The movement that we know by the name of "feminism" is undoubtedly the most significant and important social evolution of our time. The aims and aspirations behind this great movement need not detain us. Suffice it is to say that, like all great social movements, its cause and its aim have been primarily economic. What is known as "sex-emancipation" might almost be translated to read "economic emancipation"; at any rate it could only be attained through one means, namely, equal economic opportunity, and such opportunity could never have been won by mere statute or enactment. Before the aims of "feminism" could be achieved it was necessary that women should find and make this opportunity, and they found it in the writing machine. We have described the transformation of the whole business world since the invention of the writing machine. Equally revolutionary, and facilitated by the same agency, has been the transformation in the economic status of women during the same period. The business office of 1873 seems no more remote from the present than the economic restrictions imposed on the women of fifty years ago. It might almost be said that no real career was possible for her outside of the home. Such opportunities for gainful occupation as did exist were usually for the untrained and uneducated, in shops, factories, domestic service and the like. In only two other callings had they made themselves indispensable, that of school teaching and nursing, and all the openings in this and a few minor occupations could do little more than utilize a fraction of intelligent womanhood. They furnished no adequate basis for true and general economic freedom. Obviously it was the business world, and that alone, which could furnish women with the opportunity for real emancipation, and so long as this door remained closed, there could be no hope of its attainment. The prejudice which existed fifty years ago against the employment of women in a business office, or in clerical capacities of any kind, is something which in our day is hard to understand. It was blind and unreasoning, as prejudices usually are, but it was universal. How strong it was, and how unreasoning, was clearly shown in the one notable attempt to utilize the services of women in clerical work, which came before the advent of the typewriter. It is a singular fact that this attempt was made by a native and life-long resident of Herkimer County, a forecast of the part that other native sons of Herkimer County were yet to play in the great work of sex emancipation.