NAWSA SUBJECT FILE Stanton, Elizabeth Cady [*Do not sell this pamphlet*] Price, 10 Cents Twelve Copies for $1.00 BIBLE AND CHURCH DEGRADE WOMAN CONTENTS Page I. The Effect of Woman Suffrage on Questions of Morals and Religion, . . . . . . . . . . . 1 II. The Degraded Statues of Woman in the Bible, . . 5 III. The Christian Church and Woman, . . . . . . . . . . . 11 BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON [*Please take notice*] H. L. GREEN, Publisher Office of Free Thought Magazine, 213 East Indiana Street CHICAGO, ILL. [*Read, Circulate*] Sincerely yours Elizabeth Cady Stanton Alice Stone Blackwell compliments of Elizabeth Cady Stanton THE EFFECT OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE ON QUESTIONS OF MORALS AND RELIGION BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON LECKY, in his late work on Democracy, expresses the opinion that the emotional nature of woman, her religious enthusiasm, would make her influence dangerous in public legislation where calm, clear judgment is needed. He quotes as illustration, the opposition of English women to vivisection, under all circumstances, even in the hands of humane, honorable physicians. They insisted that no benefit could come to the human family from such experiments, in direct opposition to the opinions of distinguished surgeons in Germany and France. When last in England my daughter and I spent an hour with Frances Power Cobbe, the chief leader against vivisection. Her office was filled with books and pictures illustrating the cruelties of the experiments, enough to fill the hardest nature with pity and revulsion at the whole system. While sympathizing with Miss Cobbe's views, and sincerely deploring all cruelties to animals, we could not believe that all physicians were conducting their experiments for their own amusement. At the close of the interview Miss Cobbe, turning to my daughter, said, "After all I have shown you here to-day, would you shake hands with a vivisectionist?" "Yes," she replied, "I was proud to shake hands with the great German scientist Virchow, because he respected the ambition of a I 2 young New England girl; when all the other professors refused to admit her to their classes, he welcomed her to his lectures, required his students to treat her with courtesy, and taught her all she desired to know. "Would you refuse to shake hands with college professors who would thus recklessly trample on the pride and hopes of earnest young girls?" Miss Cobbe hesitated a moment and said, "Perhaps not." "The difference between us, then," my daughter replied, "is that you appreciate the physical sufferings of the girl." "Ah, yes," I added, "if there were some instrument in the world of sorrows to measure the sufferings of women - their development rudely arrested, hopes disappointed, pride humbled, ambition crushed, aspirations perverted, crippled with fears on every side - woman's wrongs in a single generation would outweigh the sufferings of animal life for centuries. The torture of nerves and muscles is limited, compared with prolonged or oft repeated mental agonies during four score years and ten." Lecy might further have illustrated the dangerous influence of English women in public affairs, by their persecution of Charles Parnell, M. P. They took the untenable position, that if a man's social relations were not in harmony with English law, he could not be a statesman to be trusted with great public interests. He was the only man who had been able to keep the Home Rule question steadily before Parliament, yet they hounded him to his grave, killed that great measure and left poor Ireland to struggle in her chains another generation. If about to start on a dangerous voyage, one would naturally ask if the captain had skill and experience in the science of navigation, but no one would think of asking whether in social life he was governed by the moral code of England or Japan. Many of the most liberal men in this country who believe in self-government for women, fear, with Mr. Lecky, the effect of woman's religious bigotry on the secular nature of our government. The action of women in some cases has given ground for these opinions. To hold the mirror up to women, that they may see them- 3 -selves as others see them, I will give a few cases. To push what they consider a moral measure, they have sometimes acted in violation of law. In the early temperance crusade in Ohio, they walked into the drinking saloons, smashed the bottles right and left, emptied liquor into the street, and then with hymns and prayers endeavored to impress their victims with the sacredness of their proceedings. But this was not law, though sanctified with religious enthusiasm. Such measures coined into law, by responsible voters, would soon lead to revolution. We had another manifestation of this dangerous enthusiasm, in the attempt to close the Chicago Exposition on Sunday. Led by the Temperance Association, 100,000 persons, chiefly women, petitioned Congress to make no appropriation to the Exposition unless the managers pledged themselves to close it on Sunday, the only day in the week the masses could enjoy it. What an outrage it would have been to close that magnificent spectacle, and drive the multitudes back into the crowded streets of the city! Yet this was the verdict of 100,000 petitioners, chiefly women. I immediately published a leaflet in favor of opening the Exposition on Sunday, and sent it broadcast over the country. Five hundred of these leaflets, by chance, fell into the hands of one of these religious bigots, which she promptly threw into the fire. I was surprised that she dared thus to trespass upon my friendship, but I simply said in a letter, "In tampering with my mail you are guilty of a state's prison offense, but I will not incarcerate you; I simply suggest in passing, that if you had lived in the time of Calvin, you would as readily have burned me, and thought you did God service." There is no doubt that in their present religious bondage, the political influence of women would be against the secular nature of our government, so carefully guarded by the fathers. They would, if possible, restore the Puritan Sabbath and sumptuary laws, and have the name of God and Christian religion recognized in the National Constitution, thus granting privileges to one sect over another, involving no end of religious persecutions. Admit all the dangers herein set forth, shall we deny the right of 4 self-government to women, because through ignorance they may at first abuse their power? No, no; these dangerous influences are steadily at work, reflected in every cradle, to be traced in every blind, conservative, bigoted priest, unjust judge, and wily statesman, the more dangerous because unrecognized and irresponsible. Woman's education has been left too much to the church, which has made her a devotee, training her sentiments and emotions at the expense of her reason and common sense. The state must now open to her a wider field of thought and action We must turn the tide of her enthusiasm from the church to the state, arouse her patriotism; awaken her interest in the general public questions, on which depend the stability of the republic and the elevation of the race, instead of wasting so much time and thought on the salvation of her own soul. In her education hereafter substitute reason for blind faith, science for theological superstitions; then will our most liberal men, our scientists, scholars and statesmen, find in the women of their households a reserve force for building a higher, purer civilization. --- THE DEGRADED STATUS OF WOMAN IN THE BIBLE BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON THE Pentateuch makes woman a mere afterthought in creation; the author of sin; curse in her maternity; a subject in marriage; and claims divine authority for this fourfold bondage, this whole-sale desecration of the mothers of the race. While some admit that this invidious language of the Old Testament is disparaging to woman, they claim that the New Testament honors her. But the letters of the apostles to the churches, giving directions for the discipline of women, are equally invidious, as the following texts prove: "Wives, obey your husbands. If you would know anything, ask your husbands at home. Let your women keep silence in the churches, with their heads covered. Let not your women usurp authority over the man, for as Christ is the head of the church so if the man the head of the woman. Man was prior in creation, the woman was of the man, therefore shall she be in subjection to him." No symbols or metaphors can twist honor or dignity out of such sentiments. Here, in plain English, woman's position is as degraded as in the Old Testament. As the Bible is in every woman's hands, and she is trained to believe it "the word of God," it is impossible to describe her feelings of doubt and distrust, as she awakens to her status in the scale of being: the helpless, hopeless position assigned to her by the Creator, according to the Scriptures. Men can never understand the fear of everlasting punishment that fills the souls of women and children. The orthodox religion, as 5 6 drawn from the Bible and expounded by the church, is enough to drive the most imaginative and sensitive natures to despair and death. Having conversed with many young women in sanatoriums, insane asylums, and in the ordinary walks of life, suffering with religious melancholia; having witnessed the agony of young mothers in childbirth, believing they were cursed of God in their maternity; and with painful memories of my own fears and bewilderment in girlhood, I have endeavored to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church. I saw the first step to this end was to convince them that the Bible was neither written nor inspired by the Creator of the Universe, the Infinite Intelligence, the soul and center of Life, Love and Light; but that the Bible emanated, in common with all church literature, from the brain of man. Seeing that just in proportion as women are devout believers in the dogmas of the church their lives are shadowed with fears of the unknown, the less they believe, the better for their own happiness and development. It was the religious devotee that threw her child under the car of Juggernaut, that gave her body a living sacrifice on the funeral pyre of her husband, to please God and save souls; for the same reason the devotees of our day build churches and parsonages, educate young men for the ministry, endow theological seminaries, make surplices and embroider slippers for the priesthood. It may not be amiss for man to accept the Bible, as it honors and exalts him. IT is a title deed for him to inherit the earth. According to the Pentateuch he communes with the gods, in performing miracles he is equal in power and glory with his Creator, can command the sun and moon to stand still to lengthen the day and lighten the night, if need be, to finish his battles. He can stand in the most holy places in the temples, where woman may never enter; he can eat the consecrated bread and meat, denied her; in fact, there is a suspicion of unworthiness and uncleanness seductively infused into the books of Moses against the whole female sex, in animal as well as human life. The first born male kid is the only fit burnt offering to the Lord; if preceded by a female it is unfit. 7 As the Bible gives us two opposite accounts of the creation of woman and her true position, so the church gives two opposite interpretations of the will of God concerning her true sphere of action. When ecclesiastics wish to rouse woman's enthusiasm to life a church debt or raise a pastor's salary, then they try to show her that she owes all she is and all the liberty she enjoys to the Bible and Christian religion; they dwell on the great honor God conferred on the sex in choosing a woman to be the mother of his only begotten son. But when woman asks for equal rights and privileges in the church, to fill the office of pastor, elder, deacon or trustee, to be admitted as a delegate to the synods, general assemblies of conferences, then the bishops quote texts to show that all these positions are forbidden by the Bible. And so completely have these clerical tergiversations perverted the religious element in woman's nature, and blinded her to her individual interests, that she does not see that her religious bondage is the source of her degradation. The honor and worship accorded the ideal mother, of the ideal man, has done naught to elevate the real mother, of the real man. So far from woman owing what liberty she does enjoy, to the Bible and the church, they have been the greatest block in the way of her development. The vantage ground woman holds to-day is due to all the forces of civilization, to science, discovery, invention, rationalism, the religion of humanity chanted in the golden rule round the globe centuries before the Christian religion was known. It is not to Bibles, prayer books, catechisms, liturgies, the canon law and church creeds and organizations, that woman owes one step in her progress, for all these alike have been hostile, and still are, to her freedom and development. Canon Charles Kingsley well said, long ago: "This will never be a good world for woman, until the last remnant of the canon law is swept from the face of the earth." It is the insidious influence of this law that degrades woman to-day in social life and the state as well as in the church; giving us one moral code for man, another for woman, endowing him with political freedom, with all the rights that belong to a citizen of a republic, while she is a slave, a subject, a mere pariah in the state. 8 When the canon law with its icy fingers touched the old Roman civil law it robbed woman of many privileges she before enjoyed. The old English common law, too, reflects many of its hideous features and has infused its deadly poison into the statute laws of every state in this new republic. For fifty years the women of this nation have tried to dam up this deadly stream that poisons all their lives, but thus far they have lacked the insight or courage to follow it back to its source and there strike the blow at the fountain of all tyranny, religious superstition, priestly power and the canon law. We may learn the effect of the canon on the civil law from the opinion of Lord Brougham. He says the English common law for woman is a disgrace to the civilization and Christianity of the nineteenth century. When last in England, hearing that the vicar had numberless volumes of the canon law, I called on him and asked to see the volume that contained the laws for women. "Ah!" said he, "they run through the whole of them," pointing to a long row of huge volumes bound in heavy calf and tightly clasped, "and they are all in Latin." I thought I could muster the patience and enough of my former knowledge of Latin for one volume, but not for a prolonged search through so many. However, a learned and liberal scholar told me afterwards that we have the essence of the canon law in the Scriptures, in the creeds, dogmas and literature of the church, in plain English that any ordinary mind can understand. The simple story of the Scotch peasant's wife shows how the Book impresses a thoughtful woman, not blinded by fear, to express her real opinions. Sitting in her cottage door at the twilight hour reading her Bible, the bishop passing by, said, "My good woman, do you enjoy that book?" "Nay, nay, Reverend Sir, as I read of all the misery woman brought into the world, and for which there is no remedy, I am ashamed that I was born a woman. I am sorry that the good Lord ever wrote the Book, and told the men all he has concerning us; it gives them an excuse for the contempt and cruelty with which they treat us." Yea, verily, here is the source and center of woman's degradation; out of these ideas grew witchcraft and celibacy, that made woman for ages the helpless victim of man's lust and power; out of these ideas grew the monstrous delusion of the curse and uncleanness 9 of motherhood, that required all woman at one time to stand up before the whole congregation "to be churched," as it was called after the birth of a child, returning thanks to the Lord for her safety. As if peril and suffering were part of the eternal law, and not the result of its violation through our own ignorance and folly, and our artificial habits of life. However, there are some considerations and characters in the Book that can give woman a few crumbs of comfort. The first chapter of Genesis has several valuable suggestions. "God said, Let us make man in our own image. Male and female he made them, and gave them dominion over the earth, and all that dwells therein." "Let us," show plurality in the Godhead, a heavenly mother as well as a heavenly father, the feminine as well as the masculine element. Without these two forces in equilibrium, there could have been no perpetuation of life in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; as necessary in the material world as the positive and negative electricity, the centripetal and centrifugal forces. "He gave them dominion over everything." Here the equality of the sexes is recognized, and this idea is echoed back from the New Testament. