However one may question the party socialists’ claim that an economic and social millennium is exclusively dependent upon their dominance, few acquainted with those active in the movement will deny the sincerity of purpose, the almost religious exaltation that animate great numbers of the party. The first socialist member from the East, and the second in the United States, has been elected to Congress from our district; a man universally esteemed for his probity, with a record of many years’ unselfish devotion to the workingmen’s cause. A copious literature and widespread propaganda proclaim the willingness of the American people now to give socialism a hearing. It seems a far cry from that first unimpressive little parade that drew the settlement family to the windows twenty years ago. * * * * * Years ago the lads in one of the settlement clubs debating the subject of woman suffrage declared it to be “a well-known fact that when women had the vote they cut off their hair, they donned men’s attire; their voices became harsh.” I cannot say that even to-day the ardent advocates of woman suffrage come in great numbers from among the male members of the settlement clubs, but, on the whole, the tendency is to accept women in politics as a necessary phase of this transitional period and the readjustment of the old relations. The conviction that the extension of democracy should include women has found free expression in our part of the city, and Miss L. L. Dock, a resident of many years, has mobilized Russians, Italians, Irish, and native-born, all the nationalities of our cosmopolitan community, for the campaign. When the suffrage parade marched down Fifth Avenue in 1913, back of the settlement banner, with its symbol of universal brotherhood, there walked a goodly company carrying flags with the suffrage demand in ten languages. The cosmopolitanism of our district was marked by the Sephardic Jewish girl who bore aloft the Turkish appeal. The Chinese banner was made by a Chinese physician and a Chinese missionary. There are four American-born Chinese voters in our part of the city. [Illustration] The transition is significant from the position of women among orthodox Jews to the motherly looking woman who stands on a soap-box at the corner of Henry Street and makes her appeal for the franchise to a respectful group of laboring men. The mere fact that this “mother in Israel” is obliged to work in a factory six days of the week is an argument in itself, but intelligently and interestingly she develops her plea, and her appeal to the men’s reason brings sober nods of approval.