Page:Women Wanted.djvu/392

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WOMEN WANTED

the employment of married women as teachers in the public schools. It is Russia that has led all lands in her recognition of the woman teacher, not only refusing longer to penalise her for marriage but actually, as we have seen, establishing for her the principle of equal pay for equal work.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MINOR

Like this, the married woman has to-day been welcomed in industry, in commerce, and in the professions. This person of affairs abroad in the world a minor! It is more than a disability that she herself must endure. It becomes an annoyance to the world to have her so. According to Bacon's Abridgement, a very imposing volume, it is still written that "the law looks upon husband and wife but as one person and therefore allows but of one will between them, which is placed in the husband." But you see what a far cry it is from the woman in London or Paris or Berlin to "the one" on the western front. How is she to "obey" that man in the Vosges or on the Somme since she cannot have telegraphic communication about her daily movements? And without it, the French woman was left in a helpless tangle in the Napoleonic code.

Madelaine de Ranier at the head of a great business concern in Paris found herself forbidden to sign a check, unable to open a bank account. The Count had enlisted on the second day after war was declared and he had left with her a sum of gold. When it was exhausted and she faced the need of