ed worthy of a place in the pages
of history. In each case history was rewritten and the past rediscovered
in the light of the new age. So it will be with the rise and growth of
women's political power. The history of their labor, their education,
their status in society, their influence on the course of events will be
explored and given its place in the general record.

It will be a history of change. The superior position which women enjoy
in America to-day is the result of a slow evolution from an almost
rightless condition in colonial times. The founders of America brought
with them the English common law. Under that law, a married woman's
personal property--jewels, money, furniture, and the like--became her
husband's property; the management of her lands passed into his control.
Even the wages she earned, if she worked for some one else, belonged to
him. Custom, if not law, prescribed that women should not take part in
town meetings or enter into public discussions of religious questions.
Indeed it is a far cry from the banishment of Anne Hutchinson from
Massachusetts in 1637, for daring to dispute with the church fathers, to
the political conventions of 1920 in which women sat as delegates, made
nominating speeches, and served on committees. In the contrast between
these two scenes may be measured the change in the privileges of women
since the landing of the Pilgrims. The account of this progress is a
narrative of individual effort on the part of women, of organizations
among them, of generous aid from sympathetic men in the long agitation
for the removal of civil and political disabilities. It is in part also
a narrative of irresistible economic change which drew women into
industry, created a leisure class, gave women wages and incomes, and
therewith economic independence.

THE RISE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT

=Protests of Colonial Women.=--The republican spirit which produced
American independence was of slow and steady growth. It did not spring
up full-armed in a single night. It was, on the contrary, nourished
during a long period of time by fireside discussions as well as by
debates in the public forum. Women shared that fireside sifting of
political principles and passed on the findings of that scrutiny in
letters to their friends, newspaper articles, and every form of written
word. How widespread was this potent, though not spectacular force, is
revealed in the collections of women's letters, articles, son