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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

George. “Wealth,” he says, “consists of natural products modified by human exertion so as to gratify human desires. It is labor impressed upon matter in such a way as to store it up. When a country increases in wealth, it increases in certain tangible things, such as agricultural and mineral products, manufactured goods of all kinds, houses, cattle, ships, wagons, furniture, etc.” Into this spacious wealth-producing domain, the autonomy of which determines a nation’s place among nations, woman has found entrance as an active agent among its complex forces.

Still further is she completing Henry George’s definition of wealth when he adds:

“ Nor should it be forgotten that the artist, the teacher, the poet, the priest, the phil­osopher, though not engagedinthe production of wealth, are not only engaged in the production of utilities and satisfactions to which the production of wealth is but a means, but by acquiring and diffusing knowledge, stimulating the mental powers and elevating the moral sense, are largely increasing the ability to produce wealth. ‘ For man does not live by bread alone.’ ” Into this higher atmosphere of wealth produc­tion, where professions are ranked and ideas generate, woman has seemingly com­pelled her own ascent; for whenever and wherever we lift our eyes to these intellect­ual ramparts she passes before our vision, she is there also. I state this advisedly, for I am informed from a variety of sources that the number of occupations and pro­fessions now open to woman are from four to five hundred, and one authority informs me that all callings of whatever nature are now open to woman if she have the courage to enter them. For myself, I am somewhat apprehensive of the full signifi­cance of the word “ courage ” in that statement. If a general should say to his soldiers, “ My boys,the enemy’s entrenchments are ours if you have the courage to take them,” he would not mean that the entrenchments were thrown open for possession. So far as woman has hitherto made headway into the promised land, she has cast up this highway of courage every inch of the route. So I dare not claim new comfort from this authority, certainly not sufficient to justify us in casting aside our armor or stack­ing our arms. The hopefulness of the outlook lies in the fact that the area yet to con­quer narrows; the line of struggle shortens; the entrenchments of opponents weaken and diminish, and this is due not simply to our persistent courage as women, not to our tireless importunities, but to very many causes inherent in the nature of modern civilization of which our courage and importunity are effects, which in turn become causes.

Society being an organism, it experiences all the expansions and transformations of any nucleated cell or egg. There is a time in the history of an egg when the lim­itations of the shell are a protection to the homogeneous, inchoate substance within. But differentiations being once set up in this life substance, functions being special­ized and the whole individualized, that which was protection becomes imprisonment. The organism wrenches and struggles, the walls yield, and the organism steps forth into the light and responsibility of freedom. If the beak of the hatched eagle could speak for itself, it would surely claim that the weakening of its prison walls was due to its own persistent knocking and battering, and the wing and the talon would put in a similar claim of merit for themselves. But it was the increasing perplexity of the whole organism, the one differentiating life within that compelled the beak to knock, the talon to scratch, and the wing to push and struggle.

There is a seed in Southern California, I think it is a variety of clover, that if it had consciousness w'ould surely believe that it planted itself. It lies upon the surface of the packed soil during the dry season, but when the rains of winter come it takes a notion to bore a little depression in the softened earth and put forth roots. “ Behold my efficiency,” it might well say. “ But mine made yours available,” a week’s rain might replv; but the incubating genius of life, brooding over mountain and canon and mesa, could say: “ I am the awakener and supply of all your forces.” A like inde­pendence of progressive forces permeates the entire structure of modern society. Sim­ultaneous transformations, seemingly foreign to each other, are transfusing the body politic, the genius of evolution burning at its center having the providence to initiate