Although women make strenuous efforts to overcome all barriers raised against their admission to the different fields of activity, they cling with great tenacity to ancient sex privileges inconsistent with a man’s conception of “solid comfort.” For instance, the objects of medical associations are social as well as scientific. The scientific program would undoubtedly meet with the approval of both sexes in the profession but the social functions are a real stumbling block,--the women leaning toward formalities and conventionalities, and the men toward what is termed “a good social time.” This is in itself sufficient to prompt most men to oppose admitting women into intellectual and social clubs. The industrial evolution plays a large part in shaping the institutions of society. While economic relations may not be considered the most essential in life, they determine in great measure, the nature of our relations to social institutions themselves. Where the economic influence is not direct we see preserved with the least change the institutions of the past. What is true of institutions is also true of the occupations of men. Their conservatism varies in the degree to which they are affected by economic and industrial conditions. Those professions least dependent upon immediate industrial changes are the most conservative in their work and ideas, and most closely reflect the ideals of the past. On the other hand, those professions which depend for their support upon the services rendered to the community remunerated according to the recipients’ estimation of these services, have discarded almost all the traditions of the past, although their origin can be traced to the most conservative institutions of society. The influence of industrial changes upon social institutions is apparent in the home. Although the homes of the industrial classes must adapt themselves to industrial changes even though these changes lower the plane of family comfort, the professional classes enjoy a margin above subsistence sufficient to enable them to combat changes with a conservatism characteristic of all classes having a greater respect for custom and leisure-class standards than for beneficial innovations. Hence we find the homes reflecting ideals of the past which clash with the democratic ideals of the present, and illustrate in their various phases the struggle between the old and the new.