In considering the political rights of men, there is a tendency to assume that they exercise their present rights in sheer virtue of their manhood, but history shows these rights have arisen out of a struggle which was economic in its nature. These rights are handed down from one generation to another and are often thought of as natural rights when in reality they are rights fought for and won by an industrial or economic class. Political concessions have been made by one class to the other, not from philanthropic motives, but rather from a recognition of the strength of the claimants. It is only when the battle is virtually won that the opposition grants rights because of their admiration of democratic principles. The development of industries in the town tended to break up the large landed holdings and to create new forms of wealth. When wealth was no longer associated with a militant career a new adjustment of power had to be made, giving political recognition to the successful industrials who controlled the wealth in the towns. An exchange was effected. The merchants received political privileges, and the noblemen engaged primarily in war, received the financial assistance of the townsmen. The expansion of the political rights of men shows a gradual increase in the power of the masses. It represents a progressive evolution. It is not so with the political rights of women. Before the era of machine industry, whatever legal recognition women enjoyed, or political rights they exercised, depended not upon their own efforts, but the efforts of the men who desired to protect their property interests, and to prevent these interests from passing outside the family circle. Although the political rights of women vary in different countries, the evolution of these rights does not show a gradual development of privileges. Rights possessed at one period were lost at another, and at no time do we hear of them making a protest against a diminution of their power, or the narrow limits of their influence. Their part seems to have been a passive one. No attempt will be made to give a history of the legal and political rights of women, but rather to point out the most striking features of this development, and to emphasize those characteristics in harmony with the general thesis that before the era of machine industry women assumed a passive attitude toward social institutions, and that their status was determined by forces, they made no effort as a class to control. The voice of women in early historical times played no part in affairs which concerned them as a sex because it was never heard.