delicate and important functions of government were intrusted to men with
neither knowledge, heart nor experience, who by their corruption imperiled
the public interest and by their blundering disgraced the national name.
In short, all the train of evils inseparable from government of any kind
beset this unhappy people with tenfold power, together with hundreds of
worse ones peculiar to their own faulty and unnatural system. It was
thought that their institutions would give them peace, yet in the first
three-quarters of a century of their existence they fought three important
wars: one of revenge, one of aggression and one--the bloodiest and most
wasteful known up to that time--among themselves. And before a century and
a half had passed they had the humiliation to see many of their seaport
cities destroyed by the Emperor of Japan in a quarrel which they had
themselves provoked by their greed of Oriental dominion.

By far the most important factor concerned in bringing about the
dissolution of the republic and the incredible horrors that followed it
was what was known as "the contest between capital and labor." This
momentous struggle began in a rather singular way through an agitation set
afoot by certain ambitious women who preached at first to inattentive and
inhospitable ears, but with ever increasing acceptance, the doctrine of
equality of the sexes, and demanded the "emancipation" of woman. True,
woman was already an object of worship and had, as noted before, the right
to kill. She was treated with profound and sincere deference, because of
certain humble virtues, the product of her secluded life. Men of that time
appear to have felt for women, in addition to religious reverence, a
certain sentiment known as "love." The nature of this feeling is not
clearly known to us, and has been for ages a matter of controversy
evolving more heat than light. This much is plain: it was largely composed
of good will, and had its root in woman's dependence. Perhaps it had
something of the character of the benevolence with which we regard our