pole to pole, when we have passed to other spheres of action.

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX — Address BY HELEN H. GARDENER OF NEW YORK.

If it were not often tragic and always humiliating, it would be exceedingly amusing to observe the results of a method of thought and a civilization that has proceeded always upon the idea that man is the race and that woman is merely an annex to him, and exists because of his desires, needs, and dictum.

Strangely enough, the bigotry of sex bias and pride does not carry this theory below the human animal. According to scientists and evolutionists, and indeed even according to the religious explanations of the source and cause of things, the male and female of all species of animals, birds, and insects come into life and tread its path together as equals. The male tiger does not assume to teach his mate what her "sphere" is, and the female hippopotamus is supposed to have sufficient brain-power of her own to enable her to live her own life and plan her own occupations; to decide upon her own needs, and generally regulate her own existence without being compelled to call upon the gentlemen of her family in particular and all of the gentlemen of her species in general to decide for her when she is doing the proper thing. The laws of their species are not made and executed by one sex for the other, and the same food, sun, covering, education, and general conduct and opportunities of life which open to the one sex are equally open to the other. No protective tariff is put upon masculine prerogative to enable him to control all the necessaries of life for both sexes, to assure him all the best opportunities, occupations, education, and results of achievement which are the common need of their kind. In short, the female is in no way his subordinate.

In captivity it is the female which has been as a rule most prized, best cared for and preserved. In the barnyard, field, and stable alike it is deemed wise to kill most of the males. They are looked upon as good food, so to speak, but not as useful citizens. What they add to the world is not thought so much of their capacities for future services are less valued than are those of the other sex. Even the manmade religious legends bring all these animals into life in pairs. Neither has precedence of the other; neither is subject to the other.

But when it comes to the human animal, "the final blossom of creative thought," as religionists word it, or of universal energy, as scientists put it, the male for the first time becomes the whole idea. A helpmeet for him is an afterthought, and according to man's teaching up to the present time an after-thought only half-matured and very badly executed.

In spite of all the practice on other pairs, one of each sex, it remained for the Almighty, or Nature, to make the mistake, for the first time, of creating a race with one of its halves a mere "annex " to the other — a subject, a subordinate, without brains to do its own thinking, without judgment to be its own guide.

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In the case of all other animals each sex has its own brain-power, with which it directs its own affairs, makes its own laws of conduct, and so preserves its own individuality, its personal liberty, its freedom of action and of development.

I am not ignorant of the scientific facts that in nature among ants, birds, and beasts, there are tribes and communities where some are slaves, or are subject to others; but what I do assert is this, that this is not a sex distinction or degradation. It is not infrequently the males who are the subjects in those communities where liberty is not equal, and where, therefore, the very basic principle of equality is impossible or unknown.

Nowhere in all nature is the mere fact of sex made a

reason for fixed inequality of liberty; for subjugation, for subordination, and for determined inferiority of opportunity in education, in acquirement, in position in a word, in freedom. Nowhere until we reach man!

Here, for the first time in nature, there enter artificial social conditions and needs. These artificial demands, coupled with the great fact of maternity under sex subjugation, linked with financial dependence upon the one not so burdened, have fixed this subordinate status upon that part of the race which is the producer of the race.

This fact alone is enough to account for the slow, the distorted, the diseased, and the criminal progress of humanity. Subordinates can not give lofty character. Servile temperaments can not blossom into liberty-loving, liberty. breathing, liberty-giving descendants.

Many of the lower animals destroy their young if they are born in captivity. They demand that their offspring shall be free; free from man's conditions or captivity, as it always has been free from the tyranny of sex control in their own species.

It is the fashion in this country nowadays to say that women are treated as equals. Some of the most progressive and best of men truly believe what they say in this regard.

One of our leading daily papers, which insists that this is true, and even goes so far as to say that American gentlemen believe in and act upon the theory that their mothers and daughters are of a superior quality, and are always of the first consideration to men, recently had an editorial headlined" UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE THE BIRTHRIGHT OF THE FREE-BORN." I read it through, and, would you believe it, the writer has so large a bump of sex arrogance that he never once thought of one-half of humanity in the entire course of an elaborate and eloquent two-column article! "Universal" suffrage touched but one sex. There was but one sex 66 free-born." There was but one born with "rights." The words, "persons," "citizens," "residents of

the State," and all similar terms were used quite freely, but not once did it dawn upon the mind of the writer that every one of those words, every argument for freedom, every plea for liberty and justice, equality and right applied to the human race, and not merely to one-half of that race.

Sex bias, sex arrogance, sex pride, sex assumption is so ingrained that it simply does not occur to the male logician, scientist, philosopher, and politician that there is a humanity! They see, think of, and argue for and about only a sex of man, with an annex to him woman. They call this the race, but they do not mean the race; they mean men. They write and talk of "human beings"; of their needs, their education, their capacities, and development; but they are not thinking of humanity at all. They are planning for and executing plans which subordinate the race-the human entity to a subdivision, the mark and sign of which is the lowest and most universal possession of male nature - the mere procreative instinct and possibility. This has grown to be the habit of thought until in science, in philosophy, in religion, in law, in politics-one and all - we must translate all language into other terms than those used. For the word "universal" we must read male; for the "people," the "nation," we must read — men. The "will of the majority - majority rule" really means the larger number of masculine citizens. And so with all our common language. It is mere democratic, verbal gymnastics, clothing the same old monarchical, aristocratic, mental beliefs with "the divine right" of man, and making woman his subject and perquisite.

It does not mean what it says, and it does not say what it means. Our thoughts are adjusted to false forms, and so the thoughts do not ring true. They are mere hereditary forms of speech. All masculine thought and expression up to the present time have been in the language of sex and not in the language of race; and so it has come about that the music of humanity has been set in one key and played. on one chord.

It has been well said that an Englishman can not speak French correctly until he has learned to think in French. It is far more true that no one can speak or write the language of human liberty and equality until he has learned to think in the language, and to feel without stopping to argue with himself that right is not masculine only and that justice knows no sex.

Were the claim to superior opportunity, status, and posi tion based upon capacity, character, or wealth, upon perfection of form or grace of bearing, one could understand if not accept the reasonableness of the position; for it would then rest upon some sort of recognized superiority; but while it is based upon sex, a mere accident of form, carrying with it a brute instinct, which is not even glorified by the capacity and willingness to produce, surely no lower, less vital, or more degraded basis could possibly be chosen. Not long ago a heated argument arose here in Chicago over the teaching of German in the public schools. This argument was used by one of the leading contestants in one of the leading journals:

"The whole amount of education that ninety-five per cent of our public school pupils receive is lamentably small. It is far less than we could wish it to be. Most of these children, who are to be the citizens and by their ballots the rulers of this nation, can often remain but a few years in the school-room. For the average American citizen who is not a professional man, or who is not destined for diplomatic service abroad, English can afford all the mental and intellectual pabulum needed."

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Now here is an amusing, and also a humiliating, illustration of the way these matters are always handled, and it is for that reason only that I have introduced a local question here. Ninety-five per cent of our public school pupils," etc., "by their ballots are to be the rulers of the nation," etc., "future citizens," forsooth! Now it simply did not occur to the gentleman who wrote that, and to the hundreds who so write and speak daily, that the most of those ninety-five