r endure them. Then
they call upon women to come out from the seclusion and protection of
their homes and aid them to 'save the city and the State.'" She
pointed out the difference between the time when the home was "a
protective and industrial center" and now when "the results of
electricity and steam have scattered the households," but in picturing
the advance that women had made in their own domain she said: "There
never was a time when there was as large a number of good
housekeepers and homemakers; when there was as much intelligence shown
in the scientific preparation of food; such knowledge of household
sanitation; such reverence for individual life; such painstaking study
of the needs and rights of childhood; when there was so much thought
given to the development of the finer and more permanent qualities of
character; when such good comradeship existed between children and
their parents; when marriage had so deep a spiritual and human meaning
as at the present time. The home ideal of today is the best the world
has yet known and it will continue to develop as larger freedom and
broader culture come to all who share in its life...."

The manner in which politics enters the modern home was pointed out
and the contempt which was shown for the political opinions of women
and then in a rousing appeal to women the speaker said: "A few days
since I was asked by a compiler of other people's thoughts to express
for him my opinion of the greatest need of American women and I
replied, 'self-respect.' ... The assumption that woman have neither
discernment nor judgment and that any man is superior in all the
qualities that make for strength, stability and sanity to any woman,
simply because he is a man and she is a woman, is still altogether too
common. The time has come when women must question themselves to learn
how far they are personally responsible for this almost universal
disrespect and then set about changing it."

Dr. Shaw told of the organization of the College Women's Equal
Suffrage League and asked: "Who can compute the loss sustained by our
country every year by the addition of unrestricted, ignorant and often
criminal male voters and the exclusion of the vast number of college
and high-school graduates through the disfranchisement of women? If
the stability of a government depends upon the morality and
intelligence of its voting citizens, how long can the foundations of
ours remain secure if we continue to