Men expect “graft” in their city halls; they do not look for the enforcement of ordinances in disfavor with the “gang”; they expect to have the streets swept when the winds come; they bear witness that a man is a good fellow when he remembers his friends and relatives by place and power; they are accustomed to suffer with much noise and pay their taxes in silence; above all they constantly make good their calling as the sex that recognizes logic with the naked eye. For when a notorious politician follows his luck with a notorious political régime in the institutions of his state they actually hold him and his appointer responsible, and strangely enough seldom say anything about his sex. Let but another individual—a woman individual—make the mistakes inherent in human nature—in an appointive position—and the most logical and the kindest man one knows will refer the whole thing finally and forever to—her sex. If, however, it were possible that logic was not the inborn and native possession of every man and might have to be learned, a little tale from an English schoolroom can be warmly recommended, for out of the mouth of babes and little girls cometh occasional wisdom. The little girl was given the following proposition as a “test of her reasoning powers”: French people are excitable, so are Italians; so all foreigners are excitable. Is this true? And this little illogically sexed miss replied: “It does not follow that every member of a family is mad because two are.” There is perhaps nothing a man does with such good will and in which good will counts for so little as his struggle to be fair to womankind. He often succeeds admirably when they are not his own. Freedom of opportunity, the development of the individual common fair play, all, all find shipwreck against convention and instinct when it is the wife or the daughter. Women have not been either kind or considerate in the matter. Quite an appreciable number have wholly ceased to cry aloud about their rights or wrongs and have quietly prepared themselves for holding higher positions of trust. In rashly independent cities like Chicago, or sexless ones like Boston, they are holding them freely. They are calmly, almost judicially, inspecting factories and collecting statistics of child labor. They are inspecting tenements, garbage, streets and schools. They are sitting unmoved and silent upon boards of all sorts, almost as if they were useful and comfortable there. They are getting parks placed and playgrounds graded and drinking cups sterilized and foods purified and milk renovated and babies fed—officially. The fact of this wider employment of women in the higher municipal duties marks a certain state of growth and an emergence from crudity.