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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

women meekly acquiesce in those that discriminate against their interests, when by open rebellion a change could be effected. It is plainly a woman’s duty not only to know what the law is respecting her rights, but also, what the law should not be.

Many women are unable to comprehend the principle that capital is labor, or that upon this principle rests its only equitable foundation; not physical labor alone, but mental labor also. It is only wealth that is accumulated without effort that is lightly esteemed by either sex.

This is so true that it has grown into a proverb that one generation by labor and frugality accumulates wealth, the second enjoys, spends or dissipates, and the third begins the struggle for existence in poverty again. We are living in a transitional period, and possibly it is not so much what our rights are, or what our duties to our­selves and to society with respect to property are today, as what they will be in the future, when justice, upon which all law is founded, invests woman with greater author­ity and responsibility by conferring upon her the law-making power.

Does justice, though, which has been beautifully defined as the soul of the universe, peacefully confer its blessings? No, all the law in the world tending toward the amelioration of mankind has been born of agitation and contest; every principle is a victory gained over an inimical force. And so the pathway traversed by all great reforms has been paved with long-continued human effort, and in many instances cemented with blood. It is most fitting, then, that the symbols of justice should be the scales and the sword. The scales, so sensitively adjusted that the slight­est variation causes vibration, are used to determine what is just; the sword the power to enforce its execution.

Law', with all its cumbrous machinery, is a plant of slow development but of con­tinuous growth. The seeds were sown far back in the ages when the complex rela­tions growing out of differing wants and conditions of men began to be considered. Customs arising from associations became crystallized into rules, rules established by usage, by legislative enactments, became laws. The Romans legalized their robberies of land and laid the foundation of all our law governing property. The Venetians traded on the Rialto, and upon their operations the basis of our commercial law rests. “The law,” says an eminent authority, “can renew its youth only by breaking with its past.”

What, with all the weight of a century or more of usage added to a law, does this breaking with its past mean? New conditions and new demands may have arisen that render it odious to a large majority, yet with its existence the rights and interests of individuals and classes have necessarily become identified and it can not be overthrown without a struggle; witness our tariff laws today in proof of this state­ment. Who of our statesmen living today that advocated the Fifteenth Amendment to our Constitution would do the same thing again?

If, then, when a law, either good or bad, is once enacted and becomes a part of the working machinery of the system, if it is so difficult and even dangerous to repeal it, it is not surprising that conservative, conscientious men are slow to accept new theories which, when incorporated into law, admit a new and untried element to the already too great body of law-makers.

Allegorically woman may hold the scales in one hand and the sword in the other as the personification of Justice, but actually she is without power, except as a bene­ficiary of man, to defend her own rights of property. The ample, floating drapery may envelop her fair form emblematically, but no ermined robes of state or bench belong to her wardrobe. She is judged, but she can not judge.

This is true today; what will be tomorrow?

The history of all conflicts in which human rights are involved proves that when the wave of reform has once been set in motion it never recedes until it reaches the further shore. The demand for the ballot for woman has been made; it is founded upon a principle of right and justice that can not be denied, though it may be delayed. Indifferent, indolent women may oppose; Susan B. Anthony may never lift up her