They have ceased to be legal
questions. They have more and more become social questions, questions
with regard to the relations of human beings to one another,--not merely
their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to one
another. This has been most characteristic of American life in the last
few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater
prominence, the movement which this association represents has gathered
cumulative force. So that, if anybody asks himself, "What does this
gathering force mean," if he knows anything about the history of the
country, he knows that it means something that has not only come to
stay, but has come with conquering power.
I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels
and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail, and that
is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to
mere social unrest. It is not merely because the women are discontented.
It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is something
which we not only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do not
wish to resist.
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