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." We not only have this broad principle of equality enunciated, but we have some grand types of women presented for our admiration. Deborah for her courage and military prowess. Huldah for her learning, prophetic insight, and statesmanship, seated in the college in Jerusalem, where Josiah the king sends his cabinet ministers to consult her as to the policy of his government. Esther, who ruled as well as reigned with Ahasuerus the king, and Vashti, who scorned the apostle's command, "Wives, obey your husbands." She refused the king's command to grace with her presence his reveling court. Tennyson pays this tribute to her virtue and dignity: "O Vashti! noble Vashti, Summoned forth, she kept her state And left the drunken king to brawl In Shushan underneath his palms." These characters and principles would furnish good texts for sermons and examples for aspiring young women in the churches, but the sons of Levi shy round all these interesting facts, and maintain 10 a discreet silence, but they should awake woman to her true position as an equal factor in the scale of being. We never have any sermons to inspire woman with self-respect and a desire for her own higher development. The cardinal virtue for her to cultivate is self-sacrifice and an humble submission to the disciple of the church. As a badge of her subjection she is always required to appear in church with her head covered. When last in Europe the wife of an English officer told me that she tried the experiment of going to church without her bonnet one warm day in summer. As she walked up the center aisle with her husband every neck was craned to see the unusual sight and it caused such a flutter in the congregation, and such severe strictures by the saints, that the vicar called in the course of the week to request that the experiment should not be repeated. However, she found it so comfortable to sit with her head bare during the long service, and as her husband sustained her, she continued to go with her head uncovered on several occasions. Then the bishop wrote her a letter, saying that the discipline of the church required every woman to attend service with her head covered, and that unless she was willing to comply with the long established religious custom, significant of woman's true position as set forth in the Scriptures, she must not enter the cathedral again. At a lunch party one day in London, the lady read the bishop's letter, to the great amusement of those present. All joined in the hope that many other women would follow this worthy example. If a bonnet is a badge of subjection, it should be thrown to the winds without further delay. As women are now required to doff their bonnets in operas and theaters, why cling to this badge of servitude in the churches? THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND WOMAN. BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON THE Grand ideas of Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, have been slowly transforming the world from the reign of brute force to moral power, and science has been slowly emancipating mankind from their fears of the unknown; but the Christian Church has steadily used its influence against progress, science, the education of the masses and freedom for woman. It is often asserted that woman owes all the advantages of the position she occupies to-day to Christianity, but the facts of history show that the Christian Church has done nothing specifically for woman's elevation. In the general march of civilization she has necessarily reaped the advantage of man's higher development; but we must not claim for Christianity all that has been achieved by science, discovery and invention. If we admit that truth it has taught, as an offset to its many errors, has been one of the factors in civilization, we shall concede all that can be fairly claimed. The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human society; and she has touched the depths of misery since in Bethlehem the Magi gathered round the child in the manger, who was hailed as the Savior of mankind. But the life and teachings of Jesus, all pointing to the complete equality of the human family, were too far in advance of his age to mould its public opinion. We must distinguish between the teachings attributed to Jesus and those of the Christian Church. One represents the ideal the race is destined to attain; the other, the popular sentiment of its time. Had Jesus lived in Russia in the nineteenth century, he would have been exiled as a Nihilist for his protests against tyranny and his sympathy with the suffering masses. He would have been driven from Germany as a socialist, from France as a communist, and imprisoned as a blasphemer in England and America, had he taught in London and New York the radical ideas he proclaimed in Palestine. 11 12 I speak of the Christian Church, Catholic and Protestant, of the priesthood, the bulls of its popes, the decrees of its councils, the articles and resolutions of its general assemblies, presbyteries, synods, conferences, which all summed up, compose the canon law, which has held Christendom during what are called the Dark Ages until now under its paralyzing influence, moulding civil law and social customs and plunging woman into absolute slavery. The worst features of the canon law reveal themselves to-day in woman's condition as clearly as they did fifteen hundred years ago. The clergy in their pulpits teach the same doctrines in regard to her from the same texts, and echo the same old platitudes and false ideas promulgated for the centuries by ecclesiastical councils. According to Church teaching, woman was an after-thought in the creation, the author of sin, being at once in collusion with Satan. Her sex was made a crime; marriage a condition of slavery, owing obedience; maternity a curse; and the true position of all womankind one of inferiority and subjection to all men; and the same ideas are echoed in our pulpits to-day. England and America are the two nations in which the Christian religion is dominant; yet, by their ethics taught in the pulpit, the idea woman is comparatively more degraded than in pagan nations. I say comparatively, for, because of the various steps of progress in education, science, invention and art, woman is not more fully the equal of man in these countries than in any other nation or period of the world. And yet the old ideas taught by the Church in the Dark Ages of her inferiority and depravity are still maintained; and, just in proportion as women are the equals of the men by their side, the more keenly they feel every invidious distinction based on sex. To those not conversant with the history of the Christian Church and the growth of the canon law, it may seem a startling assertion; but it is, nevertheless, true that the Church has done more to degrade woman than all other adverse influences put together. And it has done this by playing on the religious emotions (the strongest feelings of her nature) to her own complete subjugation. The same religious conscience that carried the widows to the funeral pyre of their husbands now holds some women in the Turkish seraglios, others in 13 polygamy under the Mormon theocracy, and others in the Christian churches, in which, while rich women help to build and support them, they may not speak or vote or enjoy any o the honors conferred on men, and all alike are taught that their degradation is of divine ordination, and thus their natural feelings of self-respect are held in abeyance to what they are taught to believe is God's will. Out of the doctrine of original sin grew the crimes and miseries of asceticism, celibacy, and witchcraft, woman become the helpless victim of all delusions generated in the brain of man. Having decided that she was the author of sin and the medium through whom the devil would effect the downfall of the Church, godly men logically inferred that the greater the distance between themselves and all womankind, the nearer they were to God and heaven. With this idea, they fought against all woman's influence, both good and evil. At one period, they crucified all natural affections for mother, sister, wife and daughter, and continued a series of persecutions that blackened the centuries with the most horrible crimes. This more than any other one influence was the cause of that general halt in civilization, that retrogressive movement of the Dark Ages, for which no historian has satisfactorily accounted. At no period of the world was the equilibrium of the masculine and feminine elements of humanity so disturbed. The result was moral chaos - just what would occur in the material world. if it were possible to destroy the equilibrium of the positive and negative electricity or of the centripetal and centrifugal force. For the supposed crimes of heresy and witchcraft hundred of women endured such persecutions and tortures that the most stolid historians are said to have wept in recording them; and no one can read them to-day but with a bleeding heart. And, as the Christian Church grew stronger, woman's fate grew more helpless. Even the Reformation and Protestantism brought no relief, the clergy being all along their most bitter prosecutors, the inventors of the most infernal tortures. Hundreds and hundred of fair young girls, innocent as the angels in heaven, hundred and hundred of old women, weary and trembling with the burdens of life, were hunted down by emissaries of the Church, dragged into the courts, with the ablest 14 judges and lawyers of England, Scotland and America on the bench, and tried for crimes that never existed but in the wild, fanatical imaginations of religious devotees. Women were acused of consorting with devils and perpetuating their diabolical propensities. Hundreds of these children of hypothetical origin were drowned, burned and tortured in the presence of their mothers, to add to their death agonies. These things were not done by savages or pagans; they were done by the Christian Church. Neither were they confined to the Dark Ages, but permitted by law in England far into the eighteenth century. The clergy everywhere sustained witchcraft as Bible doctrine, until the spirit of rationalism laughed the whole thing to score, and science gave mankind a more cheerful view of life. So large a place has the nature and position of woman occupied in the councils of the Church that the Rev. Charles Kingsley facetiously remarked that the Christian Church was swamped by hysteria from the third to the sixteenth century. Speaking of witchcraft, Lecky says the Reformation was the signal for a fresh outburst of the superstition in England; and there, as elsewhere, its decline was represented by the clergy as the direct consequence and the exact measure of the progress of religious skepticism. In Scotland, where the reformed ministers exercised greater influence than in any other country, and where the witch trials fell almost entirely into their hands, the persecution was proportionally atrocious. Probably the ablest defender of the belief was Glanvil, a clergyman of the English Establishment; and one of the most influential was Baxter, the greatest of the Puritans. It spread with Puritanism into the New World, and the executions in Massachusetts form one of the darkest pages in American history. The greatest religious leader of the last century, John Wesley, was among the latest of its supporters. He said giving up witchcraft was giving up the Bible. Skepticism on the subject of witches first arose among those who were least governed by the Church, advanced with the decline of the influence of the clergy, and was commonly branded by them as a phase of infidelity. One remarkable fact stands out in the history of witchcraft; and that is, its victims were chiefly women. Scarce one wizard to a hundred witches was ever burned or tortured. 15 Although the ignorance and crimes of the race have ever fallen most heavily on woman, yet in the general progress of civilization she has had some share. As man became more enlightened, she of necessity enjoyed the results; but to no form of popular religion has woman ever been indebted for one pulsation of liberty. Obedience and subjection have been the lessons taught her by all alike. Lecky, in his History of Rationalism and his European Morals, gives facts sufficient to convince any woman of common sense that the greatest obstacle in the way of the freedom and elevation of her sex has been, and is, the teaching of the Church in regard to her rights and duties. Women have ever been the chief victims in the persecutions of the Church amid all its awful tragedies, and on them have fallen the heaviest penalties of the canon law. But the canon law did not confine itself to social relations; it laid its hand with withering touch on the civil law, and blighted many personal and property rights accorded woman under the Roman Code. Speaking of the Roman Code before the introduction of Christianity (Gaius), Maine says: "The jurisconsults had evidently at this time assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle to the code of equity. The situation of the Roman woman, whether married or single, became one of the great personal and property independence, but Christianity tended somewhat from the very first to narrow this remarkable liberty. The prevailing state of religious sentiment may explain why modern jurisprudence has adopted these rules concerning the position of woman, which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilization. No society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by middle Roman law. Canon law has deeply injured civilization." Rev. Charles Kingsley says: "Whoever wishes to gain insight into that great institution, Canon Law, can do so most effectively by studying Common Law in regard to woman. There will never be a good world for woman until the last remnant of Canon Law is civilized off the face of the earth. Meanwhile, all the most pure and high-minded women in England and Europe have been brought up under the shadow of the Canon Law, and have accepted it, with the 16 usual divine self-sacrifice, as their destiny by law of God and nature, and consider their own womanhood outraged, when it, their tyrant, is meddled with." Women accept their position under the shadow of the canon law for the best of reasons - they know nothing about it. And, if they should undertake to explore it, they would waste their lives in the effort. This is one of the peculiarities of woman's position; she knows nothing of the laws, either canon or civil, under which she lives; and such churchmen as the Rev. Morgan Dix are determined she never shall. Nero was thought chief of tyrants because he made laws and hung them up so high the people could not read them. As the result of the canon law, what is woman's position in the State and the Church to-day? We have woman disfranchised, with no voice in the government under which she lives, denied until recently the right to enter colleges or professions, laboring at half-price in the world of work; a code of morals that makes man's glory woman's shame; a civil code that makes her in marriage a nonentity, her person, her children, her earnings the property of her husband. In adjusting this institution of marriage, woman has never yet in the history of the world had one word to say. The relation has been absolutely established and perpetuated without her consent. We have thus far had the man marriage. He has made all the laws concerning it to suit his own convenience and love of power. He has tried every possible form of it, and is as yet satisfied with none of his experiments. If an inhabitant of some other planet could suddenly light in one of our law libraries, and read over our civil and criminal codes, he would be at a loss to know what kind of beings women are, so anomalous is the position we hold, with some rights partially recognized in one place and wholly obliterated in another. In the criminal code, we find no feminine pronouns. All criminals are designated as "he," "his," "him." We might suppose our gathers thought women too pure and angelic ever to commit crimes, if we did not find in the law reports, cases in which women had been imprisoned and hung as "he," "his," "him." And yet, when it comes to privileges we are excluded, because the laws and constitutions do not contain the feminine pronouns "she," "hers," "her." We are a kind of half human, half animal being, 17 like those wonderful questioning sphinxes we see in the Old World. And we present very much the same appearance in the Church. Go into any little country town, and the chief excitement among the women is found in fairs, donation parties, festivals, church building and decorating. The women are the chief untiring, pertinacious beggars for the church. They compose the vast majority of the congregation. Rich women give large sums to clear church debts, to educate young men for the ministry, and to endow theological seminaries. Poorer women decorate the temples for Christmas and Easter, make surplices and gowns, embroider table covers for the altar, and slipped for the rector; and all alike think they are serving God in sustaining the Church and the priesthood. In return, the whole tone of Church teaching in regard to woman is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading. Perchance the very man educated by some sewing society of women will ascend the pulpit, and take his text in 1 Corinthians xiv., 34, 35: "Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." Ephesians v. 23: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church." 