Our government was founded in war. Its founders assumed, from the history of all other nations, that offense and defense were to be its main functions. And the barbaric theory is still ignorantly or carelessly assented to. This explains the lagging of the political rights of women behind their industrial and civil rights--or, rather, industrial and civil necessities; for no right has ever been, or probably ever will be, recognized until recognition becomes a necessity. The development with us of a class of women who are housekeepers only and are most of the time idle or half idle, is foreign to the spirit of our democratic era. That development cannot, therefore, long survive, any more than an equatorial plant can long survive in our zone. The new departures are in harmony with Democracy; they mean increased efficiency and usefulness of the human race; they must persist and expand and prevail. To three causes we owe the American woman of the class that only pretends to contribute, or at best half-heartedly contributes, toward the support of our social system: First, to the survival of the Old World, old era ideas of “woman’s sphere,” of the coarsening effect of labor upon her “finer nature,” of the “aristocratic flavor” and “high breeding” of uselessness and idleness. Second, to the simpler tastes of our ancestors, and the comparative ease with which at an early period in our national life the labor of the men in the family could provide money enough to satisfy those tastes. Third, to the very tardy development of the domestic laborers and providers that now relieve woman of the confining cares of household and nursery.