their freedom. Among the immigrants who came to our shores before 1840
there were, of course, a few traders, adventurers and servants who hoped
to improve their financial conditions; but the leaders, and most of the
rank and file, came that they might be free to think their own thoughts
and live their own lives. If this selection of colonists, through
religious and political persecution, sometimes gave us bigots with one
idea, it also gave us people who knew that ideas can change. Along with
Cotton Mather it gave us Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams and William
Penn.

Most of these who came in the early days belonged to extreme dissenting
sects believing in salvation through individual choice, based on
personal judgments. Preaching was exalted at the expense of ritual; and
by substituting new thinking for old habits in religion, the American
settlers made it less difficult for other adjustments to be made, even
in such a conservative matter as woman's position. It is through no
accident that Methodists, Friends, Unitarians and the Salvation Army
have been much more sympathetic to woman's progress than have the older
ritualistic faiths.

And these theological ideas had to be worked out under the material
conditions of the New World, which were also favorable to the
emancipation of women. Facing primitive conditions in the forest, it
became a habit to do new things in new ways. Woman's work and judgment
were indispensable; and these picked women showed themselves capable in
every direction. They did every kind of work; and when it came to
enduring privation or even to starving, they set an example for men.

But while every new movement in ideas always carries with it other
radical ideas, the practical difficulties of mental, social and legal