It was this unjust mode of appointment which, in so many instances, especially through the years of the war, placed side by side, with pure and noble women, the women-adventurers and sinners, whose presence cast so much undeserved reproach upon the innocent, and who caused the only shadow of disrepute which has ever fallen upon woman’s Treasury-service. Even in the worst days this class formed the exceptions to a host of honorable and noble women, and yet the shameful fact cannot be wiped out that men, high in political power, because they had that power, made womanly virtue its price, and were meanly base enough to use the Civil Service of their country to pay for their own disgraceful sins. Because this was possible, pure women, working day by day to support themselves and their children, were covered with the shadow of unjust suspicion, while women, unworthy and profligate, were allowed the same positions, with equal honor and equal pay. There could be no greater moral injustice to woman than to place her employment under the Government on such a basis. It put the best under ban, while it drew those whose steps pointed downward swiftly along the inevitable descent. There was but one redress that the State could offer to its daughters, that of making their chance equal to that of its sons. Then, if they failed, the failure would be their own; if they succeeded, they would not be defrauded by the Government they served. The new Civil-Service Rules, whatever their impracticability in other ways, seemed to offer to the women-workers of the Government this redress. If education and fitness were to be made the standard of Departmental Service, alike for women as men, then the reign of favoritism and might must end. An idle woman, the pet of some man in power, would no longer receive all that was paid a woman filling the desks of two men. The woman who had proved, by years of efficient service at a man’s desk, that she was more than equal to the performing of his duties, would cease to receive for doing them the pittance of the veriest idler in the lobbies, and no more. It sounded well; magnanimous men and true women, yearning only for justice, and that it might be earned and won without ado, took heart. Educated women from North and South, East and West, flocked to the Capital to compete in impartial intellectual examination with men. Many of these were teachers—all women to whom self-support, or the support of others, were indispensable. The number of women who have passed the highest competitive examinations, is remarkable. Their life-long pursuits and intellectual training made it impossible that, in this regard, they should prove second to men. The number so great, that all could receive appointments was not probable.