pediency carried
both measures. Women, on the contrary, have fought their own
battles; and in their rebellion against existing conditions have
inaugurated the most fundamental revolution the world has ever
witnessed. The magnitude and multiplicity of the changes
involved make the obstacles in the way of success seem almost
insurmountable.

The narrow self-interest of all classes is opposed to the
sovereignty of woman. The rulers in the State are not willing to
share their power with a class equal if not superior to themselves,
over which they could never hope for absolute control, and whose
methods of government might in many respects differ from their own.
The annointed leaders in the Church are equally hostile to freedom
for a sex supposed for wise purposes to have been subordinated by
divine decree. The capitalist in the world of work holds the key to
the trades and professions, and undermines the power of labor
unions in their struggles for shorter hours and fairer wages, by
substituting the cheap labor of a disfranchised class, that cannot
organize its forces, thus making wife and sister rivals of husband
and brother in the industries, to the detriment of both classes. Of
the autocrat in the home, John Stuart Mill has well said: "No
ordinary man is willing to find at his own fireside an equal in the
person he calls wife." Thus society is based on this fourfold
bondage of woman, making liberty and equality for her antagonistic
to every organized institution. Where, then, can we rest the lever
with which to lift one-half of humanity from these depths of
degradation but on "that columbiad of our political life--the
ballot--which makes every citizen who holds it a full-armed
monitor"?

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

VOL. III.

PHOEBE W. COUZINS _Frontispiece._
MARILLA M. RICKER page 112
FRANCES E. WILLARD 129
JANE H. SPOFFORD 192
HARRIET H. ROBINSON 273
PHEBE A. HANAFORD 337
ARMENIA S. WHITE 369
LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE 417
RACHEL G. FOSTER 465
CORNELIA C. HUSSEY 481
MAY WRIGHT SEWALL 545
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT 592
SARAH BURGER STEARNS 656
CLARA BEWICK COLBY 689
HELEN M. GOUGAR 704
LAURA DEFORCE GORD