"There is no difference between the brain of a man and the brain of a woman.

"Woman is as capable as man of determining what is good for her and her family.

"What is good for the family is very likely to be good for the

state.

"Therefore, when woman is denied the right to vote, an injustice is not only done to her, but to the state as well.

"A community can not be said to have reached its highest development when one-half of its adult thinkers are denied the right to express their convictions on governmental policies in an effective manner."

In what a time we are living!

"Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." There is scarcely a nation or people not undergoing some marvelous transformation. Russia is in the throes of a new birth; China, awakened from her sleep of centuries, is going through a quick evolution. France is a changed nation; England is finding herself; and America, the queenly leader of democracy, not to be outdone, is preparing herself for the new age by cleansing her commonwealths and enfranchising her women.

It is a great time in which to live.-Stewart.

CHAPTER XIII.

Women at Work, Women Reborn.

War Work Among the Women Workers.

Did you know that there are over 2,000,000 young American women working in munitions factories? That nearly all the uniforms our soldiers and sailors wear are largely made by women workers? That a great share of our foodstuffs are handled and prepared by women? asks the San Francisco Examiner.

Neither did we, until a Young Women's Christian Association secretary came along and related the facts at a local luncheon the other day.

At first thought, one does not link the Young Women's Christian Association with war work of any kind. The association's big brother, the Y. M. C. A., we know about. Its work, right under the noses of the enemy's guns, is well known, and even now San Francisco is engaged in the laudable job of raising nearly half a million dollars toward the association's war-work fund.

But it is apparent, just from the figures given by this traveling secretary who spoke here the other day, that there is much work for such an organization as the Young Women's Christian Association as well, in these days of war.

"These girls are part of our second line of defense," she told the women assembled to hear her, “and unless we stand by them and help them and provide good for them, our first line of defense will fail through a weakened second line.'

Wise words. They should be weighed seriously. There is work to be done by this woman's organization, whose peace-time activities have become a vital and important part of life in every community and whose new work, brought about by the war, is a vital need for the nation.

The Y. W. C. A. already is doing a noble work abroad. In Russia and in France its workers have found a great field for activity and there are scores of them there doing their bit in unaccustomed ways and among peoples hungry for the ministrations of such women, and needful of them. Its larger work now is to be done at home.

Hold up their hands in any way you can. Theirs is a big and noble work. Find out how you can help and, having found out, do it.

Women in War-Time Economies.

(By Ada Patterson)

Women of America have been reborn. Those casual visitors from other lands who went home and wrote down our women as spoiled, selfish, pampered and unemotional will dip their pens into other ink and write different descriptives. Without doubt there is

a new American woman, born of the war of her country with the Central Powers.

Feminine America had looked with pitying eyes upon the despoiled lands and tortured nations beyond the Atlantic. American women had given to those lands and nations the aid of their time and thought and purses. But when the United States declared war the women of this country were as mothers whose homes had been attacked by the enemy. Such mothers gather their children in their arms, and the spirit of defense and of protection flames from their eyes. In the breast of the most timid mother are unlocked resources, undreamed-of courage and endurance.

The rebirth of American women under the conditions of war has revealed big virtues and great selflessness. It has shown them as maids "who bind their warrior's sash," wives who tell their husbands that they will support the family while they support their country, mothers who tell their sons they would rather mourn them as dead heroes than as living cowards.

With Blood and Tears.

Women of France do their war work, like the men of France, with blood and tears, casting their souls and bodies into the fight to save their country.

"One munitions factory in France," says a writer in Every Week, "turns out the enormous amount of 1,000 tons of ammunition every day. Six thousand women are employed in this plant." Among these women thirty babies are born each month and cared for in the hospital and nursery attached to the factory. Only the fewest days necessary, and the new mothers leave their babies and go back to their shell making, to handling the white hot metal and the high explosives ten hours each day! The babies never leave the nursery. Last July there were 210 there. For the youngest the mothers are allowed a ten-minute nursing period every three hours-and the tiny victims of war times drink in deadly fatigue, fear, despondency and fearful nerve-tension with their mothers' milk! These women war-workers wear no uniform. They are clad in the ragged black of mourning for their men who have already impeded the rush of the Hun with their warm, living and loving bodies, or clad in coarse unbleached cotton dresses and their faces are tired and haggard. The experts among them work eight hours without pause for food or rest.

Mothers in war-work! Shall it be so in America?-Cheyenne Leader.

Women Better Labor Conditions.

Driven by the necessities of the great war hundreds of industries have opened their doors to women for the first time-women are everywhere doing the work hitherto done exclusively by men. With this change in the economic scheme has come a change in the social life of labor; a change that in many cases was unforeseen but which has proved in every case to be a betterment of

existing conditions. Just as the women have shown increased efficiency in the work, so has the social atmosphere of the great factories been improved.

Men, working side by side with women, have been ashamed of rude behavior, and finding keen competition from the women, have attended more strictly to business. As one works manager said recently: "The girls have got 'em scared the way they mind their knitting."

Employers, however, find that with the employment of women comes greater obligations to their working forces, and most of them have risen to the occasion. The shops are being made light and airy; rest rooms, baths and dressing rooms are being installed and the living conditions are generally being improved. No sooner are the women provided for than the employer realizes that similar conditions should be given the men, and the result is that all gain.

A good example of how the women are taken care of is shown by the new $1,000,000 plant of the Standard Aero Corporation in Elizabeth, N. J., where 1,200 women are soon to be employed. This plant is the largest in this country, where the entire airplane is made, and the women are employed in the wing-making departments and other departments, where the labor is light and requires deft fingers. Harry Bowers Mingle, president of the Standard, was the first airplane maker in this country to employ women and he did so as soon as he realized that they were better than men in the more delicate work.

At the Standard plant there is a rest room more than 100 feet long by 50 feet wide, with windows on three sides. It is comfortably furnished, so comfortably in fact that it is more like a club room that anything else. Then there are dressing rooms, shower baths and modern toilet arrangements. In addition a dining room is being built where the women may either eat the lunches they have brought from home or be served by the chef of the plant. Every effort is made to make the women's work pleasant and to give them a pride in what they are doing, for they are "soldiers of the shops" and are assisting in building airplanes that will train airmen for European service. Like soldiers, these women wear uniforms, pale blue piped with red, and soon they are to be organized in military fashion, starting with privates and ranking up to captains.

Dr. Anna Shaw Lauds Women.

BALTIMORE, Nov. 25.-Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, chairman of the Woman's Committee of the National Council of Defense, at a mass meeting of Maryland Mothers today, termed the war "a woman's war, man-made in Germany."

She declared the greatest proof of patriotism in woman the fact that they gave their sons for war. She said:

We must send our boys away with a smile. The time for tears must be after they are gone. Let our children know that they

live in a land where men are willing to die and where women are willing to give all for their country. All the world is calling to the womanhood and the motherhood of America.

A message to America's men in the service was drafted, and will be sent to the various units at Christmas. It is:

The women of America are with you in spirit and in service. You are our standard bearers, and our hope.. We love you, believe in you, and pray for you, this Christmas morn.