measure to the
success of the former. There is no way by which the progress of the
movement for woman suffrage can be so clearly seen as by a comparison
of the State chapters in this volume with the State chapters in Volume
IV, which closed with 1900. The former show the remarkable development
of the organized work for woman suffrage, especially in the last
decade, which brought the complete victory.

In Volume IV it was possible to give a resume of the Laws specifically
relating to women and one was sent with each chapter for this volume.
The space occupied by the account of the work for the suffrage,
however, made it necessary to omit them. It required thousands of
words to record the legislation of the last twenty years relating
especially to women in some of the States and the large part of it to
women in the industries, which they had scarcely entered in 1900. The
same is true of child labor. Every State shows a desire for protective
legislation. Many States provide for mothers' pensions, a modern
tendency. About half of the States now have equal guardianship laws.
There is a gradual increase in those enlarging the property and
business rights of married women. The "age of consent" and the age for
marriage have been raised in most States where they were too low. In
every State for a number of years the large organizations of women
have made a determined effort to obtain better laws for women and
children and Legislatures have yielded to pressure. In every State as
soon as women were enfranchised there was improvement in laws relating
to their welfare and that of children.

The Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment went into effect in August, 1920,
and the following winter there was a greater amount of advanced
legislation in the various States than had taken place in the
preceding ten years collectively, and the resume of existing laws that
had been prepared for this volume was soon at least partially obsolete
in many of them. A brief statement of Office Holding was incorporated
but its only value was in showing that in all States this was almost
exclusively limited to "electors." When the Federal Amendment was
proclaimed it carried with it eligibility to the offices. In some
States it included Jury service but in others it was held that for
this special legislation was necessary. In all States the professions
and other occupations are open to women the same as to men. In the way
of Education every State University a