1 Timothy ii. 11, 12, 13: "Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man. . . . For Adam was first formed, then Eve." 1 Corinthians xi. 8, 9: "For man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman but woman for the man." In all the great cathedrals in England and in some here in New York, boys from ten to fifteen chant the hymns of praise that woman's lips may not profane, while they, oblivious to these insults to their sex, swell in the listening crowd, and worship the very God who they are told made them slaves, and cursed them with sufferings that time can never mitigate. When in England, I visited the birthplace of Dean Stanley. The old homestead was occupied by a curate and his two daughters. 18 They escorted us all over the place—in the school where poor children were taught, in the old church where the dean had long preached. "Do you see that table cover in the altar?" said one of the daughters. "Sister and I worked that." "Did you spread it on the table?" said I. "Oh, no," said she; "no woman is allowed to enter this enclosure." "Why?" said I. "Oh! it is too sacred." "But," said I, "men go there; and it is said that women are purer, more delicate, refined, and naturally religious than they are." "Yes, but women are not allowed." "Shall I explain the reason to you?" I replied. "Yes," she said, with a look of surprise. "Well," said I, "it is because the Church believes that woman brought sin into the world, that she was the cause of man's fall from holiness, that she was cursed of God, and has ever since been in collusion with the devil. Hence, the Church has considered her unfit to sing in the choir or enter the Holy of Holies." She looked very thoughtful, and said, "I never supposed these old customs had such significance." "Yes," I replied, "every old custom, every fashion, every point of etiquette, is based on some principle, and women ignorantly submit to many degrading customs, because they do not understand their origin." These indignities have their root in the doctrine of original sin, gradually developed in the canon law—a doctrine never taught in the primitive Christian Church. In spite of the life, character and teachings of Jesus, ever proclaiming the essential equality and oneness of the whole human family, the priesthood, claiming apostolic descent, so interprets Christianity as to make it the basis of all religious and political disqualifications for women, sustaining the rights of man alone. The offices woman held during the apostolic age she has been gradually deprived of through ecclesiastical enactments. Although, during the first four hundred years of the Christian Church, women were the chosen companions of Jesus and his followers, doing their utmost to spread the new faith, as preachers, elders, deacons, officiating in all the sacraments, yet these facts are carefully excluded from all the English translations of the Scriptures; while woman's depravity, inferiority and subordination are dwelt upon wherever the text will admit of it. Under all the changes in advancing civilization for the last fifteen hundred years, this one idea of woman has been steadily promulgated; and to-day, in the full blaze of the sunlight of the late years of the nineteenth century, it is echoed in the pulpit by nearly every sect and in the halls of legislation by political leaders. Whatever oppressions man has suffered, they have invariably fallen more heavily on woman. Whatever new liberties advancing civilization has brought to man, ever the smallest measure has been accorded to woman, as a result of church teaching. The effect of this is seen in every department of life. There is nothing so cheap as womanhood in the commerce of the world. You can scarcely take up a paper that does not herald some 19 outrage on woman, from the dignified matron on her way to church to the girl of fourteen gathering wild flowers on her way to school. I hold men in high places responsible for the actions of the lower orders. The sentiments and opinions expressed by clergymen and legislators mould the morals of the highway. So long as the Church and the State, in their creeds and codes, make woman an outcast, she will be the sport of the multitude. Whatever can be done to dignify her in the eyes of man will be a shield and helmet for her protection. If the same respect the masses are educated to feel for cathedrals, altars, symbols and sacraments was extended to the mothers of the race, as it should be, all these distracting problems, in which their interests are involved, would be speedily settled. You cannot go so low down in the scale of being as to find men who would enter our churches to desecrate the altars or toss about the emblem of the sacrament, because they have been educated with a holy reverence for these things. But where are any lessons of reverence for woman taught to the multitude? And yet is she not, as the mother of the race, more exalted than sacraments, symbols, altars, and vast cathedral domes? Are not the eternal principles of justice engraven on her heart more sacred than canons, creeds and codes written on parchment by Jesuits, bishops, cardinals and popes? Yet where shall we look for lessons of honor and respect to her? Do our sons in the law schools rise from their studies of invidious statutes and opinions of jurists in regard to women with a higher respect for their mothers? By no means. Every line of the old common law of England on which the American system of jurisprudence is based, touching the interest of woman, is, in a measure, responsible for the wrongs she suffers to-day. Do our sons in their theological seminaries rise from their studies of the Bible, and the popular commentaries on the passages of Scripture concerning woman's creation and position in the scale of being, with an added respect for their mothers? By no means. They come ofttimes fresh from the perusal of what they suppose to be God's will and law, fresh from communion with the unseen, perhaps with the dew of inspiration on their lips, to preach anew the subjection of one-half the race to the other A very striking fact, showing the outrages women patiently endure through the perversion of their religious sentiments by crafty priests, is seen in the treatment of the Hindu widow, the civil law in her case, as in so many others, being practically annulled by theological dogmas. "The most liberal of the Hindu schools of jurisprudence,"* says Maine, "that prevailing in Bengal proper, gives a childless widow the enjoyment of her husband's property under certain restrictive conditions during her life;" and in this it agrees with many bodies of unwritten local custom. If there are male children, they succeed at once; but if there are none the widow comes in for her life before *Early History of Institutions, Lecture XI., on the Property of Married Women. 20 the collateral relatives. At the present moment, marriages among the upper classes of Hindus being very commonly infertile, a considerable portion of the soil of the wealthiest Indian provinces is in the hands of childless widows as tenants for life. But it was exactly in Bengal proper that the English, on entering India, found the suttee, or widow-burning, not merely an occasional, but a constant and almost universal practice with the wealthier classes; and, as a rule, it was only the childless widow, and never the widow with minor children, who burnt herself on her husband's funeral pyre. There is no question that there was the closest connection between the law and the religious custom; and the widow was made to sacrifice herself, in order that her tenancy for life might be gotten rid of. The anxiety of her family that the rite should be performed, which seemed so striking to the first English observers of the practice, was in fact explained by the coarsest motives; but the Brahmins who exhorted her to the sacrifice were undoubtedly influenced by a purely professional dislike to her enjoyment of property. The ancient rule of the civil law, which made her a tenant for life, could not be gotten rid of; but it was combated by the modern institution, which made it her duty to devote herself to a frightful death. The reasoning on this subject, current even in comparatively ancient times, is thus given in the Mitakshava: "The wealth of a regenerate man is designed for religious uses; and a woman's succession to such property is unfit, because she is not competent to the performance of religious rites." Thus the liberal provisions of the civil law were disposed of by burning the widow, and she was made willing for the sacrifice by a cultivated sense of religious duty. What is true in this case is true of women in all ages. They have been trained by their religion to sacrifice themselves, body and soul, for the men of their families and to build up the churches. We do not burn the bodies of women to-day; but we humiliate them in a thousand ways, and chiefly by our theologies. So long as the pulpits teach woman's inferiority and subjection, she can never command that honor and respect of the ignorant classes needed for her safety and protection. There is nothing more pathetic in all history than the hopeless resignation of woman to the outrages she has been taught to believe are ordained of God. FREE THOUGHT MAGAZINE HOSPITABLE TO ALL TRUTH AND DEVOTED TO THE EXPOSING OF ANCIENT ERROR BY THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE AND CRITICISM. EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS: JUDGE C. B. WAITE, THADDEUS B, WAKEMAN, B. F. UNDERWOOD, HELEN H. GARDENER. TESTIMONIALS. Col. Robert G. Ingersoll: "Every Liberal in this country ought to take the Free Thought Magazine and I hope they will." Hon. Geo. W. Julian: "It fills a place and meets a want which is not supplied by any other publication, and it deserves the support and encouragement of all true Liberals." Hon. D. K. Tenney: "It stands decidedly in the front rank of publications designed to clear the religious atmosphere of the delusions, superstitions and dogmas which for so many centuries have misled and cursed the world. It deserves the sympathy and support of all who favor the highest thought on the gravest subjects." Elizabeth Cady Stanton: "I like the Free Thought Magazine because it breathes the spirit of liberty. It deserves the support of all Liberal thinkers." Helen H. Gardener: "I have always liked and admired the Free Thought Magazine. I am glad to hear that it is to be enlarged, though I am sure that all of us were satisfied with it before." Hon. Philip G. Peabody, President New England Anti-Vivisection Society: "The Free Thought Magazine, in the opinion of highly educated people, is the very best Magazine published; that is saying much, but does not overstate the fact; it fills a place that no other magazine fills. It may be enlarged, but I do not see how it can be improved." Rev. Henry Frank: "The Free Thought Magazine is among the most gladly welcomed of all my monthly periodicals. It is doing valiant service for the cause of true Liberalism. It is clean. It is tolerant. It is not afraid to hear the other side. It opens up its pages as a free Arena for able thinkers and whoever desires to keep abreast of modern thought can not afford to be without it. I may, probably, be more of a Christian in theory than the editor, but I am sure I am not more of a Christian in spirit than he is." Rev. J. E. Roberts, Pastor all Souls Church, Kansas City, Missouri: "The Free Thought Magazine is a powerful instrument in the work of making thought free. To this end what could be more effective than to allow the unemancipated to argue their own cause, as witness the articles of Rev. J. R. Kaye PH. D.?" T. B. Wakeman, Esq.: "I do hereby solemnly certify that, in my humble but honest belief, the improved Free Thought Magazine is the greatest and best Free Thought and Liberal Organ of all real or would-be emancipated souls in the United States, and that its regular perusal is the most healthy and effective means of grace possible for such souls to enjoy, and to impart to others to secure their salvation in this world." Hudor Genone: "I approve of the Free Thought Magazine. It is what a man ought to be - purposeful, but impartial - tolerant of churches, implacable to wrong. Willing to hear all sides, and not ashamed to listen and let the world know you listen. "That way of course assures some nonsense; but who wouldn't sift a bushel of quartz sand to find a ten caret diamond? No one but the ignoramus who doesn't know quartz from jewels. "The Free Thought Magazine is doing good work to make the distinction known." B. F. Underwood: "The Free Thought Magazine, which has steadily improved from the first, is now a publication that reflects great credit upon its editor and corps of contributors. It contains many strong and fine articles. Free Thinkers everywhere ought to sustain it handsomely by taking it, and by making an effort to induce others to subscribe." Dr. E. B. Foote: "The Free Thought Magazine always comes well laden with matter which is well worth keeping. I trust it may have a good deal of what William Byrd Powell called vital tenacity and that it may live long to expose error and give the light of modern science." Prof. Daniel T. Ames: " I regard the Free Thought Magazine among the very best exponents of free thought, and one that richly deserves the earnest support of every man and woman who hopes for the ultimate emancipation of the human mind from the thralldom of a priestcraft founded upon and anchored in primeval ignorance and superstition." Monthly, $1.00 a year, 15 cents a number. H. L. GREEN, EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, 213 E. Indiana St., Chicago, Ill. [*ECS*] The Christian Church and Women. _____ BY MRS. E. CADY STANTON Republished from the Index, Boston The grand ideas of Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, | have been slowly transforming the world from the reign of brute force to moral power, and science has been as slowly emancipating mankind from their fears