degree in all civilized countries that women have a right to be educated in a thorough way for the work of life as well as men, and that no lower ideal can be accepted than the full development of every human being, man and woman alike?

The working forces of every nation are thereby more than doubled, and that, too, by reinforcements who have in their hands the greatest influence in the formation of character and in the education of the coming generation. We are now in the process of solving the problem of how these forces are to be used for the fullest possible advantage of humanity. There is still much, very much, to be accomplished before the power of prejudice, backed by a true-hearted, chivalrous concern to protect women from the rough-and-tumble of life, can be wholly overcome.

The workers, too, make many blunders. and are but too apt to revert to the idea that there can be but one type to aspire to, and that man and woman must both conform to it, instead of each contributing his or her full complement thereto.

But still we are moving on, and we are beginning to see dimly that in perfect equality of comradeship, of responsibility, of opportunity, and of education, will come that fuller development which must make both man and woman more able to take their part in bringing a better, happier world into being than we now dream of. God's in his heaven, All's well with the world.

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By Esther B. Tiffany

XCEPT in the case of Robert Bradford. I had more curiosity about Americans than liking for them, and Bradford's peculiar and individual charm I attributed entirely to his long residence abroad.

It was in Venice, in the winter of sixtytwo. The American Civil War was in progress. My English friends, who understood such things better than I, assured me that the Northern States were fighting a lost cause. From Bradford I could get little light; he appeared half irritably to avoid the subject. The other Americans of my acquaintance, long resident on the Continent, seemed indifferent, and I came easily to the conclusion that love of country played a very small part in the national character. Still, hearing of the arrival at our pension of two more of our transatlantic cousins, it struck me that an idle hour might not be ill spent in observing their attitude towards the disturbance in the States.

The name of the newcomers was Meier. They were mother and son; the latter an invalid who lay through the sunny hours. of the day in a wheeled chair on the loggia. Seeing them there one morning, I resolved to join them.

Hardly, however, had I stepped out when the glory of the view struck me, as it always did, with fresh delight. The pension stood on the Riva, and before it stretched the wide expanse of sunlit lagoon, with its darting gondolas, its heavy-prowed market-boats high piled with rich-hued fruit and vegetable, its island churches mirrored in the tide. For a moment I forgot what had brought me there, and it was with a touch of annoyance that I turned to respond to Mrs. Meier's good-morning. She had come to my side, and stood looking at me somewhat timidly, as one who feared she might be making an unwelcome advance. 'Good-morning, madam," she said. To my surprise, she spoke with a strong foreign accent; yet why should I be surprised? It was, after all, a German name and a German face and figure, notably of the peasant type. Still, she was hand

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somely and not vulgarly dressed. Emigrants, who had come to wealth and returned to scatter it in the old country! That hybrid American was not what I cared to study. "Good-morning," I rejoined, and was about to withdraw, but she laid a broad hand on my arm. "He smiles not at all," she said. "Who?"

"Mein sohn."

I glanced towards the recumbent figure. It was a iad of perhaps barely eighteen, sturdily built, but with a listless droop to every limb.

"He finds it hard," I said, "that he cannot join in the amusements of lads of his age."

Mrs. Meier shook her head vehemently. "Amusements? No, no, it is the war. It is that we must stay over here. The doctors say he die if he cross the sea again. He would risk it, but I—ach Gott! he is my only one! Thirteen months have we been here. His heart is broken that he cannot go home and fight for the Union."

I could not restrain a smile. "Why should he fight? Surely the quarrel is not yours?"

Unconsciously I had raised my voice, and the lad started up, gripping the arms of his chair with both hands. "Why should I fight?" he cried, "why should I fight? Not fight for my country!"

"Pardon me," I said, "I did not understand. I supposed you were, like your mother, a German."

I saw by the anxious contraction of Mrs. Meier's face that the excitement of the lad was to be feared, but it was useless to try to check him.

"And what if I was born in Germany?" he burst out. "Does that make America any less my country?"

"Oh, of course, if you choose to look at it that way," I murmured, turning again to the lagoon.

A hay-barge, its fragrant mounds greengold in the sun, was drifting lazily past, while on his back, beneath the crimson and umber triangle of the sail, lay the master of the craft half asleep. Beyond, the bell

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