But the rank and file which conducted itself so honorably in the Revolution was not a whit more noble and intelligent than the rank and file of the succeeding period.

It would have been impossible ever to have established as promptly as was done the higher and the general schools for girls if women had not given them the support they did, had not been willing, as one great educator of the early part of the nineteenth century has recorded--"to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of the most rigid economy, that their daughters might be favored with means of improvement superior to what they themselves possessed." And back of this self-denial was what?
A desire that life be made easier for the daughter?
Not at all--a desire that the daughter be better equipped to "form the character of the future citizen of the Republic." It is not alone that justice is wounded by denying women a part in the making of the civilized world--a more immediate wrong is the way the movement for a fuller, freer life for all human beings is hampered.

A woman with a masculine chip on her shoulder gives a divided attention to the cause she serves.

She complicates her human fight with a sex fight.

However good tactics this may have been in the past, and I am far from denying that there were periods it may have been good politics, however poor morals, surely in this country to-day there is no sound reason for introducing such complications into our struggles.
The American woman's life is the fullest in its opportunity, all things considered, that any human beings harnessed into a complicated society have ever enjoyed.