garden of the Tuilleries. This infamous affront affected her so that she became a raving maniac, never recovering her

reason.

For Madame Roland and her husband too the day of darkness was soon to come. They found that they could no longer control those passions which they had helped to call forth. Repulsed by the incredible excesses, which were committed during the progress of the revolution, Mr. Roland sent in his resignation on January 22, 1793, the day after the execution of the king. But all his and his wife's efforts to regulate and elevate the Revolution failed. Both became more and more the butt of calumny and the object of increasing dislike on the part of the ultra-revolutionists, whose leaders, Marat and Danton, heaped the foulest falsehoods upon them. At the instigation of these men Madame Roland was arrested early on the morning of the last of July, 1793, and thrown into the same prison cell, that had been occupied by Charlotte Corday a short time before. On November the 8th she was conveyed to the guillotine. Before yielding her head to the block, she bowed before the statue of Liberty, erected in the Place de la Revolution, uttering her famous apostrophe: "O Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!"

After the elimination of the three leading spirits of woman's emancipation all attempts to claim political rights for women were sternly repressed. The bold deed of Charlotte Corday, who on July 17th. 1793, killed Marat, the chief of the Mountain party, had given to his followers a warning of what resolute women were able to do. And so all female clubs and political meetings were forbidden by the Convention. Women were even excluded from the galleries of the hall where it sat, and Chaumette warned them that by entering into politics they would violate the law of nature and would be punished accordingly. French girls were also entirely excluded from all educational reforms that were instituted by the Convention and, later on, by Napoleon, who always maintained that female education should be of the most rudimentary description.

At the same time that Olympe de Gouges, Théroigne de Méricourt and Madame Roland took such a conspicuous part in the French Revolution, there appeared in England a most remarkable book, which might be called the first comprehensive attempt to establish the equality of the sexes. Its authoress was Mary Wollstonecraft, a woman of Irish extraction, born at Hoxton on April 27, 1759. Compelled to earn her own living, she, together with her sisters, had conducted a school for girls. Later on she held a position as governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough, in Ireland. Among her early

publications are "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters" (1787) and "The Female Reader" (1789). That she followed the events of the French Revolution with the utmost interest, appears from her book: “An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and the Effects it has Produced in Europe." It was intended to comprise several volumes, but after the first one had been published in 1790, the work remained unfinished. Two years later, in 1792, appeared the work with which the name of Mary Wollstonecraft is always associated, as from this book was born one of the grandest movements which exists in the world to-day the Woman Suffrage Movement.

This book, entitled "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,' was a sharp protest against the assumption that woman is only a plaything of man. It is also a demand on her to become his equal and his companion.

In the preface the authoress states the "main argument" of her work, "built on this simple principle that, if woman be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence or general practice." In carrying out this argument she explains that woman can never be free until she is free economically; it makes no difference how poetic, romantic and chivalrous we become, the fact is, there can be little equality between the sexes as long as the male partner has entire charge of the purse. Woman may be free socially; she may get rid of all sexual superstition, and she may crack and cast from her all theological trammels: but of what value is all this if she is still dependent upon man for food, raiment and shelter? What good does it do her to say "My body is my own, subject to the whims and lusts of no man, if upon that very man depends her livelihood? Woman's economic dependence is the root of that tree which nourishes the poisonous fruits of her subjection and abject slavery. Only when woman is on equal terms with man, can she be really virtuous and useful. But this result can only be obtained by rejecting the fallacious idea of weakness and refusing man's help."

After that the authoress states, that woman by open air exercise can become healthy and strong. By study she can acquire a solid education and useful knowledge, and thus become fit to earn her own living. Marriage will then cease to be her sole hope of salvation. If she marries she must not expect infinite romantic love from her husband, that would be an endeavor to perpetuate what is transitory in its very From her husband she should require esteem and friendship. But before she can ask for or inspire these senti

essence.

ments she must have shown herself a lofty mind and a sincere, benevolent, and independent temper.

"But this ideal will remain a myth unless the system of education is entirely changed. It is the duty of the Government to organize schools and colleges, for boys and girls, both rich and poor, and of all ages.'

Mary Wollstonecraft recommends that boys and girls should study together. She does not regard as an evil the attachment which might result under these conditions. On the contrary, she is an advocate of early marriage, and believes that the physical and moral health of young people would be greatly benefited thereby. "Do not separate the sexes, but accustom them to each other from infancy!" she demands. By this plan such a degree of equality should be established between the sexes as would break up gallantry and coquetry, yet allow friendship and love to temper the heart for the discharge of higher duties.”

Thus asking the widest opportunities of education for women, she demands also her participation in industry, political knowledge, and the rights of representation.

While Mary Wollstonecraft in this manner advanced progressive ideas, she also discussed several questions, dangerous and explosive at that time. In regard to marriage she recommended emancipation from the coercions and ceremonies imposed upon all Christians by the Church. And where love had ceased, divorce should be made easy. These points, together with her extraordinary plainness of speech and her denial of the eternity of the torments of hell, caused an outcry of all classes, to whom the dust of tradition was sacred, or who saw their assumed authority endangered. The air grew thick with insults and insinuations, hurled at the champion of such principles by churchmen feeding on their worn-out thistlecreeds. There were also the shrill, polished shrieks of society, whose antiquated dogmas Mary Wollstonecraft had repudiated. But the impulse, given by her, did not die. It became the heritage of later and more advanced generations, who have tried to realize the ideas of this most remarkable woman of the 18th Century.

WOMAN'S ENTRY INTO INDUSTRY.

Since the stirring years of the American War of Independence and of the French Revolution the question of woman's rights and woman suffrage has remained constantly before the public. Its significance greatly increased when with the invention of steam-engines, with the rapid growth and extension of trade and commerce, and with the introduction of modern methods all conditions of industrial life likewise became revolutionized. Many of those industries in which women participated, were transferred from the homes to factories, where the workmen and women were placed at machines, producing within one day greater quantities of goods than the laborers formerly had manufactured within weeks or months.

With this industrial revolution came, however, also many evils. The laborers remained no longer masters of their own time and efforts. While hitherto they had been the owners of their little industry, now the factory owners and the great industries began to own them. They found themselves bound by strict rules, not of their own making, but prescribed and enforced by their employers, many of whom had not the slightest consideration for the people that worked for them. Just as soulless as their machines, and thinking only of gain, they abused their employees wherever possible, and in doing so often resorted to the meanest tricks.

Nowhere did such evils become so appalling as in England, where the politicians subordinated all other considerations to industry. It was here that in order to reduce the small wages of the workman cheap woman- and child-labor was first introduced on a large scale, and feeble, defenseless creatures, without experience and organization, were subjected to the most cruel oppression and exploitation.

At the end of the 18th and during the first half of the 19th Century large numbers of women and pauper children were shipped from the agricultural districts of Southern England to the northern districts to work in the factories which had been established there in consequence of the superior water-power.

Tender women and girls, and even children from six to ten years were placed in cotton mills, where they were compelled to work in overcrowded rooms thirteen to fourteen hours daily. Robert Mackenzie in his book "The Nineteenth Century," p. 77, states, that the accommodations provided for these people were of the most wretched nature. "If such children became over-tired and fell asleep they were flogged. Sometimes through exhaustion they fell upon the machinery