of the unknown; but the Christian Church has steadily used its influence against progress, science, the education of the masses, and freedom for woman. It is often asserted that woman owes all the advantages of the position she occupies to-day to Christianity, but the facts of history show that the Christian Church has done nothing specifically for woman's elevation. In the general march of civilization, she has necessarily reaped the advantage of man's higher development; but we must not claim for Christianity all that has been achieved by science, discovery and invention. If we admit that the truth it has taught, as an offset to its many errors, has been one of the factors in civilization, we shall concede all that can be fairly claimed. The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history; and she has touched the depths of misery since in Bethlehem the Magi gathered round the child in the manger, who was hailed as the Saviour of mankind. But the life and teachings of Jesus, all pointing to the complete equality of the human family, were too far in advance of his age to mould its public opinion. We must distinguish between the teachings attributed to Jesus and those of the Christian Church. One represents the ideal the race is destined to attain; the other, the popular sentiment of its time. Had Jesus lived in Russia in the nineteenth century, he would have been exiled as a Nihilist for his protests against tyranny and his sympathy with the suffering masses. He would have been driven from Germany as a socialist, from France as a communist, and imprisoned as a blasphemer in England and America, had he taught in London and New York the radical ideas he proclaimed in Palestine. I speak of the Christian Church, Catholic and Protestant, of the priesthood, the bulls of its popes, the decrees of its councils, the articles and resolutions of its general assemblies, presbyteries, synods, conferences, which, all summed up compose the canon law, which has held Christendom during what are called the Dark Ages until now under its paralyzing influence, moulding civil law and social customs and plunging woman into absolute slavery. The worst features of the canon law reveal themselves to day in woman's condition as clearlyas they did fifteen hundred years ago. The clergy in their pulpits teach the same doctrines in regard to her from the same texts, and echo the same old platitudes and false ideas promulgated for centuries by ecclesiastical councils. According to Church teaching, woman was an after-thought in the creation, the author of sin, being at once in collusion with Satan. Her sex was made a crime; marriage a condition of slavery, owing obedience; maternity a curse; and the true position of all womankind one of inferiority and subjection to all men; and the same ideas are echoed in our pulpits to-day. England and America are the two nations in which the Christian religion is dominant; yet, by their ethics taught in the pulpit, the idea woman is comparatively more degraded than in pagan nations. I say comparatively, for, 2 because of the various steps of progress in education, science, invention and art, woman is now more fully the equal of man in these countries than in any other nation or period of the world. And yet the old ideas taught by the Church in the Dark Ages of her inferiority and depravity are still maintained; and, just in proportion as women are the equals of the men by their side, the more keenly they feel every invidious distinction based on sex. To those not conversant with the history of the Christian Church and the growth of the canon law, it may seem a startling assertion; but it is, nevertheless, true that the Church has done more to degrade woman than all other adverse influences put together. And it has done this by playing on the religious emotions (the strongest feelings of her nature.) to her own complete subjugation. The same religious conscience that carried the widows to the funeral pyre of their husbands now holds some women in the Turkish seraglios, others in polygamy under the Mormon theocracy, and others in the Christian Churches, in which, while rich women hep to build and support them, they may not speak or vote or enjoy any of the honors conferred on men, and all alike are taught that their degradation is of divine ordination, and thus their natural feelings of self-respect are held in abeyance to what they are taught to believe is God's will. Out of the doctrine of original sin grew the crimes and miseries of asceticism, celibacy, and witchcraft, woman become the helpless victim of all the delusions generated in the brain of man. Having decided that she was the author of sin and the medium through whom the devil would effect the downfall of the Church, godly men logically inferred that the greater the distance between themselves and all womankind, the nearer they were to God and heaven. With this idea, they fought against all woman's influence, both good and evil. At one period, they crucified all natural affections for mother, sister, wife and daughter, and continued a series of persecutions that blackened the centuries with the most horrible crimes. This more than any other one influence was the cause of that general halt in civilization, that retrogressive movement of the Dark Ages, for which no historian has satisfactorily accounted. At no period of the world was the equilibrium of the masculine and feminine elements of humanity so disturbed. The result was moral chaos, - just what would occur in the material world, if it were possible to destroy the equilibrium of the positive and negative electricity or of the centripetal and centrifugal force. For the supposed crimes of heresy and witchcraft, hundred of women endured such persecutions and tortures that most stolid historians are said to have wept in recording them; and no one can read them to day but with a bleeding heart. And, as the Christina Church grew stronger, woman's fate grew more helpless. Even the Reformation and Protestantism broght no relief, the clergy being all along their most bitter prosecutors, the inventors of the most infernal tortures. Hundreds and hundred of fair young girls, innocent as the angels of heaven, hundred and hundred of old women, weary and trembling with the burdens of life, were hunted down by emissaries of the Church, dragged into the courts with the ablest judges and lawyers of England, Scotland and America on the bench, and tried for crimes that never existed but in the wild, fanatical imaginations of religious devotees. Women were accused of consorting with devils and perpetuating their diabolical propensities. Hundreds of these children of hypothetical origin were drowned, burned, and tortured in the presence of their mothers, to add to their death agonies. These things were not done by savages or pagans: they were done by the Christian Church. Neither were they confined to the Dark Ages, but permitted by law in England far into the eighteenth century. The clergy everywhere sustained witchcraft as Bible doctrine, until the spirit of rationalism laughed the whole thing to score, and science gave mankind a more cheerful view of life. So large a place has the nature and position of woman occupied in the councils of the Church that the Rev. Charles Kingsley facetiously remarked that the Christian Church was swamped by hysteria from the third to the sixteenth century. Speaking of witchcraft, Lecky says the Reformation was the signal for a fresh out-burst of the superstition in England; and there, as elsewhere, its decline was represented by the clergy as the direct consequence and the exact measure of the progress of religious scepticism. In Scotland, where the reformed ministers exercised greater influence than in any other country, and where the witch trials fell almost entirely into their hands, the persecution was proportionally atrocious. Probably the ablest 3 defender of the belief was Glanvil, a clergyman of the English Establishment; and one of the most influential was Baxter, the greatest of the Puritans. It spread with Puritanism into the New World, and the executions in Massachusetts form one of the darkest pages in American history. The greatest religious leader of the last century, John Wesley, was among the latest of its supporters. He said giving up witchcraft was giving up the Bible. Scepticism on the subject of witches first arose among those who were least governed by the Church, advanced with the decline of the influence of the clergy, and was commonly branded by them as a phase of infidelity. One remarkable fact stands out in the history of witchcraft; and that is, its victims were chiefly women. Scarce one wizard to a hundred witches was ever burned or tortured. Although the ignorance and crimes of the race have ever fallen most heavily on woman, yet the general progress of civilization she has had some share. As man became more enlightened, she of necessity enjoyed the results; but to no form of popular religion has woman ever been indebted for one pulsation of liberty. Obedience and subjection have been the lessons taught her by all alike. Lecky, in his History of Rationalism and his European Morals, gives facts sufficient to convince any woman of common sense that the greatest obstacle in the way of freedom and elevation of her sex has been, and is, the teaching of the Church in regard to her rights and duties. Women have ever been the chief victims in the persecutions of the Church amid all its awful tragedies, and on them have fallen the heaviest penalties of the canon law. But canon law did not confine itself to social relations; it laid its hands with withering touch on the civil law, and blighted many personal and property rights accorded woman under the Roman Code. Speaking of the Roman Code before the introduction of Christianity (Gaius), Maine says: "The jurisconsults had evidently at this time assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle to the code of equity. The situation of the Roman woman, whether married or single, became one of the great personal and property independence; but Christianity tended somewhat from the very first to narrow this remarkable liberty. The prevailing state of religious sentiment may explain why modern jurisprudence has adopted these rules concerning the position of woman, which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilization. No society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by middle Roman law. Canon law has deeply injured civilization." _____ Rev. Charles Kingsley says: "Whoever wishes to gain insight into that great institution, Canon Law, can do so most effectively by studying Common Law in regard to woman. There will never be a good world for woman until the last remnantof Canon Law is civilized off the face of the earth. Meanwhile, all the most pure and high-minded women in England and Europe have been brought up under the shadow of the Canon Law, and have accepted it, with the usual divine self-sacrifice, as their destiny by law of God and nature, and consider their own womanhood outraged, when it, their tyrant, is meddled with." Women accept their position under the shadow of the canon law for the best of reasons, - they know nothing about it. And, if they should undertake to explore it, they would waste their lives in the effort. While spending a year in England, I heard that a learned clergyman in the Established Church, living near by, had a remarkable library of old and valuable books, and among others innumerable huge volumes of the canon laws. So, thinking I might readily find those affecting women, I made arrangements to spend a day in his library. The volumes are as large as our largest family Bibles stood there in long rows, leather bound and clasped, without an index, and all in Latin. Seeing the formidable array, I said, Could you be kind enough to give me the volumes that contain canons specially affecting woman? He said, Alas! I could not, without looking through all of them; and that, as you readily see, would involve more time than you and I have to spare. But, he added, as the customs of society, the position of woman in the Church, and the old common law of England have all been moulded by the canon law, you can judge the general spirit of these volumes by what you see and hear of woman's condition in every day life. This is one of the peculiarities of woman's position: she knows nothing of the laws, either canon or civil, under which she lives; and such churchmen as the Rev. Morgan Dix are determined we never shall. Nero was thought the 4 chief of tyrants because he made laws, and hung them up so high the people could not read them. What shall we say of the great State of New York, that makes laws for women, and binds them in calf, and then forbids its daughters to enter the law schools where they might learn them, or to plead for the most unfortunate of their sex in our courts of justice? As the result of the canon law, what is woman's position in the State and the Church to day? We have woman disfranchised, with no voice in the government under which she lives, denied until recently the right to enter colleges or professions, laboring at half price in the world of work; a code of morals that makes man's glory woman's shame; a civil code that makes her in marriage a nonentity, her person, her children, her earnings the property of her husband. In adjusting this institution of marriage, woman has never yet in the history of the world had one word to say. The relation has been absolutely established and perpetuated without her consent. We have thus far had the man marriage. He has made all the laws concerning it to suit his own convenience and love of power. He has tried every possible form of it, and is as yet satisfied with none of his experiments. If an inhabitant of some other planet could suddenly light in one of our law libraries, and read over our civil and criminal codes, he would be at a loss to know what kind of beings women are, so anomalous is the position we hold, with some rights partially recognized in one place and wholly obliterated in another. In the criminal code, we find no feminine pronouns All criminals are designated as "he," "his," "him." We might suppose our fathers thought women were too pure and angelic ever to commit crimes, if we did not find in the law reports, cases in which women had been imprisoned and hung as "he," "his," "him." And yet, while the masculine pronoun can be made to do duty for punishments, when it comes to privileges we are excluded because the laws and constitutions do not contain the feminine pronouns "she," "hers" "her." We are a kind of half human, half animal being like those wonderful questioning sphinxes we see in the Old World. And we present very much the same appearance in the Church. Go into any little country town, and the chief excitement among the women is found in fairs, donation parties, festivals, Church building, and decorating. The women are the chief, untiring pertinacious beggars for the church. They compose the vast majority of the congregations. Rich women give large sums to clear church debts, to educate young men for the ministry, and to endow theological seminaries. Poorer women decorate the temples for Christmas and Easter, make surplices and gowns, embroider table covers for the altar, and slippers for the rector; and all alike think they are serving God in sustaining the Church and the priesthood. In return, the whole tone of the church teaching in regard to woman is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading. Perchance the very man educated by some sewing society of women will ascend the pulpit, and take his text in I. Corinthians xiv., 34, 35: "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." Ephesians v., 23: "wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church." I. Timothy ii., 11, 12, 13: " Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man. . . For Adam was first formed, then Eve." I. Corinthians xi., 8, 9: "For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man." Now, my friends, what effect do you think such Epistles such as these, written by Paul to the Ephesians, the Corinthians, and the Thessalonians, had on the men and women of those times; and what is the effect of sermons from such texts today, but to degrade woman and demoralize man> These teachings in regard to woman so faithfully reflect the provisions of the canon law that is fair to infer that their inspiration came from the same source, written by men, translated by men, revised by men. If the Bible is to be placed in the hands of our children, read in our schools, taught in our theological seminaries, proclaimed as God's law in our temples of worship, let us by all means call a council of women in New York, and give it one more revisions from the woman's stand-point. 