ay a
part not only in writing but in public speech, which was a very
novel part for women to play in America; and after the Civil War
had settled some of what seemed to be the most difficult legal
questions of our system the life of the nation began not only to
unfold but to accumulate.

Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at
the time of the Civil War. There was none of that underground
struggle which is now so manifest to those who look only a little
way beneath the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told
tonight were uncommon in those simpler days. The pressure of low
wages, the agony of obscure and unremunerated toil did not exist
in America in anything like the same proportions as they exist
now. And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the
contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have assembled
in the cities and the cool spaces of the country have been
supplemented by feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our
political questions has been altered. They have ceased to be
legal questions. They have more and more become social
questions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings
to one another, not merely their legal relations but their moral
and spiritual relations to one another.

This has been most characteristic of American life in the last
few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and
greater prominence the movement which this association represents
has gathered cumulative force, so that when anybody asks himself,
What does this gathering force mean? if he knows anything about
the history of the country he knows that it means something
_which has not only come to stay but has come with conquering
power_.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the
channels and methods by which it is to prevail. _It is going to
prevail_ and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it
which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely
because women are discontented, it is because they have seen
visions of duty, and that is something that we not only can not
resist but if we be true Americans we do not wish to resist.
Because America took its origin in visions of the human spirit,
in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of t