The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-09-17
French Feminists Honor Saint Philosopher
 As Patron Saint

As a result of the war, the women of France are now engaged in a null titudes of occupations heretofore clos ed to them. The Paris of the Petit coats" has turned over it's varied in dustries and activities to@the fair sex, and they have more than made good. The French capital was never so se- rious, so earnest, so competent as it is now, when. it has become largely "a city of women. A woman lawyer has been appointed to represent soldiers accused of infractions of rules and violations of military law. The fair physicians of Paris have risen nob1y to the task of caring for the sick of the city, since a majority of the male surgeons have gone to the front. Women have tackled all sorts of work, from the hardest drudgery to the most difficult. professions and they have sell dom failed. Quietly and without os- tentation the devoted women ~~of France have occupied the niches left vacant by men.
 French fenninists may be pardoned if they are inclined to boast a little of this remarkable illustration Of the natural capacities of the weaker sex" Something of this jubiIation suffragists of Paris march to the Quai MaIaquaais to pay their annual ora tarica1 and floral tribute to the statue of Con dorcet, the philosopher of the Revolution, who has been adopted as the patron saint of the French suf- fragist movement Condorcet was a democrat, an anti-royalist and ah un- believer in Christianity, and died a martyr to tn cause he had espoused. s
 This iskthe 172nd anniversary of the birth of Jean Antoine. Marquis de Condorcet, who was born in Picardy Sept IT, 1T43. He was distinguished as mathematician, but he is now chiefly rem embered for his sincere and enthusiastic support of the revo- lution. He was chosen some years ago as the patron of French feminfsm be- cause he was the first influential the social inequality which weighed upon Frenchwomen.
 ssAmong those causes of human i'm provement that are of most import ance to the general weIfare.'' wrote Condorcef in his "Progress of the total annihi1ation of the prejudices which have established between the sexes an Inequality of right. fatal ven to the party which 1t favors- In vain, might we seek for motives to justify the eprinciple, in difference of physical organization, of intellect, or of moral sensibi1ity. It had at first no other origin but abuse of strength. and all the attempts which have since been made to support it are idle |SOpn1STES.es 5se5s $ Z
 Like Thomas Paine and Robert C. Ingerso1 in America and John Stuart Hill in England, swell as the pioneer defenders of women's rights in nearly all lands, Condorcet was the foe of Christianity. Henwas a contemporary and friend of Vo1taire, Helvetius, DsAIernbert and other great phiIoso- phers of that period, and carrfed on d correspondence with Benjamin Frank. lin, to whom he wrote in 1788: The very name of king is hateful Con dorcet had cold and innpassive ex- terior, but a heart that beat for hu- manity, and ,DsAlembert well describ- ed him as ia volcano covered with snow He had a horror of physical violence, and Madame Roland irnpa- tiently wrote of him as "a. fine spirit absorbed in cotton. During the reign of terror he was prescribed and thrown into prison, whre he took poison to save his neck from the gull 1otine. To the last he never lost faith in the triumph of democracy. declar- ing that passions are aeeting, and reason is eterna1.''