5 Disraeli said that the early English editions contain six thousand errors in the translation from the Hebrew, which were constantly introduced and passages interpolated for sectarian purposes or to sustain new creeds. The Church Union says of the present translation that there are more than seven thousand variations from the received Hebrew text, and more than one hundred and fifty thousand from the received Greek text, making these two authorities one hundred and sixty-three thousand errors. It is fair to suppose that at last one-half of these errors are with reference to the woman's position. It would not be assuming too much, in view of all the facts of history, for woman hereafter to take the liberty of defining her own position, without the slightest reference to the Church, its canon law, or Biblical interpretations. But, to return to the temple of worship, the sermon finished, to which women reverently listen in silence, the choir performs its part in this travesty on womanhood. In all the great cathedrals in England and in some here in New York, boys from ten to fifteen chant the hymns of praise that woman's lips may not profane, while they, oblivious to these insults to their sex, swell the listening crowd, and worship the very God they are told who made the slaves, and cursed them with sufferings that time can never mitigate. When last in England, I visited the birthplace of Dean Stanley. The old homestead was occupied by a curate and his two daughters. They escorted us all over the place, - the the school where poor children, were taught, in the old church where the dean had long preached. "Do you see that table cover in the altar?" said one of the daughters. "Sister and I worked that." "Did you spread it on the table?" said I. "Oh, no," said she: "no woman is allowed to enter this enclosure." "Why?" said I. "Oh! it is too sacred." "But," said I. "men go there; and it is said that women are purer, more delicate, refined, and naturally religious than they are." "Yes, but women are not allowed." "Shall I explain the reason to you?" I replied. "Yes," she said with a look of surprise. "Well" said I, "it is because the Church believes that woman brought sin into the world, that she was the cause of man's fall from holiness, that she was cursed of God, and has ever since been in collusion with the devil. Hence, the Church has considered her unfit to sing in the choir or enter the Holy of holies." She looked very thoughtful, and said, "I never supposed these old customs had such significance." "Yes," I replied, "every old custom, every fashion, every point of etiquette, is based on some principle, and women ignorantly submit to many degrading customs, because they do not understand their origin." Though women are pre-eminently fitted to preach a gospel of glad tidings, yet the Quakers, the Unitarians, and the Universalists are the only sects that ordain women. The Methodists allow them to preach, but do not ordain them. None of the sects allow women to be elders or deacons, though a few individual churches have conferred these honors. The Greek Testament speaks of "deaconesses" in the early Church; but our translation interpolates the "wives of deacons," by no means an honest substitution. In the Episcopal Church, they would not allow a woman to be a member of the vestry, even though obliged to fill the office with a man who was not a communicant. Better a man unbeliever than a saintly women to officiate in church matters. And the few women that are ordained over congregations find there are ever some adverse influences at work that they feel, though they may not be able to say, "Thou art the man." All these indignities have their root in the doctrine of original sin, gradually developed in the canon law, - a doctrine never taught in the primitive Christian Church. In spite of the life, character, and teachings of Jesus, ever proclaiming the essential equality and oneness of the whole human family, the priesthood, claiming apostolic descent, so interpret Christianity as to make it the basis of all religious and political disqualifications far women, sustaining the rights of man alone. The offices woman held during the apostolic age she has been gradually deprived of through ecclesiastical enactments. Although, during the first four hundred years of the Christian Church, women were the chosen companions of Jesus and his followers, doing their utmost to spread the new faith, as preachers, elders, deacons, officiating in all the sacraments, yet these facts are carefully excluded from all the English translations of the Scriptures; while woman's depravity, inferiority, and subordination are dwelt upon wherever the text will admit of it. Under all the changes in advancing civilization for the last fifteen hundred years, this one 6 idea of woman has been steadily promulgated; and to day, in the full blaze of the sunlight of the nineteenth century, it is echoed in the pulpit by every sect and in the halls of legislation by every party. _____ In one of the essential doctrines of Christianity, - namely, self-sacrifice, - women have been carefully trained, until, as John Stuart Mill says, that has come to be their pet virtue. This is nowhere better illustrated than in their religion. There is no depth of personal degradation they have not touched in the religious worship and sacrifice of ancient civilizations and no humiliations of the spirit the mortals can suffer, when ostracised by those in no way superior to themselves, that educated women in our day have not endured. Seeing this, I have endeavored at many of our suffrage conventions to pass some resolutions embodying the idea that woman's first duty was self development; and at last, after a prolonged struggle and much opposition, even by women themselves, the following resolutions were passed at our thirtieth anniversary, held in Rochester, July, 1878: - Resolved, That, as the first duty of every individual is self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience taught by the Christian Church have been fatal, not only to her own vital interests, but through her to those of the race. Resolved, That the great Principle of the Protestant Reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment, heretofore exercised by man alone, should now be claimed by woman; that in the interpretation of Scripture, she should be guided by her own reason, and not the authority of the Church. Resolved, That, it is through the perversion of the religious element in woman, playing upon her hopes and fears of the future, holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance to that which is to come, that she and the children has trained have been so completely subjugated by priestcraft and superstition. The following Sunday, the Rev. A. H. Strong, D. D., President of the Baptist Theological Seminary of that city, preached a sermon especially directed against these resolutions, which met strong clerical criticism and opposition by all the fraternity in the State who chanced to see reports of the proceedings. One amusing episode in that convention is worth of note. Frederick Douglass, who has always done noble service in our cause, was present. But his intellectual vision being a little obscured that warm afternoon, he opposed the resolutions, speaking with a great deal of feeling and sentiment of the beautiful Christian doctrine of self sacrifice. When he finished, Mrs Lucy Coleman, always keen in pricking bubbles, arose and said: "Well, Mr. Douglass, all you say may be true; but allow me to ask you why you did not remain a slave in Maryland, and sacrifice yourself like a Christian to your master, instead of running off to Canada to secure your liberty like a man? We shall judge your faith, Frederick, by your deeds." The time has come when women, too, would rather run to Canada to taste some of the sweets of liberty than to sacrifice themselves forever in the thorny paths marked out for them by man. Whatever oppressions man has suffered, they have invariably fallen more heavily on woman. Whatever new liberties advancing civilization has brought to man, ever the smallest measure has been accorded to woman, as a result of church teaching. The effect of this is seen in every department of life. There is nothing so cheap as womanhood in the commerce of the world. You can scarcely take up a paper that does not herald some outrage on woman, from the dignified matron on her way to church to the first of fourteen gathering wild flowers on her way to school. I hold men in high places responsible for the actions of the lower orders. The sentiments and opinions expressed by the clergymen and legislators mould the morals of the highway. So long as the Church and the State, in their creeds and codes, make woman an outcast, she will be the sport of the multitude. Whatever can be done to dignify her in the eyes of man will be a shield and helmet for her protection. If the same respect the masses are educated to feel for cathedrals, altars, symbols, and sacraments was extended to the mothers of the race, as it should be, all these distracting problems, in which their interests are involved, would be speedily settled. You cannot go so low down in the scale of being as to find men who would enter our churches to desecrate the altars or toss about the emblem of the sacrament, because they have been educated with a holy reverence for these things. But where are any lessons of reverence for woman taught to the multitude? And yet is she not, as the mother of the race, more exalted than sacraments, symbols, altars, and vast cathedral domes? Are not the eternal principles of justice engraven on her heart more sacred than canons, creeds, and codes written on parchment by Jesuits, bishops, cardinals, and popes? Yet where shall we look for lessons of honor and respect to her? 7 Do our sons in the law schools rise from their studies of the invidious statutes and opinions of jurists in regard to women with a higher respect for their mothers? By no means. Every line of the old common law of England on which the American system of jurisprudence is based, touching the interests of woman, is in a measure, responsible for the wrongs she suffers to-day. Do our sons in the theological seminaries rise from their studies of the Bible, and the popular commentaries on the passages of Scripture concerning woman's creation and the position in the scale of being, with an added respect for their mothers? By no means. They come oft-times fresh from the perusal of what they suppose to be God's will and law, fresh from communion with the unseen, perhaps with the dew of inspiration on their lips, to preach anew the subjection of one half the race to the other. A very striking fact, showing the outrages women patiently endure through the perversion of their religious sentiments by craft priests, is seen in the treatment of the Hindu widow, the civil law in her case, as in so many others, being practically annulled by the theological dogmas. "The most liberal of the Hindu schools of jurisprudence,"* says Maine, "that prevailing in Bengal proper, gives a childless widow the enjoyment of her husband's property under certain restrictive conditions during her life;" and in this it agrees with many bodies of unwritten local custom. If there are male children, they succeed at once; but, if there are none, the widow comes in for her life before the collateral relatives. At the present moment, marriages among the upper classes of Hindus being very commonly infertile, a considerable portion of the soil of the wealthiest Indian provinces is in the hands of childless widows as tenants for life. But it was exactly in Bengal proper that the English, on entering India, found the suttee, or widow-burning, not merely _____ * Early History of Institutions, Lecture XI., on the Property of Married Women. an occasional, but a constant and almost [universal practice with the wealthier classes; and, as a rule, it was only the childless widow, and never the widow with minor children, who burnt herself on her husband's funeral pyre. There is no question that there was the closest connection between the law and the religious custom; and the widow was made to sacrifice herself, in order that her tenantcy for life might be gotten rid of. The anxiety of her family that the rite should be performed, which seemed so striking to the first English observers of the practice, was in fact explained by the coarsest of motives; but the Brahmins who exhorted her to the sacrifice were undoubtedly infiuenced by a purely professional dislike to her enjoyment of property. The ancient rule of civil law, which made her a tenant for life, could not be gotten rid of; but it was combated by the modern institution, which made it her duty to devote herself to a frightful death. The reasoning on this subject, current even in comparatively ancient times, is thus given in the Mitakshava: "The wealth of a regenerate man is designed for religious uses; and a woman's succession to such property is unfit, because she is not competent to the performance of religious rites." Thus the liberal provisions of the civil law were disposed of by burning the widow, and she was made willing for the sacrifice by a cultivated sense of religious duty. What is true in this case is true of women in all ages. They have been trained by their religion to sacrifice themselves, body and soul, for men of their families and to build up the churches. We do not burn the bodies of women to-day; but we humiliate them in a thousand ways, and chiefly by our theologies. So long as the pulpits teach woman's inferiority and subjection, she can never command that honor and respect of the ignorant classes needed for her safety and protection. There is nothing more pathetic in all history than the hopeless resignation of woman to the outrages she has been taught to believe are ordained of God. Elizabeth Cady Stanton By HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH THE editor of the Journal suggests as my theme, "What was Elizabeth Cady Stanton like sixty years ago? What was she most interested in? What was she tackling?" In 1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton was just fifty-four years old. She had the build and brains of her father, Judge Daniel Cady; the social charm of her mother, Margaret Livingstone; the rugged health, snow white hair, dancing blue eyes and optimism of both parents combined. She had already won her spurs in the woman movement, having called the first Woman Rights Convention in 1848. Here she demanded votes for women in the famous IX resolution. She addressed the New York legislature in 1854, her theme being the right of a married woman to her wages. And, now, of the closing decade of the sixties. That was a tumultuous time in American politics and every reform reflected the antagonisms between state-rights and centralization. Elizabeth Cady Stanton registered the change in the political atmosphere. She founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, and steered its course as president for a quarter of a century. The suffrage campaign in Kansas, which she waged with Governor Robinson in 1867, taught her no only the wisdom of Federal action, but the need of a suffrage paper. In Janu- [*Woman's Journal Dec. 1929*] ary, 1868, the Revolution was founded. Of the name of this first political newspaper of our movement . Mrs. Stanton argued: "There could not be a better name than Revolution The establishing of woman on her rightful throne is the greatest revolution the world has ever known or ever will know. To bring it about is no child's play" . . . Borne through cross current by the seaworthy National Woman Suffrage Association, and flying the pennant "Revolution," Mrs. Stanton reached the national capital and inaugurated on January 