All four countries have the advantage of having a population largely agricultural,--a population scattered in small groups. Clearly, the problem of dealing with congested masses of people is here absent. Everywhere there is an eagerness for education. The educational average is high. The position of woman is one of freedom, for here have been kept alive the old Germanic traditions which we [the Germans] know only from reading Cæsar or Tacitus. An external factor in hastening the solution of the question of woman's rights was the very unusual numerical superiority of women. The foreign wars, which took the majority of the men away from home for long periods of time,--first in the Middle Ages, and then again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,--and the fact that the Scandinavian countries themselves were afflicted with wars only to a small extent, explain the freedom of the Scandinavian women. Like the English women, they had for centuries not known the significance of war for woman. In the absence of the men, women continued the transaction of business and industrial enterprises. In the name of the feudal law and as heads of families they administered affairs, exercising rights that were elsewhere denied to women. SWEDEN Total population: 5,377,213. Women: 2,751,257. Men: 2,626,456. Swedish Association of Women's Clubs. Woman's Suffrage Society. In Sweden the woman's rights movement is closely connected with that of the United States. The founder of the Swedish woman's rights movement was Frederika Bremer, who in 1845 visited the United States, studying the conditions of the women there. Upon her return she encouraged the Swedish women through her novel _Hertha_ to emancipate themselves. This took place in 1856. The government, being unable to disregard the free traditions of the past, was thoroughly in favor of the demands of the woman's rights movement. As early as 1700, women owning property exercised the right of voting in the election of ministers. In 1843 this right had been extended to all women taxpayers. In 1845 the daughter's right of inheritance had been made equal to that of the son's. In 1853 was begun the custom of appointing women teachers in the small rural schools; in 1859 women were admitted as teachers in all public institutions of learning. Since 1861 women have been eligible as dentists, regimental surgeons, and organists (but not as preachers). In 1862 every unmarried woman or widow over twenty-one years of age, and paying a tax of 500 crowns (about $135), was granted active suffrage in municipal affairs. The municipal electors, inasmuch as they elect the members of the _Landsthing_ (county council) and the members of the town councils, exercise a political influence, for the members of the _Landsthing_ and the town councils elect the members of the two Chambers of the _Riksdag_, the national legislative body. On