ained
in the field of semi-slavery and uncertain barter; in a word, it is
still in the feudal stage. The woman gives what she is and has, and
nominally she gets protection and support. Sometimes these fail and, on
the other hand, she occasionally receives the unearned gifts supposed to
befit a potentate or a shrine. As women become educated they find this
condition of uncertainty and instability unbearable. They are willing to
work, but they must have a chance to think and to plan their lives
according to their individual needs. Some degree of economic
independence is necessary to intelligent thinking and orderly living. It
is not that women are demanding more property; they are demanding some
definite individual property as a home for their souls; and they are
coming to realize that if this property rests on some one else's
feelings and caprices it is no home for the soul; it is only a tavern.

This conception is well illustrated by the case of a woman in western
New York, who married about 1850, and went to live on a farm with her
husband. They had small means, but she brought seven hundred dollars to
the altar, which was more than he possessed in ready capital. Her part
was, however, soon swallowed up in the general business, and while there
was a tacit agreement, voiced at long intervals, that she had put
something into the business, her part never increased, though the man
with whom she worked grew well-to-do. Certain feudal rights in the
butter the woman made and in the chickens she raised, yielded her small
sums, which often escaped her, but which she sometimes secured and put
into a few silver spoons and dishes for her table, a square of Brussels
carpet, three lace curtains, a marble topped stand, and six horsehair
covered chairs for her parlor. These articles were considered in a very
special sense her own. The man might have sold them and used the money,
but public opinion would have condemned him had he done so.

Meantime the woman cooked for the family and the hired men, scrubbed
and washed and mended. She strained and skimmed the milk from a dozen
cows, and churned the butter; she fed the calves; cared for the hens;
dug in the garden; gathered the vegetables; did the family sewing; and
stole fragments of time for her flower-beds. Her hours were from five in
the morning until nine at night, three hundred and sixty-five days in
the year, with no half-days or Sundays off.

Incidentally she read her Bible, ma