19, and 20, 1869, the long series of annual Washington conventions. Up to that time the endeavor had been to force the Republicans to accept changes in the wording of their Constitutional Amendments to the end of enfranchising women as well as Negroes. Criticism was bitter. Mrs. Stanton replied: "No, we are right in our position. We demand in the reconstruction, suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens. There is where Wendell Phillips failed. He should have passed, when slavery was abolished, from the abolitionist to the statesman." Having failed to "broaden the narrow demands of men," Mrs. Stanton, clear, logical, far-seeing, realized that "An amendment wholly for our own was called for." In January, 1869, she rejoices to Lucretia Mott, "Hon. George W. Julian has acceded to our wish, and will propose a XVI Amendment basing suffrage on citizenship without any discrimination founded on sex. I feel an added dignity!" The following year, 1870, came the second Washington convention, and before a Congressional Committee, Mrs. Stanton, as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, inaugurated, brilliantly, the custom of annual hearings by making one of her scholarly arguments for the Julian amendment. Then, seeing that a national organization was not enough, a newspaper not enough, national conventions and hearings not enough, a definite suffrage amendment before Congress not enough to bring victory while popular support wide and deep was lacking, Mrs. Stanton started her career as a Lyceum lecturer. In the next twelve years she carried her evangel from coast to coast, from Great Lakes to Gulf. Owing to the bitter criticism heaped upon her, she was, from the first, one of the best advertised lecturers in the lyceum field, and consequently most sought after, most highly paid. She roused the West on education, on woman's emancipation, child care, politics, divorce. She interpreted its liberal spirit to the East, and in large measure harmonized the points of view which made possible in the end the winning of suffrage. Mrs. Stanton in middle life EQUAL RIGHTS "MEN AND WOMEN SHALL HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES AND EVERY PLACE SUBJECT TO ITS JURISDICTION" Amendment to the United States Constitution now before Congress _____ NATIONAL WOMAN'S PARTY, Washington, D. C. _____ No. 4 APRIL 1940 17 _____ "Created Equal" A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. By Alma Lutz, The John Day Company, New York, $3. Reviewed by INEZ HAYNES IRWIN LIKE ALL good biographies, CREATED EQUAL shows a two-fold richness. It reveals and translates the life of its subject. It develops in its background a warm and stories picture of her times. In addition, Miss Lutz has traced the story of the most beautiful friendship that, so far as recorded history shows, has ever existed between a pair of women - and they lived in the period of splendid friendships among women. The only such devotion in the past to compare with it is that of Ruth and Naomi; the only one in the present that of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain. The inclusion in this chronicle of the story of the great working alliance is not only as it should be, but as it must be. No one can ever write the life of either of these women without an almost equal consideration of the other. It would be impossible in the compass of a brief review, even by the process of leaping from a high peak of endeavor to a higher peak of achievement, to tell the story of a woman like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. But there are certain epochs that one cannot leave out. It was repeated experience, hearing the heartbreaking stories of women clients in her father's law office, plus the realization that - because the law pressed so unjustly on women, there was no remedy for their agonies - that made her a theoretical feminist. It was the determination of the World's Antislavery convention, held in London in 1840, not to admit women delegates that turned her into an active feminist. It was the base betrayal of the women suffragists by the men Abolitionists who, before the Civil War, had espouse their cause, and who, after the War, determined first to enfranchise the negro, that turned her into a militant suffragist. As a theoretical feminist, she helped individual women wherever she could. As an active feminist, she called the first Woman's Rights Convention ever held in the history of the world at Seneca Falls in 1848 - the initial engagement in the long fight for equal rights. As a militant feminist, she worked and fought ceaselessly in the equal rights cause as long as she lived. The varied and picturesque panorama of the life which Miss Lutz paints so vividly fills the reader with a kind of stupefaction. He wonders inevitably from what secret loom of time Elizabeth Stanton wove her forty-eight-hour-long working day, from what bottomless well of energy she pumped her burning vitality. Writing editorials, articles, essays, books, innumerable letters and diaries, collaborating on the monumental HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE; attending conventions, presiding at them, making speeches; lecturing for eight months of twelve successive years all over the country; meeting droves of people; fighting for the Bloomer costume; fighting for temperance; fighting for saner property laws and freer divorce laws; fighting for the WOMAN'S BIBLE and for a reform in their attitude towards women within all denominations of churches - there are eighty-seven years of hardbitten living and all the maturer ones filled with the guerilla warfare of woman's rights struggle its strategic sieges, its open and desperate battle. Somewhere along the line of this tumultuous activity, she became Mrs. Henry Stanton. She bore a large family of children, brought them up and helped earn the money to educate them. She was one of those women who take marriage and maternity in the stride of a tremendous achievement. Miss Lutz has assembled masses of rainbow material. The great people of the period file in gorgeous procession through it - scores of able men, few of them lacking biographies; scores of able women, most of them lacking biographies. She stops now and then to give an illuminating picture of a scene, to throw in a thumbnail sketch of character. All the details of Elizabeth Stanton's life, however, come out large and clear against this moving tapestry. But as will always be true of any book treating these two women, the reader is most moved by their friendship. The story leaps into another dimension at that instant, on a street corner in Seneca Falls in 1851, when Amelia Bloomer introduced Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony. From here on, history begins to spin and whirl in those two pairs of forthright hands. The two women left no path unexplored, no lead undeveloped, no stone unturned. They made plenty of mistakes, of course. It was a mistake - although the method was an enormous credit to their sense of humor - to make an implacable enemy of Horace Greeley. It was a mistake - although an enormous credit to their sense of chivalry - to take up the defense of the notorious Circe, Victoria Woodhull. It was a mistake - although an enormous credit to their courage - to clutter their cause with personal side-issues like the infanticide case of Hester Vaughan, of the California murderess Laura Fair and that pathetic victim of social injustice Mrs. Daniel McFarland. It was a mistake - although an enormous credit to the breadth of their vision - to carry the extra weight of other reforms like Abolition, temperance and divorce. It was a mistake - and more than a half-century later, Alice Paul was to profit by that mistake - to abandon the woman's rights movement for the duration of the Civil War. But they (Continued on Page 15) 14 EQUAL RIGHTS April 1940 _____ Equal Rights Official Organ of the NATIONAL WOMAN'S PARTY Capitol Hill Washington, D. C. Phone Atlantic 1210 Published Monthly at 144 B Street, N. E., Washington, D. C. Entered as second-class matter at the post- office at Washington, D. C., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Subscription, $1.00 a Year Foreign Subscription, $1.50 HELEN HUNT WEST . . . . . . Editor _____ CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ALMA LUTZ INEZ HAYNES IRWIN EDITH HOUGHTON HOOKER HELEN ROBBINS BITTERMANN _____ NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COUNCIL NATIONAL OFFICERS Chairman, Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, D. C. 1st Vice-Chairman, Jane Norman Smith, N. Y. 2nd Vice-Chairman, Mrs. Amy. C. Ransome, Calif. 3rd Vice Chairman, Mrs. Margaret C. WIlliams, Conn. Treasurer, Miss Laura M. Berrien, Ga. Secretary, Rebekah Greathouse, D. C. _____ Nina E. Allender D. C. Alma Lutz, Mass. Marie Moore Forrest, D. C. Perle S. Mesta, Okla. Mrs George Halsey, Md. Anita Pollitzer, S. C. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del. Clara Snell Wolfe, Ohio Alice Paul, D. C., (Ex-officio as Chairman of World Woman's Party) _____ Activities Of New York City Committee Soroptimist Clubs of Bronx County - Dinner Meeting. "For They Are All One," A discussion of the Equal Rights Amendment; Speaker, Mrs. Robert Nelson Errington. Broadcast on the Equal Rights Amendment over Station WBNX by Mary Tobin New York City League of Women Voters - 10th Assembly District. Discussion of Equal Rights Amendment - Speakers, Mrs. Robert Nelson Errington, National Woman's Party; Miss Rita Morris, League of Women Voters. Evening Meeting - The Equal Rights Amendment, home of Mrs. Leslie Black; Speaker, Mrs. Robert N. Errington. Susan B. Anthony Day Celebration; Mrs. Robert Nelson Errington, Chairman, New York City Committee, Susan B. Anthony Memorial Committee. Editorial in New York Times - February 15. New York Sun interview with Mrs. Errington; column on Susan B. Anthony and National Woman's Party in Sun on February 10. Article February 14 by Mary Tobin, special writer. Radio Broadcast over Station WNYC - "Susan B. Anthony and Women Pioneers"; Speaker, Mrs. Errington. Two-column article in Bronx News - Wreath Ceremony at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 15, at 11:30 A. M.; Presiding, Mrs. Errington; Laying of Wreath, Mrs. George B. Mesta. Evening Meeting - Discussion of Equal Rights Amendment - Speaker Mrs. Errington; Yonkers (N. Y.) League of Women Voters. Women, We Warn You! WHAT RIGHT have women to take men's jobs? What right have they to work at all? The questions were propounded by the man from Chicago who had just come to Washington to urge Congress to do its duty to men by sending women back to the kitchen - anybody's kitchen - "where they belong." Berating women for daring to compete with men for paid jobs, the new arrival let loose the full force of his fury on the National Woman's Party for its advocacy for a "full share in democracy for women." "We are determined," he said "to give men back their jobs and to put women back in their place." Women, he declared, could find someone to marry them and provide them with the necessities "as was intended." The Constitution, he believed to be for the protection of men alone and said that women could look to men for protection, as they had in the past. Making no bones of the fact that there is a definite campaign for the accomplishment of this questionable, but in his opinion entirely worthy cause, the visitor conceded the right of a woman, unmarried and without support, to hold temporary employment until the matter could be remedied. He admitted having already discussed the plan with several members of Congress and boasted that women, as holders of jobs, were on their way out. All this would be of little importance but for the fact that during the past year there was spawned in Chicago a so-called Wage Security Plan, the purpose of which was identical with that outlined by the Chicagoan now in the nation's capital opening an offensive on women. Women of the United State have dallied too long in securing for their protection a Constitutional guarantee of equal legal rights. At this moment a battery of guns is trained on all women. Married women are being used as an opening wedge, but the epidemic will spread if permitted to take root. It is time for American women to stop quibbling about methods of securing equality and to secure it. They should demand that Congress immediately submit to the States for approval the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Federal Constitution safeguarding the principle of equal legal rights. With this Amendment a part of the basic law of the United States, attacks on their right to work could not succeed. They would be unconstitutional! The energies and abilities women now expend in the struggle to attain rights, which for men citizens are not even questioned, would then be released for constructive work. The energies some men expend in trying to drive women out of the labor markets as a short cut to a gold mine of jobs, might also be used to some better purpose. Directed in the proper channels this combined force might conceivably work out a plan for the creation of new jobs for those who need them. This would be more in keeping with our democracy. It is lazy thinking that suggests banditry of women's jobs in order to provide jobs for men. Eliminating women from the economic field would not solve the problem. It would exaggerate, for it would lower the standard of living and present a more difficult economic tangle than our Nation is prepared to face. If fourteen million working women were deprived of jobs, the support not only of this number, but their dependents as well, would fall upon men. The hands of the clock will not turn back. Women, we warn you! December 1939 EQUAL RIGHTS 135 _____ Tributes To Elizabeth Cady Stanton POSTMASTER GENERAL URGED TO EXPRESS NATION'S APPRECIATION OF MRS. STANTON BY ISSUING COMMEMORATIVE STAMP TWO CEREMONIES of special significance were among those held November 12 in commemoration of the 124th birthday anniversary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Each gave the illustrious pioneer worker for equal rights for men and women not only the gratitude of women, but official recognition by her state and national governments. In the Nation's Capitol in Washington D. C., before the Adelaide Johnson statue of the Equal Rights Pioneers, Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott, there was held a commemorative ceremony, sponsored by the National Woman's Party. Simultaneously with the Washington observance another was held in New York City on the site of Mrs. Stanton's last residence, 250 West 94th Street, where a bronze tablet designating the historic spot was unveiled by the New York Education Department and the National Woman's Party. Members of Mrs. Stanton's family and state officials were among those attending. Mrs. Ethel Ernest Murrell, Florida Chairman for the National Woman's Party, in a beautiful eulogy of Mrs. Stanton, expressed the gratitude of women for the vision, the courage and the endless effort of the woman who 91 years ago dared to ask equal rights for her sex. Mrs. Alma Ambrose, of Baltimore, Md., chairman of the Eastern Regional Conference, presided, other speakers being Mrs. Ellis A Schnabel, Pennsylvania Chairman; Mrs. Elsie Graff, Virginia Chairman; Mrs. George Halsey, Maryland Chairman; Mrs. Marie Moore Forrest, District of Columbia Chairman, National Woman's Party, and Mrs. Helen Hoy Greeley. Mrs. Forrest brought to the gathering a message from Alice Paul, founder of both the National Woman's Party and the World Woman's Party, who is now at the World Party Headquarters in Geneva. "The greatest thing the women of the United States can do to help women of the world," read the message, "is to win the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment. Women of the world look to the United States to set the example." At the close of the Washington meeting there was sent to Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, ill at her home in Greenwich, Conn., an affectionate greeting expressing disappointment at her inability to be present and appreciation of her own great contribution to the cause of women. In New York, three generations of descendants of Elizabeth Cady Stanton were present at the ceremony. The tablet