of by Olive Schreiner in this passage, is the rare
exception.

But so far Olive Schreiner is undoubtedly right. When the revolt at
length takes place it is in answer to an immediate and pressing need
of the whole community. When the restrictions upon a class have become
hurtful to the whole, when their removal is called for because society
is in need of the energies thus set free, then takes place a more or
less general uprising of the oppressed and restricted ones, apparently
entirely spontaneous and voluntary, in reality having its origin
partly at least in the claim which society is making upon the hitherto
restricted class to take up fuller social responsibilities.

When observing then the modern change of attitude among women, towards
life, we can therefore only conclude that such an immediate and
pressing need is felt by society today, a claim neither to be ignored
nor denied.

On this reasoning, then, and observing the eager demand of women
everywhere for increased freedom and independence, we can only draw
the conclusion that the whole world is dimly recognizing an immediate
and pressing need for the higher services of women, services which
they cannot render unless freed legally, politically and sexually. It
is this immense and universal social claim which has been responded
to by the whole organized movement among women, industrial as well as
educational and political.

In order to understand the relation of the organized suffrage
movement to the question of improving women's industrial and economic
conditions and status, we have to consider the changed conditions of
society under which we live, and we will have to recognize that the
demand for the vote in different countries and at different times may
or may not coincide with the same social content. Psychologically,
indeed, as well as practically, the vote connotes all sorts of
different implications to the women of today, contemporaries though
they are.

It was with an appreciation of these complexities that Professor W.I.
Thomas has pointed out that in his opinion suffragists often place too
great stress upon primitive woman's political power, and ignore
the fact that women held an even more important relation to the
occupational than to the political life of those early days, and that
in her occupational value is to be traced the true source of her power
and therefore her real influence in any age.

While agreeing with Professor Thomas that some