“In your day you doubtless remember that generally boys were in greater request and more welcome by parents than girls. And there continued to be such a feeling until quite lately—for no very good reason, except the habit of heredity—since men could hardly be said to have had any advantage over women for the last 100 years. At any rate this prejudice assisted the state in the policy it adopted of reducing the proportion of females, and within two generations the census showed a reduction of fifty per cent in the number of females while the _total population remained the same without increase_. This result was peculiarly gratifying to the political economists and philosophers, for as they declared the state had now complete control of the population and could on a tolerably short notice increase or diminish it as the comfort of the race might demand.” I interrupted the Professor here to express with some pardonable enthusiasm my congratulations that this vital question had been so successfully and thoroughly met. I said I always had confidence in my race and now more than ever. I felt proud of the honor of being an humble member of it; and more to the same effect; to which he listened with some impatience and then proceeded. “There were some results that were not anticipated, that followed from the practical operation of the “option of sex.” One was the very rapid elevation, almost deification of women. As there was now but one woman to three men her value and importance rose in the inverse ratio; and it became the habit to say that women were worth three times as much as men. They were in fact worth a good deal more than that, for they soon perceived that they held the key of power and the destiny of the race and were able to construct the conditions of life to suit their own whims and caprices. They became in fact the ruling sex. They demanded for themselves and easily obtained all the easy and profitable positions in business and official life, and remanded men to those least desirable. The wholesome civil service principles that had become pretty well settled in the law, thought, and practice of the country were now habitually evaded or openly set aside in favor of the sex. Nothing they asked for was denied them and hardly anything was good enough for them. In your day the women in America were extravagantly petted and coddled, but the attention and reverence they received then was nothing compared with the adulation and servility that has of late been rendered to them. Such a condition of things could not fail to encourage tyranny and arrogance, and to create them where they had not been before. Sentiment and favoritism became the controlling forces and business principles were ignored.