marking the site of Mrs. Stanton's last home was unveiled by her great grand-daughter, Mrs. Harriot Stanton de-Forest Allaben, assisted by her four-year-old daughter Catherine. Among the speakers were Mrs. Stanton's granddaughter, Mrs. Nora Stanton Barney, of Greenwich, Conn., and Miss Katherine Devereux Blake, of New York, widely known educator, peace advocate and Chairman of the Committee on International Relations of the New York Federation of Women's Clubs. Miss Blake knew Mrs. Stanton well. Those arranging the ceremony were keenly disappointed that Harriot Stanton Blatch, the distinguished daughter of Mrs. Stanton, who has so faithfully followed in her footsteps, could not be present. The words of her beautiful message, reverent, intimate and reminiscent, brought to those gathered together a consciousness of a goal yet to be attained and a torch still to be carried rather than the closing of a chapter with a tribute to one who had achieved. "Dear friends and veterans of the Eternal Struggle for Woman's Freedom," wrote Mrs. Blatch. "I greet you from the deep memories of old: So full of stirring reminiscences. "This is a well-night holy occasion that brings us together here today. We commemorate the anniversary of the birth, one hundred and twenty-four years ago, of my mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as well as her endeavors and her achievements on this very spot. "She passed on to us the banners of equality and freedom to be borne ever forward to the still distant goal. Let us dedicate ourselves anew to placing the cap=stone upon the final victory of women's rights." Governor Herbert Lehman, Governor of the State of New York, in a greeting said: "It is well that the University of the State of New York decided to make the location of Mrs. Stanton's residence. Her work with Susan B. Anthony in behalf of equal rights for women entitles her to a lasting place in the record of the suffrage movement." From Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, of New York, came the following: "I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the memory of one of the most outstanding women America has known. The right of women to vote and to take an active part and interest in the affairs of their government was among the most progressive and important of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's contribution to this cause is worthy of ______ 1939 Biennial Conference National Woman's Party WASHINGTON Friday, December 15 Saturday, December 16 _____ DINNER - COSMOS CLUBS, 7:30 P. M. Friday, December 15. Open to the Public. Price $1.50. Addresses by prominent Democrats and Republicans. Send for Reservations Immediately MORNING and AFTERSOON MEETINGS, starting 10 A. M., Saturday, December 16 - ALVA BELMONT HOUSE Discussion of IMMEDIATE STEPS for the ADVANCEMENT OF THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT. Morning Session - PROGRESS IN THE STATES. Afternoon Session - INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS. The Goal Is In Sight! Come And Help! _____ ANNA KELTON WILEY (Mrs. Harvey W.) National Chairman, N. W. P. MARIE MOORE FORREST Conference Chairman 136 EQUAL RIGHTS December 1939 _____ tribute and gratitude as never ending as her efforts for its fulfillment were untiring and indefatigable." United States Senator James M. Mead of New York, said: "This tablet to Elizabeth Cady Stanton serves a worthy purpose enriching the memory and commemorating one who served so loyally and devotedly the cause of women's rights." From Congressman Sol Bloom, of New York, came this tribute: "As one who has always admitted the really great work accomplished by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, I am particularly happy that this tablet is being erected to her memory. Mrs. Stanton was one of those great pioneers who has done so much to contribute to the advancement of the well being and the welfare of the American people." Alma Lutz, author of a biography of Mrs. Stanton, now being published by John Day and Company, wrote: "I am very sorry that I am unable to be present at this ceremony to pay tribute to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for I know that I and every women in the world who cherishes freedom owe her a debt of gratitude. "Elizabeth Cady Stanton had the vision, the courage and the determination to work for the emancipation of women at a time when this was a very unpopular and unladylike thing to do. Her interest in women's advancement went far beyond woman suffrage to equal rights under the law and in all human relationships. She also saw that before women could be completely free there must be a great change in their own thinking - a discarding of false traditions and a cultivation of confidence in themselves. . . . In 1850, Elizabeth Cady Stanton made this plea - 'Take down every barrier in woman's way and let her find her own sphere.' That this statement made 89 years ago is still applicable today is an indictment of our progress. . . . In 1939 as in 1850 there is a need to say with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 'Take down every barrier in woman's way and let her find her own sphere.'" George Gordon Battle, distinguished authority on International Law, said: "Mrs. Stanton richly deserves this tribute of the New York State Department of Education, the National Woman's Party, and all women's organizations gathered to pay her honor." From Vassar College, through Dean Mildred Thompson, came this message: "This occasion and the place both seem to me to be so distinctly important in the history of our country, and especially in the advancement of interests of women, that I as the Dean of Vassar College and a Vassar alumnae take pleasure in sending my greetings on this occasion. We are most happy to have strong connections with Elizabeth Cady Stanton through her daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, who we are proud to claim as one of our graduates. Vassar in its early days profited greatly by the great zeal of women for the cause of women and by the passionate desire of women over the country to seize the opportunities which were being offered for their development through educational means. We therefore feel ourselves a part of this great movement for the advancement of the cause of women which is so nobly symbolized by the career of Elizabeth Cady Stanton." Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid, of the New York Herald-Tribune, unable to attend, wrote: "Because of my feeling for the family of Mrs. Stanton as well as my admiration for her, I am sad that I cannot even be present at this interesting gathering." From the Business and Professional Women's Club of Johnstown, N. W., birthplace of Mrs. Stanton, came the following through its President, Robertene M. Smith: "We who dwell here in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's early home are deeply moved by your commemoration of the birthday of our townswoman. There are those living among us still who remember the old mansion of gray brick where she spent her childhood and many happy intervals in her later years, and who caught from their parents or grandparents a reflection of strength and sanity she shed about her. The old Academy where she studied her Greek and Latin is still standing and served for the schooling of our parents and many of our elder friends. "I read from one of her letters these lines: 'As I sit beside Hattie with the baby in her arms, and realize that three generations of us are together, I appreciate more than ever what each generation can do for the next one, by making the most of itself and thus slowly building the Jacob's ladder by which the race shall at last reach the divine heights of perfection.' "We hope and pray that her spirit is still with us and if ever we doubt its influence we will gather fresh faith and trust in her mission when we remember the memorial you are raising to her in the heart of our mightiest city." At the close of the meeting resolutions were adopted petitioning the Postmaster General of the United States to "express the nation's appreciation of her (Mrs. Stanton's) character and her achievement through the issuance of a commemorative stamp on the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of her birth, November 12, 1940." In addition to these two nationally important ceremonies, women in various parts of the country observed the anniversary with meetings, radio broadcasts and other tribute to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who with Lucretia Mott called the first Woman's Rights Convention and who made the first public demand that women be enfranchised. _____ What Better Christmas Gift? What better Christmas gift for a woman than a subscription to Equal Rights? Through Equal Rights you inform her concerning her status under the law and in the economic field, which means the conditions under which she lives. Through Equal Rights you may inform her how to help to better her status and that of her daughter, her granddaughter and other women of future generations. Send in $1 for each subscription you desire to give as a Christmas gift, together with the names of those to whom you desire that Equal Rights be sent, and we will notify them in time for Christmas. Make your contribution to the cause and at the same time make your gift a real gift - a woman's gift to a woman! _____ Alva Belmont House NATIONAL WOMAN'S PARTY Rooms are available to members and their friends __ Rates, $2.00 to $3.00 per day, according to accommodations BREAKFAST, 25c to 35c __ Reservations should be made well in advance, due to the limited number of rooms available. JANE BOWDEN, House Director Capitol Hill (144 B St., N. E.) Washington, D. C. November, 1939 EQUAL RIGHTS 123 _____ She Believed in Women By Alma Lutz (EDITOR'S NOTE: Alma Lutz, writer of this article, is author of a book on Elizabeth Cady Stanton, now in the hands of John Day Company, publishers, will be off the press early in 1940. Miss Lutz, who has been active in the equal rights cause ever since her graduation from Vassar, has had access to a wealth of hitherto unavailable material concerning Mrs. Stanton, which should make her book not only a very readable volume, but an important historical record. She is the author of a book entitled The Life of Emma Willard and numerous magazine articles dealing with the Woman Movement and other subjects. ON NOVEMBER 12, the birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a tablet will be unveiled on 250 West 94th Street, New York City, where Mrs. Stanton lived from 1898 until her death on October 26, 1932. The tablet being erected by the New York State Education Department and the National Woman's Party. It bears the following inscription: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON NOV. 12, 1815 - OCT. 26, 1902 LOVED FROM 1898 ON THIS SITE CALLED THE FIRST WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION SENECA FALLS, N. Y., JULY 19-20, 1848 AND MADE THE FIRST PUBLIC DEMAND FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND FOR EQUAL RIGHTS Mrs. Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, well known for her own work for woman suffrage and the advancement of women, has been asked to be the speaker at the unvailing, but as illness makes it impossible for her to be present, her place will be taken by her daughter, Nora Stanton Barney, who lived with her grandmother at 250 West 94th Street when she was preparing to enter Cornell University to study architecture and engineering. Rhoda Barney, Mrs. Stanton's great-granddaughter, a student of architecture and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, will unveil the tablet. Jane Norman Smith, Vice-Chairman of the Woman's Party and Chairman of its New York City Committee, will preside. Persons prominent in Government, members of Mrs. Stanton's family and active workers in the feminist movement have been asked to participate in the ceremonies, scheduled for 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Members of the National Woman's Party, friends of equal rights and admirers of Mrs. Stanton are urged to be present to pay tribute to this great pioneer for the emancipation of women. Mrs. Stanton lived in an apartment at 250 West 94th Street at the end of a very active life. Even at eighty-four, she was writing magazine and newspaper articles. Editors regarded her as an interesting personality and sought her comments on a variety of subjects. Somehow or other, no matter what her subject, she always smuggled in a word or two on woman's emancipation. She was a steady contributor to the Sunday edition of the New York Journal and American and was featured as "the grand old woman of America." In 1901, when she was eighty-six, she wrote in her diary, "I am writing articles long and short all the time. Last week I had something in seven different papers. The December number of the North American Review contains an article of mine, and so does the Cosmopolitan. In a word, I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well." Although at the time she no longer took an active part in the work of the National American Woman Suffrage Association of which she had been president for many years, she still sent her speeches to its Conventions and her suggestions regarding policy to Miss Anthony. She wrote Miss Anthony in 1899: "To my mind our Association cannot be too broad. Suffrage involves every basic principle of republican government, all social, civil, religious, educational and political rights. It is therefore germaine to our platform to discuss every invidious distinction of sex in the college, home, trades and professions, in literature sacred and profane, in the canon as well as in civil law. At the inauguration of our movement, we numbered in our Declaration of Rights eighteen grievances covering the whole range of human experience. On none of these did we talk with bated breath. Note the radical claims we made, and think how the world responded. . . In short, in response to our radicalism, the bulwarks of the enemy fell as never since. . . . But at present, our Association has so narrowed its platform for reasons of policy and propriety that our Conventions have ceased to point the way." Keen, interested, planning until the very last, she wrote a letter to President Roosevelt on October 25, 1902, asking him to immortalize himself by bringing about the complete emancipation of his countrywomen. The next afternoon she passed away quietly in her chair. The world's estimate of her in 1902 newspapers, magazines and memorial meetings was that she was "the mother of woman suffrage," "the great statesman of the Woman's Rights movement," "the greatest woman the world has ever produced." When Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johns- (Continued on page 129) _____ Cover Picture The cover picture of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose 124th birthday anniversary is celebrated November 12, is of the Adelaide Johnson statue in the nation's Capitol, depicting in Carrara marble the three pioneers for equal rights, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B Anthony and Lucretia Mott. Calling her the "Apostle of New Time," Adelaide Johnson thus describes the woman who nearly a century ago called the first Woman's Rights Convention: "Born Rebel against Tyranny, Agitator, Typical Mother, Tireless Reformer, Great Stateswoman, Initiator of the only world-wide revolution known to humanity in its ages long struggle toward Freedom - The Woman's Revolution." _____ 124 EQUAL RIGHTS November, 1939 _____ How Women Began To Fight For Equal Rights (World's First Convention on Women's Rights - July 19, 1848) By Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley WHEN the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Association of London issued in 1839 its call for a general international conference to open in London on June 12, 1840, the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Societies sent both men and women delegates, James and Lucretia Mott being among those sent from Pennsylvania. When they reached London the women delegates were excluded from participation in the convention. The tone of Mrs. Mott's diary shows that she was by no means crushed by this assertion of male supremacy. