ve up all hope.
"Women," said she, "are beginning to take interest in education, and have
organized a society for the higher education of girls." The pedagogical
congresses in Madrid (1882 and 1889) promoted the intellectual
emancipation of women. Catalina d'Alcala, delegate to the International
Congress of Women in Chicago in 1893, closed her report with the words,
"We are emerging from the period of darkness." However, he who has
wandered through Spanish cathedrals knows that this darkness is still very
dense! Nevertheless, the woman's suffrage movement has begun: the women
laborers are agitating in favor of a new law of association. A number of
women teachers and women authors have petitioned for the right to vote. In
March, 1908, during the discussion of a new law concerning municipal
administration, an amendment in favor of woman's suffrage was introduced,
but was rejected by a vote of 65 to 35. The Senate is said to be more
favorable to woman's suffrage than is the Chamber of Deputies.

The fact that women of the aristocracy have opposed divorce, and that
women of all classes have opposed the enactment of laws restricting
religious orders, is made to operate against the political emancipation of
women. A deputy in the Cortez, Senor Pi y Arsuaga, who introduced the
measure in favor of the right of women taxpayers to vote in municipal
elections, argued that the suffrage of a woman who is the head of a family
seems more reasonable to him than the suffrage of a young man, twenty-five
years old, who represents no corresponding interests.

PORTUGAL

Total population: 5,672,237.
Women: 2,583,535.
Men: 2,520,602.

No federation of women's clubs.
No woman's suffrage league.

Portugal is smaller than Spain; its finances are in better condition;
therefore the compulsory education law (introduced in 1896) is better
enforced. As yet there are no public high schools for girls; but there
are a number of private schools that prepare girls for the university
entrance examinations (_Abiturientenexamen_). The universities admit
women. Women doctors practice in the larger cities. The women laborers are
engaged chiefly in the textile industry; their wages are about two thirds
of those of the men.

THE LATIN-AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA[96]

The condition prevailing in Mexico and Central America is one of
patriarchal family life, the husband