The central point of our particularism was the idea of being let alone. First, the _individual_ was to be let alone, the pioneer on his reclaimed land or the pioneer of industry. But when men saw that their gains would be greater by some sort of combination, then the _trusts_ were to be let alone—freedom of contract was called liberty! Our courts, completely saturated with this philosophy, let the trusts alone. The interpretations of our courts, our corrupt party organization, our institutions and our social philosophy, hastened and entrenched the monopolistic age. Natural rights meant property rights. The power of single men or single corporations at the end of the nineteenth century marked the height of our particularism, of our subordination of the state to single members. They were like _pâté de foie gras_ made by the enlargement of the goose’s liver. It is usual to disregard the goose. The result of our false individualism has been non-conservation of our national resources, exploitation of labor, and political corruption. We see the direct outcome in our slums, our unregulated industries, our “industrial unrest,” etc. But egotism, materialism, anarchy are not true individualism. To-day, however, we have many evidences of the steadily increasing appreciation of the individual and a true understanding of his place in society, his relation to the state. Chief among these are: (1) the movement towards industrial democracy, (2) the woman movement, (3) the increase of direct government, and (4) the introduction of social programs into party platforms. These are parallel developments from the same root. What we have awakened to now is the importance of every single man. The first, the trend towards industrial democracy, will, in its relation to the new state, be considered later. The second, the woman movement, belongs to the past rather than to the present. Its culmination has overrun the century mark and makes what is really a nineteenth-century movement seem as if it belonged to the twentieth. It belongs to the past because it is merely the end of the movement for the extension of the suffrage. Our suffrage rested originally in many states on property distinctions; in New Hampshire there was a religious and property qualification,—only Protestant tax-payers could vote. Gradually it became manhood suffrage, then the immigrants were admitted, later the negroes, then Colorado opened its suffrage to women, and now in thirteen states women have the full suffrage. The essence of the woman movement is not that women as women should have the vote, but that women as individuals should have the vote. There is a fundamental distinction here.