sition to what they term "the danger
of having the ballot thrust upon them" shows life. While their
enrollment is infinitesimal it has set women to thinking, and a number
who have signed the declaration that they do not want the franchise,
have for the first time been compelled to give the matter
consideration and have decided that they do want it. The facts also
that within a few years the membership of the National Suffrage
Association has doubled; that auxiliaries have been formed in every
State and Territory; that permanent headquarters have been established
in New York; and that the revenues (almost wholly the contributions of
women) have risen from the $2,000 or $3,000 per annum, which it was
barely possible to secure half-a-dozen years ago, to $10,345 in 1899,
$22,522 in 1900 (including receipts from Bazar), $18,290 in
1901--these facts are indisputable evidence of the growth of the
sentiment among women. In this line of progress must be placed also
the thousands of other organizations containing millions of women,
which, although not including the suffrage among their objects, are
engaged in efforts for better laws, civic improvements and a general
advance in conditions that inevitably will bring them to realize the
immense disadvantage of belonging to a class without political
influence.

Nothing could be more illogical than the belief that a republic would
confer every gift upon woman except the choicest and then forever
withhold this; or that women would be content to possess all others
and not eventually demand the one most valuable. The increasing number
who are attending political conventions and crowding mass meetings
until they threaten to leave no room for voters, are unmistakable
proof that eventually women themselves and men also will see the utter
absurdity of their disfranchised condition. The ancient objections
which were urged so forcibly a generation or two ago have lost their
force and must soon be retired from service. The charge of mental
incapacity is totally refuted by the statistics of 1900 showing the
percentage of girls in the High Schools to be 58.36 and of boys,
41.64; the number of girl graduates, 39,162; boys, 22,575; 70 per
cent. of the public school teachers women; 40,000 women college
graduates scattered throughout the country and 30,000 now in the
universities, with the percentage of their increase in women students
three times as great as that of men, and 431,153 women practicin