In government service (in 1901) there were 1000 women telephone employees, 183 women telegraph clerks, and 161 women office clerks. These positions are much sought after by men. The number of women employed in commerce is 18,000; the total number of persons employed in commerce being 57,087. Recently women have been appointed as factory inspectors. The beginnings of the modern woman's rights movement coincide with the political upheavals that occurred between 1859 and 1870. When the Kingdom of Italy had been established, Jessie White Mario demanded a reform of the legal, political, and economic status of woman. Whatever legal concessions have been made to women are due, as in France, to the Liberal parliamentary majority. Since 1877, women have been able to act as witnesses in civil suits. Women (even married women) can be guardians. The property laws provide for separation of property. Even in cases of joint property holding, the wife controls her earnings and savings. The husband can give her a general authorization (_allgemeinautorisation_), thus giving her the full status of a legal person before the law. These laws are the most radical reforms to which the Code Napoleon has ever been subjected,--reforms which the French did not venture to enact. The Liberal majority made an attempt in 1877 to emancipate the women politically. But the attempt failed. Bills providing for municipal woman's suffrage were introduced and rejected in 1880, 1883, and 1888. However, since 1890, women have been eligible as poor-law guardians. The élite among the Italian men loyally supported the women in their struggle for emancipation. Since 1881 the women have organized clubs. At first these were unsuccessful. Free and courageous women were in the minority. In Rome the woman's rights movement was at first exclusively benevolent. In Milan and Turin, on the other hand, there were woman's rights advocates (under the leadership of _Dr. med._ Paoline Schiff and Emilia Mariani). The leadership of the national movement fell to the more active, more educated, and economically stronger northern Italy. Here also the movement of the workingwomen had progressed to the stage of organization, as, for example, in the case of the Lombard women workers in the rice fields.