whole; that if one member suffers the whole suffers; that if one is blessed all are blessed. Women have no separate interests; if man is elevated and the general tone of society purified, woman receives her share of advantage. Whatever woman can do to help in American politics, by so much she hastens the time of her own recognition as a political equal. The country has made immense strides in material development during the last quarter of a century. Huge commercial enterprises have arisen like giants in armor, and have strode from ocean to ocean, leaving tracks of steel and handprints of light. The triumphs of mind over matter stamp this period illustrious among the centuries. Within this success there hides danger. The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive to touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disuse? Out of the heart are the issues of life in politics as well as in religion. Women have much heart. Politics need heart. Sentiment is the mightiest force in civilization; not sentimentality, but sentiment. In the earlier years of the world's history, human needs demanded grosser forms of force, and these received man's homage. Woman, because of her physical structure, was incapacitated for preeminent service. She was either man's toy or his slave, as he was noble or brutish. Later, when he passed from the nomadic period, and sought an abiding. place under a roof instead of a tent, and developed municipal government, she ruled over temporal things in that home; she was not the companion of man's brain or heart, and therefore not a factor in his government. With the growth of human brotherhood, and its necessary correlative, popular government, woman, as a part of glorified humanity and elevated with its uplift, found herself side by side with man; his helper not only, as formerly, in things temporal. but his companion in all things. To-day all forces in human existence and human relations have been exalted and refined. As far removed as is the beast of burden from the electrician's wire, so far is the woman of the earlier years from her sister of the twentieth century's dawn. As the humanitarian idea has plowed its way through human history, woman has developed with that idea, and now her finer instincts, her keener intuitions, and her patient heart are the full complement of the robust masculinity which has conquered nature. The two united glorify humanity. It is no longer a question of man or woman, but of quality of service, and of power to meet the world's need. The ideal woman is no longer the pale, white lily of medieval romance; she is a living, breathing, thinking, doing human being — a well-equipped helpmeet in all life's activities. There is no grander science than that of politics, except the science of theology. How God governs the universe of mind and holds in his hand the universe of matter is the grandest theme the soul can contemplate; next in dignity are the principles and methods which control and apply human agencies to masses of citizens for the general good. This is political science. We pity the narrowness which can not comprehend the dignity of this study; we are patient with weakness which can not grasp it; we make no answer to those who ridicule it; but we give heart and hand in patriotic devotion to the women who reach out to know and to do large things for the home and for the flag. There is another side of the question which should appeal to all women. None dispute woman's preeminence in the home, and a true woman desires most of all to be faithful there to prepare the food, to make the garments, and to minister in the nursery to little children is the dream of youth and the blessed fruition of mature years; but to many a mother's heart has come the disappointment of a loss of power, a limitation of influence, when early manhood takes the boy from the home, or when, even before that time, in school or elsewhere, he touches the great world and begins to be bewildered with its controversies, its trade, with questions of economics and politics. matters. The problems which vex philosophers and worry statesmen knock for admission at the door of his mind. Then, often, comes the mother's first sense of separation from her child. Disappointing is her answer if she is obliged to say, "My son, I do not know; you must ask somebody else." Sad indeed will be her heart if she finds that he soon learns to respect those outside the home more than he does his mother in the home, because his inquiries are answered elsewhere. Does the question come, "Where is father; is it not his duty to answer the boy's questionings?" To be sure it is; but fathers are burdened with the care of providing for the family. They must procure shelter, and food, and clothing. Too often these necessities drive out of sight and out of mind the boy's education, even in political Mothers always have to do what others leave undone. Happy is that mother whose ability to help her child continues on from babyhood into youth, manhood, and maturity. Blessed is the son who need not leave his mother at the threshold of the world's activities, but may always and everywhere have her blessing and her help. Thrice blessed are the son and the mother between whom there exists an association not only physical and affectional, but spiritual and intellectual, and broad and wide as is the scope of the being of each. Let no woman fear such association. Let her covet it as a gem in the crown of her maternity. In infancy and babyhood the mother holds her son by her affection and his necessity; in young manhood and maturity the ideal relation is a union so fine and close that touch of brain and thrill of nerve best illustrate it. Such mothers and such sons shall bring to the nation, which is only the larger home, a priceless benediction. We contend, therefore, that woman's relation to politics and her leadership therein are justified by the very ele ments of her nature; by her relation to the human family, as wife, as mother, as the mother of citizens, as a wage. earner, as a philanthropist, and as a Christian. When the political power involved in these relations is obtained, the ideal social state will be set up. THE REV. EUGENIA T. ST. JOHN OF KANSAS, INTRODUCING THE DISCUSSION ON THE PRECEDING ADDRESS, SAID: "To-day women as well as men are capable of studying and understanding constitutional law, and all the functions. and forms of government." She spoke of the numerous organizations of women in her own and other States formed for the study of the science of government; she eulogized the loyalty of women; referred to their capacity for diplomacy, and expressed her conviction that the administration of public affairs would be improved, not only by the ballot in the hands of women, but also by women's sharing the offices with men. She drew illustrations from the history of the suffrage movement in her own State, where women have shown the ability to draw up bills, and to secure their adoption by legislatures of men. She described the methods of a new organization, now formed in every county in Kansas, under the name of the "Parliamentary Drill," in which women are learning, and, in many instances, teaching to young men who have had less time and less opportunity than themselves for such study, parliamentary usage and the principles on which it rests; and with this are combining the study of the municipal laws and of the organic and statute laws of their State. She spoke of the compilation of the statutes of Kansas, prepared by a woman for the instruction of the wives of farmers and tradesmen ; she said that often this work, which aspired to teach only women, was referred to as an authority by politicians. THE DISCUSSION WAS THUS CONCLUDED BY MARY FROST ORMSBY OF NEW YORK, PRESIDENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC There was a time among the nomadic tribes when women were the equal of men in every political and national consideration. The subjugation of woman is described in the Book of Esther. In the matriarchal, prehistoric times the mother, or woman, controlled everything. The Egyptians during the time of their greatness recognized the equality of woman. Their preeminence over the rest of the world at that time is doubtless due largely to this greater freedom and development of the mothers of their race; but they were conquered by the Persians and brought under the cruel Ahasuerus, and during his reign the comparative equality of women was lost. After the long night of barbarism and of subjugation came the Christian religion, reviving past liberty, and greatly increasing it; hence the wonderful spread of Christianity. After the dawn of the Christian Era, the honorable wife of the Roman was no longer confined to the house and kept in ignorance. In Rome, during the three centuries in which her glory was at its height, the Roman women became more and more men's equals, and the famous matrons of Rome, who are held up as models by the ignoramuses of to-day in their attempt to rebuke the women of brains and capacity of this era, were themselves strong-minded women in every sense of the phrase. The crowning gem of Roman womanhood, the illustrious Cornelia, who is immortal in history as having reared the two grandest statesmen of all Rome's twelve centuries, who in speaking of these sons called them her "chief jewels," was herself a strong-minded woman in the exact modern sense. She was a public speaker; her lectures were crowded, and so great was her power as a |