no longer an American citizen and had lost not only her citizenship but her right to practice law. She would have made any kind of declaration, taken any oath which would have affirmed her loyalty to her native land, but she was entirely helpless to change her status by any act of her own. She immediately plunged into work for American women going from coast to coast on a trying campaign, literally giving her life for her sister women, yet unable to say "I am an American citizen." This country has

produced few men with minds more brilliant than this wonderful super-woman possessed and there will never live any man with a finer conception of real citizenship and its duties, yet she was without the right to assert or maintain citizenship other than that established by the marital relation.

The Sections of the Federal Statute quoted above would seem to be but carrying out the contemplation of the law that the husband and wife are one person, giving the husband sole power and authority over the acts of his wife, the merger having submerged the personality of the wife in the personality of the husband.

Even the most superficial examination of the Common Law, the Roman Law and the statutes of the several States of this country, except those States where by legislation in recent years a separate and individual legal status has been given wives, shows the complete guardianship of the wife is recognized in the coverture of the husband. This is but following the trend of Justice Blackstone's opinon: "The very being or legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage, or, at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband." Certainly in the statute regulating citizenship Blackstone's opinion is held. The domicile of the husband is the domicile of the wife. The American born woman who marries the subject or citizen of another country becomes at once merged in the citizenship of her foreign husband and

though she leave her husband and reside on American soil, so long as the marriage exists she is the subject or citizen of the country of her spouse.

An important Code of Laws is known to have existed in the early days of Babylon, about 2250 B. C. This Code was inscribed on a monument set up in a conspicuous and central place and when a citizen felt aggrieved he went out and looked up the law for himself. Even in that ancient day there was discrimination against women. The husband was the master of his wife as of his slave and ho could pledge her for the security of debt on an agreement much like our chattel mortgage. The husband could repudiate his wife at will, he could change her with as much facility as a man may change his stenographer or clerk nowadays, but if a woman repudiated her husband she was condemned to pay the extreme penalty of the lawa very violent extreme it was, too, for the description declares it to have been "impaling on a stake." Hence, with customs established so long (since when the mind of man runneth not to the contrary), giving legal advantages to men, it is not strange that changes must be accomplished by the only road round, the franchise, as the one safe road home to Justice. That the franchise has bettered conditions for women is shown by the amendments to statutes, since the suffrage amendment, in the States where women now vote. There are better laws for the protection of women and minors, pensions for destitute mothers, labor laws which defend the potential mothers and the children who must work to live. Gov. Carlson, of Colorado, has declared: "One of Colorado's greatest assets is her voting population which consists of intelligent women as well as men. In all reforms the women have taken an active part and important movements have often had their inception in small gatherings of public spirited women who were willing and able to give time to forwarding questions which at first sight men may

have deemed unimportant. The principle of equal suffrage rests upon simple justice. In a democracy where the people rule it is unfair that only half of the people should have a voice in the affairs of government and the other half of the people should be forced to make use of a spokesman or remain silent." And John M. Parker, the man of whom Louisiana is so justly proud as her citizen whose career in State and national politics is without blemish or reproach, who carried the banner of the Progressive Party as Vice-Presidential nominee in 1916, and who is known and loved from side to side of his native State, gave to the writer the following story as a tribute to the influence of women:

"My fondness for fishing and hunting has made me many friends among those leading the simple life and living close to nature. Their judgment is clearer and better than those contaminated by commercial and political strife.

One day, sitting on a log eating lunch, one of those grizzled farmer friends, a splendid man, said: 'John, this woman suffrage business has made me do a lot of tall thinking. Nine times in ten my wife would vote with meand the tenth time she would be right." "Woman's sense of right and wrong," concludes, Mr. Parker, "is much better than man's, her sense of perfect justice much sounder."

It appears that whether it be to know how and when citizenship may be acquired or lost, the legislation pertaining to property rights or personal obligations, the woman citizen, fighting for an equal place with her brother, needs to be informed in the law. Blackstone said: "It is undeniable that a competent knowledge of the law of the society in which we live is the proper accomplishment of every gentleman and scholar." Cicero gives us the information that even the boys of Rome were made to learn the Twelve Tables as a carmen neccessarium. Today every

woman should know at least the outline of laws which affect her.

From the legal point of view the inferior position occupied by women has been gradually changing and is a reflection of that civilization which has been developing through hundreds of years. There remains much, however, in certain States of our glorious "land of the free" to be changed and cured if we may justly claim to have turned all of the pages of predjudice and tradition inherited from barbaric times. Some idea of the progress made by women in the past few decades may be gained by comparing the status of women today with that shown by the recently evoked Statute of the time of Edward III, under which Sir Roger Casement was indicted for High Treason, and which declared Petty Treason to be "lack of faith to a subject as when a vassal slays his lord, a priest his bishop or a wife her husband." Some three hundred years later women were deemed of slightly less inferior position for when Queen Mary, the Consort of William III, passed on to that reward which is promised even to crowned heads, her body was accompanied from Whitehall to Westminster Abbey by all of the Justices and Serjeants of Law attired in black silk gowns as mourning garb. The black silk gown has continued to be worn by Justices in England and elsewhere, coming to be an insignia of the high office, and it is pleasant to remember it was first worn in honor of a woman, even though a dead woman.

In the United States the legal status of women grows yearly nearer the perfection of freedom and equality which might be expected under our Constitution. The woman is a citizen. She does her part in the nation. She is taxed and pays. She is represented in every profession, trade and calling. She has equal education and nearly equal commercial opportunity and responsibility-in the far West where she has been weighed in the scale with equal civil rights she has not been found wanting.

CHILD LABOR.

On September 1st, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Child Labor Bill, the first effort of the national government to protect children in this country from labor conditions which had been a growing menace to the citizens of tomorrow because of the greed of their taskmasters. The Bill must stand as an everlasting monument to the better element in the nature of law makers; it is the answer to the plea of the mothers of the land for child protection. It cannot, unfortunately, be retroactive, and there stands as a living reproach an army of crippled and maimed, of mental defectives and weazened incompetents, the product of child slavery. It is the plain duty of every State, and of the Federal government, to reach out a protective arm to the overworked, under fed army of infants whose puny frames and untutored minds wait helplessly for legal aid. No matter whether the sentiment which forces child protection be the result of sympathy for the child, consideration for the welfare of the nation or aversion to the money-mad taskmasters, the result is one hundred per cent good. Judge Bissell, quoting in a decision handed down in the 155 N. Y. Supp. p. 577, said: "The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bears, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.' Nevertheless protection given to the bears by the Puritans was good-for the bears.

The general provisions of the Federal Child Labor Bill are:

No producer, manufacturer, or dealer shall ship in interstate or foreign commerce any article or commodity, the product of any mine or quarry situated in the United States, in which within thirty days prior to the time of removal children under the age of sixteen years have been permitted to work, or any article or commodity the product of any mill, cannery, workshop or factory in the United