men. Although
they take a far keener and more intelligent interest in national and
local politics than American women as a rule have ever taken, their
presence at political meetings has but yesterday been sanctioned.

The civil responsibility of the father and mother in many European
countries is barbarously unequal. If a marriage exists between the
parents the father is the only parent recognized. He is sole guardian
and authority. When divorce dissolves a marriage the rights of the
father are generally paramount, even when he is the party accused.

On the other hand, if no marriage exists between the parents, if the
child is what is called illegitimate, the mother is alone responsible
for its maintenance. Not only is the father free from all
responsibility, his status as a father is denied by law. Inquiry into
the paternity of the child is in some countries forbidden. The unhappy
mother may have documentary proof that she was betrayed under promise of
marriage, but she is not allowed to produce her proof.

Under the French Code, the substance of which governs all Europe, it is
distinctly a principle that the woman's honor is and ought to be of less
value than a man's honor. Napoleon personally insisted on this
principle, and more than once emphasized his belief that no importance
should be attached to men's share in illegitimacy.

These and other degrading laws the European progressive women are trying
to remove from the Codes. They have their origin in the belief in "The
imprudence, the frailty, and the imbecility" of women, to quote from
this Code Napoleon.

Whatever women's legal disabilities in the United States, their laws
were never based on the principle that women were imprudent, frail, or
imbecile. They placed women at a distinct disadvantage, it is true, but
it was the disadvantage of the minor child and not of the inferior, the
chattel, the property of man, as in Europe.

Laws in the United States were founded on the assumption that women
stood in perpetual need of protection. The law makers carried this to
the absurd extent of assuming that protection was all the right a woman
needed or all she ought to claim. They even pretended that when a woman
entered the complete protection of the married state she no longer stood
in need of an identity apart from her husband. The working out of this
theory in a democracy was far from ideal, as we shall see.

CHAPTER IV

AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE COMMON