s respectively, has come very
near the point of hereditary or social privilege. The struggles of
so-called "Organized Labor" to establish a privileged caste have so
far been generally unsuccessful, always so in the courts, and usually
so in the legislatures; but in many States those who have enlisted in
either wars, Civil or Spanish, wholly irrespective of actual service
or injury, are entitled not only to pensions, Federal and State, but
to a diversity of forms of State aid, to general preference in public
employment, and even to special privilege or exemption from license
taxes, etc., in private trades, and their children or descendants are,
in many States, entitled to special educational privilege, to support
in State schools or industrial colleges, to free text-books, and other
advantages. Presumably some of these matters might be successfully
contested in the courts, but they never have been. As to pensions,
nothing here need be said. The reader will remember the familiar fact
that our pensions in time of peace now cost more than the maintenance
of the entire German army on a war footing or than the maintenance of
our own army. The last pensioner of the Revolutionary War, which
ended in 1781--that is to say, the last widow of a Revolutionary
soldier--only died a few years ago, early in the twentieth century.
The Order of the Cincinnati, founded by Washington and Lafayette, was
nevertheless a subject of jealous anxiety to our forefathers; but
apparently the successful attempt of volunteers disbanded after
the Civil and the Spanish Wars, although far more menacing because
embodying social and political privilege, not a mere badge of honor,
seems to call forth but little criticism.

XVII

SEX LEGISLATION, MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

The notion that a woman is in all respects a citizen, entitled to
all rights, political as well as property and social, was definitely
tested before our Supreme Court soon after the adoption of the
Fourteenth Amendment, on the plea that the wording of that amendment
gave a renewed recognition to the doctrine that a woman was a person
born or naturalized in the United States and therefore a citizen and
entitled to the equal protection of the laws. The court substantially
decided [1] that she was a citizen, was entitled to the equal
protection of the laws, but not to political privileges or burdens any
more than she was liable to military service. The State constitutions
of many States