as now helps to make the relation less
intolerable. On the contrary, with justice the foundation and a rigorous
fulfilment of duty on both sides will come a far closer tie than exists
save in rarest instances, and homes will regain a quality long ago
vanished from our midst. Such training will be the first step toward the
co-operation which must be the ultimate solution of many social
problems.

It has failed in many earlier attempts because personal justice was
lacking; but even one generation of sustained effort to simplify
conditions would insure not only a different ideal for those who think
at all, but the birth of something better for every child of the
Republic.

For the individual standing alone, hampered by many cares and distracted
over the whole household problem, action may seem impossible. But if
the most rational members of a community would band together, send
prejudice and tradition to the winds, and make a new declaration of
independence for the worker, it is certain that the tide would turn and
a new order begin. Till such united, concerted action can be brought
about there is small hope of reform, and it can come only through women.
Dismiss sentiment. Learn to look at the thing as a trade in which each
seeks her own advantage, and in which each gains the more clearly these
advantages are defined. It is a hard relation. It demands every power
that woman can bring to bear upon it. It is an education of the highest
faculties she owns. It means a double battle, for it is with ourselves
that the fight begins. Liberty can only come through personal struggle.
It is easy to die for it, but to live for it, to deserve it, to defend
it forever is another and a harder matter. Still harder is it to know
its full meaning and what it is that makes the battle worth fighting.
Union to such ends will be slow, but it must come:--

"Freedom is growth and not creation:
One man suffers, one man is free.
One brain forges a constitution,
But how shall the million souls be won?
Freedom is more than a revolution--
He is not free who is free alone."

Is this the word of a dreamer whose imagination holds the only work of
reconstruction, and whose hands are powerless to make the dream
reality? On the contrary, many years of experience in which few of the
usual troubles were encountered, added to that of others who had thought
out the problem for themselves, have demonstrated that reform is
possible. Precisely s