THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN.

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ceiv'v' that it is neither from the present nor the future that she receives or will receive her credentials as an economic factor, but from the primal condition of society itself, being the original necessity of that vast scheme of economics which introduces and links the nations to each other, and of which man alone has hitherto been the recog­nized exponent and director. Although man has cast a blind eye upon this truth, yet, if woman perceives it clearly, she can well afford to smile serenely on his self-gratula- tion as umpire of economics. For the woman soul, in the discovery and realization of its high assignment in the scheme of things, will find that power of equanimity, which sooner or later converts all obstacles into auxiliaries, all hindrances into means of advance. This internal ascension of the spirit into an imperturbable equanimity is our great need as women, if we would make all external advantage more surely and successfully our own. Abolish within all sense of bondage, and advancing on the wings of freedom, believe and take the whole arena of affairs as our native domain. Emancipate the thoughts from the ever-cramping sense of personal wrong and inter­national disadvantage, and a miracle follows. The spirit at once assumes its proper majesty and gathers up the reins of directing power. A few individual examples among women illustrate my statement, and we call them the world’s representative women. Their persevering and telling efforts for woman’s emancipation is not from the standpoint of woman as woman, but from the standpoint of the social unity and solidarity of the race, the proper balance of the social organism. Woman has been and will forever be a hero worshiper; but the hero enlarges. It is neither man nor woman, but humanity. She labors for justice for woman as a means to an end, and that end, the adjustment of civilization to the perfecting organic principle which Spencer styles “ a moving equilibrium.”

The women invested with largest power to bring about this state of social equity are women who, in their own spiritual forces, have attained this condition of a “ moving equilibrium.” There is perhaps no vantage-ground that will so surely bring the rank and file of women into this condition of spiritual balance and power as a realization of the magnitude of woman’s relation to the entire scheme of economics.

The lad who believed himself to be the child of a peasant, expressed in his person­ality and bearing only the common manners and nature of the peasant life, but hear­ing one day from a stranger that he was the child of a king, he was transformed by his consciousness of the fact from the peasant weakling to the dignity and power of his true relation.

Woman, then, being the oldest factor in economics, under what aspect shall we now regard her as the new factor? Looking at her economic relationships today, and comparing them with those of the past, the contrast is as marked as that of day with night. It is the recognition of this contrast that fixes her as the new factor in eco­nomics. The light of morning is new to one who w'akens, but the same light has been on its way through the darkness, and it is old with travel. What engineering ever laid out the line where darkness terminated and dawn began? So with woman’s industrial advance. She attains new areas, but the attaining is old with unflinching continuity and struggle. When the face of Ramona appeared to Father Salvierderra through the tangled thicket of old mustard, the vision was new. But long before its appearance there had been perceptible tumult in the fragrant thicket, a bending and weaving and tossing of branches, some persistent agile force pressing its way through the interlaced foliage that seemed to defy advance. The vision was new, but Ramona had been coming long before, and as she disentangled the network around her, sung her canticle to the sun. '

The new economic area to which woman has attained during the latter half of the nineteenth century is that of the creation of wealth. Her economic responsibilities are no longer limited to the application and distribution of supplies. She is a wealth- producer in the broadest meaning of the term; not indirectly, but directly, and this constitutes her a new element in industrial development. What is it to be a creator of wealth? What is wealth? No one has given us a better definition than Henry (6)