empire, the fall of the second Napoleon, the birth of
the French republic, the incorporation of India into the British
empire, and the revolution of commerce by the Pacific railways
and the Suez canal. Great changes have likewise taken place in
the structure of our own State and national legislation, the most
conspicuous and pronounced result being the centralization of
power in the federal government. It has been preeminently a
period of amelioration, a long stride in the direction of
tolerance of opinion, belief, speech and creed. Hospitals,
asylums, schools, colleges and the manifold agencies of an
advanced Christian civilization for alleviating the average lot
of humanity, have grown and multiplied beyond the experience of
former times, and men like Matthew Vassar, George Peabody and
John Hopkins have hastened to consecrate the abundant fruits of
honorable lives to the exaltation and advancement of the race.

But in no direction have greater changes occurred in this country
than in the condition of woman in respect to employment, wages,
personal and property rights. In all heathen countries at this
hour the mass of women are slaves or worse, wholly deprived of
civil rights. In most Christian countries their legal status is
one of absolute subordination in person and property to men. In
this republic alone have we attained an altitude where some small
measure of justice is meted out to women by the laws. In 1850 a
fair measure of her rights was the grim edict of the common law
holding her in guardianship prior to marriage, and upon marriage
making her and all her possessions practically the property of
her husband, while a cruel, unreasonable and vicious public
opinion excluded her from all except menial and ill-paid service.
One by one and year by year these barriers have given way, until
in many States her property and personal rights enjoy the
complete shelter of the law. Now more than half the occupations
and employments of this age of industrial activity and progress
are thronged with the faithful, efficient and contented labor of
women.

The law has broken forever the thraldom of an odious and hopeless
marriage by reasonable laws for divorce for just cause, given her
the custody of her children, vested her with the absolute power