* * *

We have completed our journey round the world,--from Japan to the United
States is only a short distance, and the intellectual relations between
the two countries are quite intimate. Few oriental people seem more
susceptible to European culture than the Japanese. But whatever woman's
rights movement there is in non-European countries, it owes its origin
almost without exception to the activity of educated occidentals,--to the
men and women teachers, educators, doctors, and missionaries. Here is an
excellent field for our activities; here is a duty that we dare not forget
in the midst of our own struggles. For we cannot estimate the noble work
and uplifting power that the world loses in those countries where women
are merely playthings and beasts of burden.

CONCLUSION

In the greater part of the world woman is a slave and a beast of burden.
In these countries she rules only in exceptional cases--and then through
cunning. Equality of rights is not recognized; neither is the right of
woman to act on her own responsibility. Even in most countries of European
civilization woman is not free or of age. In these countries, too, she
exists merely as a sexual being. Woman is free and is regarded as a human
being only in a very small part of the civilized world. Even in these
places we see daily tenacious survivals of the old barbarity and tyranny.
Hence it is not true that woman is the "weaker," the "protected," the
"loved," and the "revered" sex. In most cases she is the overworked,
exploited, and (even when living in luxury) the oppressed sex. These
circumstances dwarf woman's humanity, and limit the development of her
individuality, her freedom, and her responsibility. These conditions are
opposed by the woman's rights movement. The movement hopes to secure the
happiness of woman, of man, of the child, and of the world by establishing
the equal rights of the sexes. These rights are based on the recognition
of equality of merit; they provide for responsibility of action. Most men
do not understand this ideal; they oppose it with unconscious egotism.

This book has given an accurate account of the _means_ by which men oppose
woman's rights: scoffing, ridicule, insinuation; and finally, when
prejudice, stubbornness, and selfishness can no longer resist the force
of truth, the argument that they do not wish to grant us our rights. There
is little encouragement in this; but it shall not perplex us. Man, by