nounced a change of policy and took on in its various departments five hundred women and girls. The Municipal Service Commission in New York last fall was holding its first examination to admit women to the position of junior draughtsmen in the city's employ. The Civil Service Commission at Washington, preparing to release every possible man from government positions for war service, had compiled a list of 10,000 women eligible for clerical work in government departments.
Like that it is happening all about us. This is the new woman movement. And you're in it. We all are. I know: you may never have carried a suffrage banner or marched in a suffrage procession or so much as addressed a suffrage campaign envelope. But you're "moving" to-day just the same if you've only so much as rolled a Red Cross bandage or signed a Food Administration pledge offered you by the women's committee of the Council of National Defence. All the women of the world are moving.
"Suffrage de la morte," a Senator on the Seine has termed the vote offered the French feminists in the form of a proposition that every man dying on the field of battle may transfer his ballot to a woman whom he shall designate. And the French women have drawn back in horror, exclaiming: "We don't want a dead man's vote. We want only our own vote." Nevertheless it is something like this which is occurring.
And we may shudder, but we may not draw back.
