Such is the anti-democratic woman. But over against her set the American woman. The plutocratic American man, being gaudy and conspicuous, distracts attention from the democratic American man, who outnumbers and outvotes and out-influences him into insignificance, except as an awful warning against flying in the face of the world’s democratic destiny. The plutocratic American woman is even more conspicuous than the plutocratic American man. But contrast her with the rest of the women, especially with the women who go forth from the homes to work. Great as is the influence against Democracy exerted by the women of the leisure class, it is weak in comparison with that exerted for Democracy by the professional and business women of the United States. Ten years ago about one-fifth of all the wage and salary earners in the United States were women and girls. When these figures were published there was a great outcry of wonder and alarm--wonder at the changed conditions, alarm lest those changed conditions might be permanent and the old-fashioned woman of the fireside and the stoveside and the cradleside might be passing away. To-day about one-third of all the women in the United States not on farms earn their own living outside their own homes, and these women constitute more than one-fourth of all the persons in the United States engaged in gainful occupations other than agriculture. It is evident that the changed conditions are not passing, but permanent; that the “new woman” is the woman of the future. Yet we still hear the old order talked of as if it were not a departing order, and the new order criticised as if it were abnormal, a fad of a few “freak” women. Obviously, this change is most intimately associated with Democracy. Democracy, work, women; women, work, Democracy. Did any of those ancient republics we hear so much about, those whose decline and fall Europe and our own pessimists say we must inevitably imitate, ever number among its inhabitants a company of women wage and salary earners such as has been so swiftly evolved in democratic, work-compelling, work-exalting America?