ABSTRACT
The influence of woman has much freer play both in the aristocratic and in the working ranks, in both of which the education and occupation of the sexes are more alike. In the higher ranks or aristocracy, industrial life falls neither to man nor to woman; the determining element of these ranks is that wealth, as their means of living, springs from inheritance alone. Although the man of the middle ranks need not seek to exchange his lot with his elder brother of the aristocracy, the position occupied by women of the upper ranks is comparatively more favourable. Even in times when war was the great occupation of an aristocracy, woman was not entirely excluded from an interest in it. The women of the labouring classes, comparatively speaking, do interest themselves more in passing events and public movements than the women of the middle ranks.
