before a notary proving her ownership or brings a written permit from her husband. In the State of Washington, the supreme attempt to confer equality on woman finds expression in the statute: "All laws which impose or recognise civil disabilities upon a wife which are not imposed or recognised as existing as to the husband, are abolished." But in spite of that most laudable effort, the end is not yet attained. For the State of Washington is still enmeshed in the community property system, by which the management and control of the common property in marriage is vested in the husband. And although the law has been distinctly framed that a married woman is entitled to her own earnings, it practically takes them away from her by requiring her to count them in with the community property which is under her husband's control. The atomic theory, you see, was not more firmly fixed in science than is this idea that has been embedded in the social structure that a married woman is legally, civilly, and politically a minor!
Even in these United States, where the mention of the "subjection of woman" raises a smile, so largely has it by the grace of the American man been permitted to become a dead letter, the employment of married women has remained against public policy. Many boards of education have by-laws about it. Even these women teachers who commit matrimony and conceal it are almost invariably later on detected and dropped from the pay roll when found guilty of maternity. Business houses have shared
