trol their own property or to collect their own
wages, and which forbade all women to vote. The changes have not
come because women wished for them or men welcomed them. A
liberal board of trustees, a faculty willing to grant a trial, an
employer willing to experiment, a broad-minded church willing to
hear a woman preach, a few liberal souls in a community willing
to hear a woman speak--these have been the influences which have
brought the changes.

There is no more elaborate argument or determined opposition to
woman suffrage than there has been to each step of progress....
Had a vote been taken, co-education itself would have been
overwhelmingly defeated. In 1840, before women had studied or
practiced medicine, had it been necessary to obtain permission to
do so by a vote of men or women, 8,000 graduated women physicians
would not now be engaged in the healing art in our country. In
1850, when vindictive epithets were hurled from press, pulpit and
public in united condemnation of the few women who were
attempting to be heard on the platform as speakers, had it been
necessary to secure the right of free public speech through
Legislatures or popular approval, the voices of women would still
be silent.... The rights of women have come in direct opposition
to the popular consensus of opinion. Yet when they have once
become established, they have been wanted by women and welcomed
by men.

There are a few fanatics who, if they could, would force the
women of this generation back into the spheres of their
grandmothers. There are some pessimists who imagine they see all
natural order coming to a speedy end because of the enlarged
liberties and opportunities of women. There are sentimentalists
who believe that the American home, that most sacred unit of
society, is seriously imperiled by the tendencies of women to
adopt new duties and interests. But this is not the thought of
the average American. There are few intelligent men who would be
willing to provide their daughters no more education than was
deemed proper for their grandmothers, or who would care to
restrict them to the old-time limited sphere of action. Thinking
men and women realize that the American home was never more
firmly established than at the present time, and that it has