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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

iner, Mr. Sturges, has written a paper on this subject, which will be found in the records of the Congress.

I have written to every woman bank cashier in this country, and I have received many interesting letters, among others one from Mrs. Annie Moores, President of the First National Bank of Mount Crescent, Texas. She says that she had never had her attention drawn to this point before, but that she immediately made it a subject of investigation and was perfectly amazed at the result. She happened at the time she received my letter to be in Virginia, and her investigation was in the County of Suffolk. She found eight stockholders in the bank of Monsmont were women, possessing by inheritance one-third of the stock, which they all voted by proxy. Further investiga­tion has proved that two-thirds of the National bank stock of this entire county of Suffolk is owned by women. Mrs. Simpson, who is President of the Simpson Bank of Columbus, Texas, gives very much the same figures; and adds that woman to be capable of investing funds wisely and judiciously must be possessed of three essential qualifications—to wit: A knowledge of matters of finance, self-confidence, and firm­ness.

The keynote of the relation of the sexes is really a financial one; this may appear a very materialistic view to take of the situation, but the readjustment nowin progress between the relative position of the sexes is largely of that character. Life was com­paratively a simple thing when the law recognized but one responsible head to the family, of arbitrary power over its goods and chattels. The position of a married woman or an unmarried woman in the household was that of a dependent. She was expected to marry; failing that the family had a right to her services without remuner­ation. Under this primitive system protected by the English common law ,the family was really presided over by the father. No one acquainted with the social life of this country forty years ago can deny this fact. The wife, in many cases the active partner of the concern, had absolutely no financial independence. Most of the young women of that day employed themselves in household work; some few taught school; some few went out as seamstresses and dressmakers, and their wages were largely appro­priated by the younger members of the family to help the boys through college or for current expenses. Only a widow, and she in a very limited sense, ever thought of com­merce, and no consideration was given to women as investors, their “nearest of kin“ among men doing the investing for them. But within the last thirty years, public opinion, and the laggard that always follows it, the law, have revolutionized the financial standing of woman.

The Code Napoleon was the forerunner of the financial emancipation of woman, recognizing as it did her financial status as a partner in marriage; consequently French women are financiers, and are more largely engaged in commerce than the women of any other nation, and not as employes but as employers and partners; because the Code conferred on them, early in the development of the women question, a financial standing; and, far from being a source of danger to the family, it has proved in France to be the surest foundation on which the family can be established.

The baneful influence of the English common law in regard to marriage can never be overestimated, creating, as it has, between husband and wife, the feeling that the finances are exclusively in the hands of the husband; so that money is an unfor­tunate subject to discuss after marriage, and one to be scrupulously avoided before marriage. Many a girl marries a man ignorant of his financial resources, and most men in this country marry a woman without any discussion as to her financial pros­pects from her family or herself. The constant tendency of modern legislation is to rehabilitate the family as a partnership; and while the laws relating to the property of married women are modified and liberalized until her position is approximately one founded on justice, these laws are of so recent enactment that the feeling of ethical responsibility as to the making, managing and spending of money is not yet developed. Bank stocks are also largely in the hands of widows, or women who are not convers­ant with the needs of the younger generation, and consequently carry out old-fash-