week. According to that good friend of all women, "The New York Journal," seven thousand women go insane annually in New York alone for want of sufficient food and clothing.

Slavery far worse than that of the negro before the war, serfdom far worse than that which ever existed in mediæval Europe, binds down these helpless creatures. Do you wonder that there are in America as vast armies of outcast women as in any country on earth-that hundreds of thousands of these victims, ground down by competition to the point of starvation, in misery and degradation, yield to temptations which give them food, clothing, shelter?

"If you have tears to shed prepare to shed them now." You would find that all you had heard about American men working only that the women of their families could have "heaps" of money to spend is like all the other myths, for you would ascertain that while the women in New York spend $40,000,000 for such necessaries as dresses, the men spend on alcoholic drinks and tobacco alone, almost $100,000,000; upon their palatial clubs (to which no woman

belongs) sports, and such mentionable luxuries about $60,000,000 more; and that (in a whisper) all this is a mere bagatelle to what they spend on the "unmentionable."* (Laughter. A voice: "Poor, virtuous paragons!" Another voice: "You have buried our last illusion.") Amen!

I feel sure you now agree with me that democracy has added nothing to woman's power, influence, opportunity—that our sex has not gained thereby financially, politically, legally, socially, nor been blessed therein by association with a more sober, more chaste, more unselfish manhood than elsewhere-and that all women therein have lost forever the distinctions, honours, favours, glories, powers, opportunities, which belong to some of the sex in an aristocracy, to enough at least to make it quite respectable to be publicly classed with women. (Laughter.)

I feel sure our young friend will never again ask me, "Why do so many American women seek

to live in aristocracies ?" You cannot find an *The same ratio holds throughout the country.

ambitious woman in any monarchy who wishes to live in a republic. Millions of women in republics would gladly desert their governments, if their freedom from family ties admitted of such a step. There is a true saying (which originated in America by the way) that "every woman is at heart an aristocrat." This arises from that strongest impulse of nature, selfpreservation (as well as a desire for sex-preservation) and insures woman's lasting allegiance to aristocratic institutions.

The greatest misfortune that ever befel American women was that their colonies broke away from English rule, for they must always desert their native land, kith and kin, and live under a foreign flag in order to gain the superior sex-recognition which a republic denies

them.

In every aristocracy large numbers of women always have greater power, authority, and opportunity than the vast majority of men, but in a democracy (even with the ballot) no class of women will ever possess authority, oppor¬ tunity, or power higher than its lowest classes

of males. I grant that woman generally has not grown in aristocracies as she should have done but there is nothing inherent in such institutions to prevent her growth; her condition therein is like the grain of wheat buried for thousands of years with a mummy, grain which grows and blossoms when the necessary conditions are furnished. But woman's condition in a republic is like that of a grain of sand, which can never grow and blossom, whatever condition may be furnished, as it has no inherent germinating qualities.

I feel sure no one can look into these matters as deeply as I have done, without deciding that there is no government which gives woman such scope for her ambition as an aristocracy; for differentiation, that law of all-enduring progress, growth and aspiration, is the inherent law of European monarchies.

I beg you never to let anybody persuade you to believe that it is the comparative youth of the American Republic which causes these disparagements, for this is not true. (Voices: "So, so!") New Zealand, and West Australia are

young enough to be its great grand-children, and yet women therein enjoy not only all the rights, privileges, liberties-political, legal, civil and social-of women in the oldest communities, but they enjoy as well all the distinctions, honours, recognitions, favours, glories and powers. The true reasons are that New Zealand and West Australia are the arteries of an aristocracy; and that every republic is inherently a masculine monopoly, as dangerous to woman's future as the Upas tree to life. (Cheers and prolonged applause.)

THE SIMILARITY

OF THE THREE "ISMS"

I have striven to show you woman's position in a democracy because you had already rightfully agreed, before you ever saw me, that its conception of our sex would be preserved, should your ideas of society prevail. As your ideals are emanations from republicanism, I know that you ladies are either socialists or anarchists. I have not presumed to ask which, nor shall I do