ous male guardianship over unmarried women and permitting a person "of staid age and character" to manage her own affairs. At first this was a privilege to be granted only on special appeal to the king. But at last the right of self-government at 21 was established for all unmarried women. So radical a departure from custom was of course not accomplished without misgivings. There were those who feared that for a woman to manage her own affairs, was not in accordance with true womanly dignity and the dictates of religion. They said, The majority of women do not want it. Why, then, give them a responsibility they do not wish or ask for? But in spite of those objections, the spinster came to be recognised as a responsible individual.
For so long now has the world been accustomed to seeing her going about, doing as she pleases almost as any other adult, that we have forgotten that she ever couldn't. She can acquire education. She can own property. She has been able for some time now to get into a great many occupations and professions: only her difficulty was to get up. And there has been that limitation to her income. It has remained stationary at a figure seldom passing two-thirds that of a man's income. The teaching profession affords statistics that are world wide testimony to the situation that has prevailed from, say, Newark, N. J., to Archangel, Russia: there have been women school teachers working for a less wage than the man school janitor: there have been women professors at the head of high school departments at a salary less than
