The whole woman question may be briefly summed up as a century-old struggle between conservatism and progress. Women are moving irregularly, and perhaps illogically, along certain lines of development toward a point that will probably be reached; while conservatism, halting and fearful, is struggling blindly to hold points and maintain lines that must be given up. Unfortunately for the rapidity of women’s advancement, women themselves have no thoroughness, no clearness, as to the fundamental cause of their grievances or the ends to be attained, and are not yet alive to a consciousness of the fact that the question of woman’s rights is simply and purely a question of human rights, the basic solution of which, on the broad plane of justice, will solve all the social, political, and industrial problems of which the woman question forms a part. The time when woman suffered silently and toiled patiently without once questioning the justice of her lot has happily passed forever. Confusion and antagonism are engendered because of misunderstanding of the real movement. Women are consciously or unconsciously struggling for that selfhood which has hitherto been denied them, and are seeking for opportunity to develop that personality which Browning, Ruskin, and other broad thinkers declare “is the good of the race.” The most discouraging feature of the situation is the fact that women as a whole do not realize that a politically inferior class is a degraded class; a disfranchised class, an oppressed class; and that her economic dependence upon man is the basic cause of her inferiority. The grievances openly proclaimed by the advocates of woman suffrage as causes of hostility are too frequently childish, unreasonable, and unworthy of serious attention. In the majority of cases they centre around some fancied wrong that is a result rather than a cause. The keynote not only to the woman question, but to the labor question may be found in the words of that deep thinker and able writer, August Bebel: “The basis of all oppression is economic dependence upon the oppressor.” The widespread discontent with present social conditions is an augury of hope for the future. There is no element in the unrest which need excite grave apprehension. Thoughtful people perceive clearly that women are intensely human, nothing more, and that as human beings they are entitled not only to food, clothes, and shelter, but to an opportunity for development.