that, as women never had been admitted they were therefore disqualified, the common law of custom overriding, and the only road to admission, it was pointed out, was recourse to Parliament for an enabling statute.

In 1913 Lord Wolmer sought to secure the enabling statute for women solicitors, barristers and parliamentary agents, but it found no support. Later in the same year a one-clause bill was introduced by J. W. Hills, with intent at the least time and consideration of Parliament to enable women to become solicitors. There developed much sentiment in favor of the proposition and it seemed well on the way to successful passage when the outbreak of the war halted all consideration of the matter.

In the British dominions generally the disqualifications of women as practising lawyers has been removed. They are received on the same footing as men in New Zealand, the greater part of Australia, and in Canada. That the self-sacrifice of all the women of Great Britain, and their whole-hearted support of the government in war time will secure for them the long-desired recognition in all branches of politics, commerce and the professions is generally conceded, that it will also go farther than any demonstration of militant tactics in winning for women lawyers the right to practise in the courts, is a foregone conclusion.

In the United States women have been admitted to practise law in all of the States but Virginia and Arkansas, and as the latter State has granted women limited suffrage and many concessions in regard to their property rights, the way is paved for women at the Arkansas Bar. Late in 1916 Georgia passed the “Portia

Bill," which opened the courts of that State, after many years of effort, to women lawyers.

Illinois has many women practising in her courts and she has women doing splendid work in the children's and morals' courts and as justices of the peace. The Illinois Woman's Bar Association has a standing quite equal to the State association of men lawyers. Boston has an organization of women lawyers and there are other organizations of women of the legal profession, but the only association national in scope is the Woman Lawyers' Association, which meets at the County Lawyers' Association Rooms in New York City. It counts among its members women lawyers in every State where they practise, having a total membership of more than two hundred members. The president for two terms of the organization, Mrs. Olive Stott Gabriel, graduated from the New York University law department. Mrs. Gabriel is a native of Portland, Oregon, but has lived long in New York City and has an international reputation among those who labor to save and secure young girls who have drifted from the strait and narrow way or who have been the victims of the white slave traffic. Mrs. Gabriel has done much to gain for women lawyers the recognition to which they are entitled. Discussing the aim of women lawyers to secure better legislation for women and minors, Mrs. Gabriel says:

"Woman's chief interest is first and foremost of the children. With primitive woman this interest centered in her own offspring, but organized womanhood has evolved or developed a spirit of universal motherhood, and the women's clubs once criticized and condemned as the menace of the home, has come to be recognized as the agent of home extension as well as home making,

the friend and guardian of defenseless little ones and the sworn ally of the public school system. Women lawyers individually, and in their associations, seek untiringly for laws to protect and defend the home, for clean milk for the babies, home economics, sanitation, education, pure drinking water and a better moral standard. They seek civil service reform, opportunities for industrial training and knowledge of parliamentary law. We have a close walk with nature, a better understanding of art, literature and music, a wider outlook upon life, a broader vision, deepened sympathies and an optimistic faith in a future big with promise for women because of our legal education and our opportunities to come in close contact with everything worth while in the march of a progressive civilization.'

Miss Mary Wood and Miss Helen Varick Boswell, both graduates of law colleges, preferred the field of politics to the practise of law and both have stood high in the political history of the nation. Miss Boswell was put in charge, at national headquarters, of the woman's division of the Republican party, in four successive Presidential campaigns. With extreme tact and ability she kept herself in touch with the political situation throughout the country, and, largely due to her legal education, she had a grasp and understanding of the complex questions presented the people to decide them in their vote for governmental protection, and so was enabled to direct the campaign in masterly fashion. Miss Mary Wood was associated with Miss Boswell in directing the woman's political aid in national campaigns and as chairman of the legislative committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, she patiently pursued a campaign of education of her sex in the laws

most needed for the best interest of women and minors throughout the United States.

Mrs. Jean Norris, who preceded Mrs. Gabriel as president of the Woman Lawyers' Association, held place as one of the best known women lawyers at the New York Bar, and when Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt sought to place the proper legal safeguards around the million dollars left by Mrs. Frank Leslie to the cause of woman suffrage, she employed Mrs. Norris to form a corporation and to act as the legal adviser on all disbursements, expenditures and investments from the fund.

Within a week after the suffrage amendment was passed in New York, Miss Helen P. McCormick was appointed to the post of Assistant District Attorney by Mr. Harry Lewis, District Attorney of Kings County. Thus for the first time, in 1917, a woman invaded the judicial arm of the law in the East, though in the west and middle western States women held office as Assistant Prosecutors, Assistant United States District and States Attorneys since 1912. Miss McCormick being a young woman of unusually charming personality, educated in broad fields and possessing ability in her profession to an unusual degree, her appointment met with the high favor and the commendation of the entire legal profession and community.

Another early result of the granting of suffrage to women in the State of New York was the appointment by Governor Whitman of Mrs. John Francis Yawger to the Board of Probation Officers. While Mrs. Yawger did not come from the legal profession to the post, as the wife of a well known member of the bar of New York she had pursued with him the study of law in all its branches and so her appointment came as the opportunity

to use her information not only of humanity, social conditions and the rules of government, but her actual knowledge and experience of the enforcement of law, tempered with that mercy which betters the community and the State.

It is no longer an unusual sight when women appear in the courts of New York to argue their cases and it would be noticeable if any day passed without women lawyers and women law clerks going in and out of every court room and every city department. There is no conflict between them and the men in the same profession, rather is there a spirit of great kindness and a desire to be of mutual aid and assistance. The matter of sex is disregarded in noting the strength or weakness of the case the woman represents.

Mary Elizabeth Lease, the lawyer, author, lecturer and publicist, was long affiliated with the New York Bar. It was Mrs. Lease who about eighteen eighty-six jarred the attention of Kansas, and later of the whole nation, by her meteoric career across the West in a blaze of wonderful oratory advocating certain reforms. She had studied law from small girlhood and was admitted to the Bar of Kansas when she was twenty-one. At various times she appeared in different States as associate counsel in important cases, for she was everywhere conceded the silver-tongued woman orator of America. She was one of the early "homesteaders", and to her "home" meant not merely a place of residence, but a sanctuary built upon a foundation of toil and privation vesting in it certain inalienable rights of the homesteader-so she launched a campaign against excessive taxation and foreclosure. It was largely due to her unceasing efforts an abatement was brought about of the worst of the troubles