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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

that all life can yield is his; that he must aim high; must aspire to greatness. He has the fond encouragement of his parents, friends and society, and the whole world approves his efforts and applauds his success. But the girl—alas! the case is far different.

I have only touched upon some of the innumerable discouragements that the ambitious girl, striving to cultivate and develop the mental or intellectual force with which God has endowed her, has always had to contend; but what chapters, aye, vol­umes, could be written of the wasted lives, disappointed hopes and blighted ambitions that have fallen to the lot of women through all time. Some may say, “Such has been the sad experience of men also.’’ Yes; but men have failed or fallen in spite of all the encouragement, all the privileges, all the superior advantages and all the aids to success which have been so cordially extended to him, while woman has faltered and failed because of discouragements. If she has succeeded at all in , accomplishing anything outside the nursery, the kitchen or church work, it has been as a warrior battling for his rights against fearful odds. Constantly assured that she has not the natural ability or capacity to compete with man in the learned pro­fessions or in scholastic attainments; that she is by the designs of the Almighty wholly unfitted for any work or mission that requires more than the veriest modicum of common sense, and that even to aspire to anything more is to fly in the face of Divinity, as was once said of the invention of the lightning-rod.

The conservative, repressive training of the home has been supplemented and emphasized by the religious teachings of the church. In law she has always been a ward, first of her father, and second and always of her husband. Occupying an inferior place in her family, what wonder that her children have grown up with an idea of woman’s weakness. Theology has held her morally responsible for sin in the world, and its partner in authority, the law, has decreed that she should not be trusted to manage her own interests financially, and denied her the right to the cus­tody of her own offspring. Such has been the condition of woman for thousands of years, in the sphere which law and gospel, state and church have assigned to her. But a new era has dawned. She has discovered for herself (what man did long ago) that she has a mind of her own, and that such mind, or brain through which it works, is just as capable of expansion, cultivation and development to the highest degree of intellectual power as if it were perched upon masculine shoulders. She has learned that maternity is something more than a mere physical function, and that motherhood implies responsibilities and duties that only the most intelligent can faithfully per­form, and to have good mothers there must first be wise women. She begins to realize that men who have constituted themselves her protectors, and claim to have legislated in her behalf and the best interests of her children, are not to be unquestionably relied on, and that it is just as well to investigate such claims and look after the interest of her offspring herself. She entertains some doubts about this government deriving its power from the consent of the governed. The woman of today has become a discov­erer! The great Christopher, whom we are all honoring above all men, discovered a new world in the fifteenth century, but behold, a greater than Columbus is here. The woman of the nineteenth century has discovered herself. She has discovered that she has a distinct objective existence. This magnificent building, planned by women, designed by a woman, filled to repletion with woman’s handiwork and brain work along all lines of human activity, from the primeval domestic wares of the stone age to that beautiful picture (in the exhibit of Spain) of the first woman lawyer admitted to practice that learned profession in her royal kingdom; all these, and the magnifi­cent work done, and active participation of women in all the wondrous exhibits of this beautiful “ White City,” demonstrate the fact that henceforth and forever “woman’s sphere” in life will be defined and determined by herself alone. Her place in nature, no longer fixed by masculine dogmatism, shall be as broad and multifarious in scope as God shall decree her capacity and ability to accomplish.