Page:The Business of being a Woman by Ida Tarbell.djvu/241

 nothing in nobility when contrasted with that of the man.

If we jump fifty years in the nation's history to the beginning of the agitation against slavery, we find women among the first and most daring of the protestants against the institution. It was for the sake of shattering slavery that they broke the silence in public which by order of the Christian Church they had so long kept—an order made, not for the sake of belittling women, but for the sake of establishing order in churches and better insuring the new Christian code of morality. The courage and the radicalism of women of the 30's, 40's, and 50's in this country compare favorably with that of the men and women in any revolutionary period in any country that we may select.

The American woman has played an honorable part in the making of our