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott met in London for the first time in 1840. Henry Brewster Stanton, one of the leading anti-slavery lecturers of the day, was present as a delegate. He took his bride with him to the conference. At first the women who went to London were denied entrance to the Hall. Hot debate followed. Scripture, ancient history, and English custom were liberally quoted to bar the women delegates from the hall. The incongruity of the thing was amazing. This group was gathered together from all parts of the world, eloquently to defend the rights of slaves, themselves denied freedom of speech, represented one-half of the people of their own race. It was behind the curtained grille, where the two women delegates were finally relegated that the two women pioneers first met, and decided that it was about time that some demand be made for new liberties for women. An English contemporary, speaking of Mrs. Mott, said: "She is slender, petite, dark complexioned; has striking intellectual features and bright vivacious eyes. * * * We shall not discuss here the question whether it is right for women to take an active part with their brethren in promoting philanthropic objects; but we shall take the liberty to express our wish that half the temper, fullness of mind, warmth of heart, distinctness of utterance, facility of elucidation and vivacity of manners which distinguish Lucretia Mott, had been the gift of nine-tenths of gentlemen who raised their voices at the convention." That quotation certainly gives us a fine picture of that brave staunch pioneer woman, born in Nantucket in 1793. At the time of the London meeting, Mrs. Mott was 55 and Mrs. Stanton 33. There was a difference of 22 year in their ages. Each of them in addition to being among the great minds of the last century, in helping to start the "greatest revolution the world has known, that of lifting woman into her proper place in the scale of being" was first a devoted wife to a splendid mate who believed and cooperated in the movement of woman's emancipation. Secondly each became the mother of five children, no small brood even in those days of large families. When in Seneca Falls in 1923 we saw the rocking chair in which Mrs. Stanton wrote her speeches while she rocked her babies. As these two splendid characters, these future torch bearers, walked down Great Queen Street in London, after they had been ejected from the Anti-Slavery Meeting which they had crossed the ocean in a sailing ship to attend, they discussed the day's events and agreed to hold a woman's rights convention on their return to America, because the men to whom they had just listened in such dire need of education. And thus a missionary work for the emancipation of women "in the land of the free and the home of the brave" was inaugurated. How many fine movements originate in a protest! As President Wilson once said, "This nation, to put it in the vernacular, originated in a kick." One item which amused me in the History of Woman Suffrage about this incident was that the two ladies who were not allowed to speak at the Convention kept up a brisk fire morning, noon and night at their hotel on the unfortunate gentlemen domiciled there. A Mr. Birney, with his luggage promptly withdrew, but a Rev. Mr. Nathaniel Colver, from Boston, who always fortified himself each morning with 6 eggs beaten in a large bowl, stood his ground to the last, his physical proportions being his shield and buckler and his Bible being his chief weapon of defense. And so the Seneca County Courier, a semi-weekly journal, on July 14,1848, contained the following item: "Woman's Rights Convention, a convention to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of woman, will be held in the Wesleyan Chapel, at Seneca Falls, N. Y., on Wednesday and Thursday, July 19 and 20, commencing at 10 A. M. During the first day the meeting will be exclusively women who are earnestly invited to attend. The public generally is invited to be present on the second day when Lucretia Mott of Philadelphia and other ladies and gentlemen will address the convention." In review that notice let us recall that Lucretia Mott was a finished speaker at the time when women in public life were unknown. Let us recall that being a native of Nantucket where women were thought something of, and having had connection with the business side of life as well as the home side, she had had training in outside affairs. Also, being endowed with a fearless spirit and the gift of tongues, she came of a long line of Quakers and so she had had the experience of growing up with people who believed in and practiced the quality of men and women. Furthermore her husband, James Mott was also a Quaker and the espouser of just causes. And so unlike the great majority of the women of her time she was a practiced public speaker and had the right to preach and to take part in the discussion in the Society of Friends. Seneca Falls, N. Y., was a Quaker settlement and it happened that in 1848 Mrs. Stanton moved from Boston to that city. The four women who launched the Convention - Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha C. Wright (Mrs. Mott's sister) and Mary Ann McClintock - all lived at that time in Seneca Falls. These four ladies met in the parlor of Mrs. McClintock's house on Sunday, July 16, to write their declaration, resolutions and to consider subjects for speeches. They had only three days in which to work and found their task a herculean one. The found the proceedings of peace and temperance and anti-slavery societies too tame for their use. They knew women had wrongs but how to state them was the difficulty, especially as they, the originators or this crusade, were neither "sour old maids," "childless women" nor "divorced wives" as the newspapers described them to be. And so in their search for source material to use as a model, they finally took up the "Declaration of Independence" and after reading it aloud with much spirit and emphasis decided to adopt November, 1939 EQUAL RIGHTS 125 _____ this historic document with some slight changes, as the model for their protest. To secure the requisite number of grievances to make them fit the Declaration of Independence they had to go through statute books, church usages and the customs of society. One gentleman who collaborated with them remarked sarcastically, "Your grievances must be grievous indeed, when you are obliged to go to books in order to find them out." And that reminds me of what Maude Younger used to say:" Laws are not made for the best of husbands but to restrain the worst of men." The eventful day came. Crowds arrived in carriages and on foot. When those in charge of the Declaration and Resolutions and several statute books of the State of New York arrived at the Chapel, the door was locked and Mrs. Stanton had to boost her young nephew through the window to unlock the doors for the women. It had been decided beforehand that no men were to be present, but as they were already on the spot, it was decided in a hasty council held around the church altar that this was an occasion when men might make themselves pre-eminently useful and so it was agreed that they should remain. James Mott, tall and dignified, in Quaker costume, was called to the chair, Mary McClintock was appointed secretary and Mrs. Mott, accustomed to public speaking, stated the objects of the convention and in describing the degraded condition of women the world over, showed the importance of inaugurating some movement for the education and elevation. The Declaration was signed by 100 men and women and it is curious to note that the same old arguments and objections rife at the start of the woman movement continued on until the vote was won and I feel that some of the opposition against our present struggle for the Equal Rights amendment to the Constitution is based on the same sort of prejudice and ignorance. The twelve Resolutions were not then brought up and discussed, and the only one not unanimously adopted was the ninth urging the women of the country to secure for themselves the elective franchise. This resolution undoubtedly originated with Mrs. Stanton. When she read it a storm of protest arose. Women feared that asking for the vote might defeat what they considered their more conservative demands. Even lion-hearted Mrs. Mott cautions, "Lizzie Thee will make the movement ridiculous." Strange it is that this most ridiculed Resolution was secured first by the women of the next generation, building on the work begun at Seneca Falls, but that all the other demands of those grand pioneers considered conservative, still lag of complete accomplishment, and will so lag until the passage of the proposed amendment reading that "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and in every place subject to its jurisdiction." The Convention adjourned at the close of two days but so many points of discussion had developed that it was agreed that another meeting should be held at Rochester two weeks later. The comments of the press were carefully preserved. They are priceless. One which appeared in the papers of the day read: "Now it requires no argument to prove that the rights demanded by the women at Seneca Falls are all wrong. Every true hearted female will instantly feel that these are unwomanly, and that if carried out the males would have to change their position in society to the same extent, in an opposite direction, in order to enable them to discharge the domestic duties, now appertaining to females, which must be neglected to a great extend if women are allowed to exercise their rights. Society would have to be radically remodelled in order to accommodate itself to such a change in the order of things, an order established at creation and continued for six thousand years." It was my great privilege to attend the sesquicentennial celebration of this epoch-making convention, in 1923, at Seneca Falls. Wesleyan Chapel is no longer standing. A bronze tablet marks the spot where the first Woman's Rights Convention in the world was held. Only the ninth Resolution about winning the vote is quoted and the names of some of the signers. There was a great difference between this occasion and the one it commemorated seventy-five years previous. When we arrived the whole town was waving with purple, white and gold banners. The village was proud of its heritage as the home of one of the three great pioneers of Equal Rights and as the birthplace of equality of rights for one-half the human race. The convention was proclaimed by the ringing of all the bells of Seneca Falls from 9 to 9:15. The village president and the trustees opened the convention with a reception to the officers and members of the National Woman's Party. Both Western Union and the Postal Telegraph had installed extra keys and sent an extra force to handle the news. This is significant when we recall that in 1848 there was only one newspaper which did not treat the meeting with scorn and ridicule and that was the New York Tribune whose editorial comments by Horace Greeley are said to have been instrumental in converting Susan B. Anthony, who joined the movement for woman suffrage in 1851. Miss Anthony was five years the junior of Mrs. Stanton. So they were close of age and for fifty years after that meetings, they stood shoulder to shoulder, through storm and stress, and it is we, all of us, who are the debtor today for the liberty of thought and conscience we now enjoy and for the inspiration they have given us to press on toward the finished goal of equal rights by constitutional amendment. In 1923 ten thousand people attended the pageant of 1848, directed by Miss Hazel MacKaye, which began with the singing of the "March of the Women." Then from the darkness, from across the stage, came the solitary, frail, gray-clad figure of Lucretia Mott, portrayed by a modern pioneer, and as she stood there alone outlined against the darkness, the spiritual significance of the life of Lucretia Mott, preacher and the exponent of the equality of human rights, seemed to take on a deeper meaning. The picture of this intrepid woman, who seventy-five years ago then (now ninety-one years) who dared to emerge from the darkness of ignorance and prejudice and age-old traditions and stand forth against the whole world, we strikingly made manifest. It is no wonder that Alice Paul, the beloved founder and leader of the National Woman's Party, seized upon the momentous occasion of this convention, following the pageant - Miss Paul who has a peculiar genius for always seizing upon strategic occasions and places to launch new parts of our program - to present the following resolution which she read herself: "Whereas, Only one point in the Equal Rights program of 1848, that of equal suffrage, has been completely attained, and whereas the National Woman's Party, as stated in its declaration of principles, is dedicated to the same Equal Rights program as that adopted on this spot seventy-five years ago; Be it Resolved, That in order to bring the complete equal rights ideal to the victory that was won for (Continued on page 130) 126 EQUAL RIGHTS November 1939 _____ Equal Rights Amendment "Men and Women Shall Have Equal Rights Throughout the United States and Every Place Subject to its Jurisdiction." WHY SEEK AN EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT TO THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION? Because - 1. The Federal Constitution is the proper and only place for the enumeration of those inalienable human rights and fundamental principles of government on which our democracy is based. 2. A constitutional amendment is the only orderly way to bring about the incorporation of the principle of the equality of all citizens before the law into all the units of our political system, while leaving each unit of government completely free to establish its chosen local standards for the application of this principle. 3. It is the only means of securing contemporaneous, obligatory revision of State Constitutions and Statutory Law to bring them into conformity with the basic democratic principle of "Equal Rights for All and Special Privileges for None." 4. It is necessary, in order to ensure the permanent observance of the Equality principle, and to prevent the re-establishment of discriminations based on sex by political units - whose acts must always conform to the principles enunciated in the Federal Constitution. 5. It is the only economical way for women to work for their emancipation from the hundred of forms of sex discrimination that still remain in our legal system. 6. It is the only way to release women from the dubious and precarious struggle for their own struggle for their own freedom - which must now rank first with them - and enable them to focus their energies on work for the advancement of a civilization in which men and women will enjoy equal rights and privileges, as well as bear the burden of equal - if not always identical - duties and obligations. WHY ASK FOR IMMEDIATE SUBMISSION OF THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT TO THE STATE LEGISLATURES FOR RATIFICATION? Because - 1. The nationwide demand for an Equal Rights Amendment justifies immediate submission to the State Legislatures for consideration on its merits. 2. The Congress, regardless of the individual opinions of its members, is warranted in taking this immediate action, since its only obligation is to ensure that such popular demand exists. 3. The State Legislature is the place for a constitutional amendment to be considered on its merits, and such consideration can be had only after its submission to the States by Congress. 4. Commissions for the revision of the State Constitutions and Statutes to bring them into conformity with the equality principle will not begin work until ratification is under way. At best, it will require several years to complete the work of establishing "Equal Justice Under The Law." "JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED" National Woman's Party Booth At The World's Fair The New York World's Fair will close for the season November first. The record achievement for the past month at the National Woman's Party Booth at the Fair is one for gratification. October has been a busy month. New York members have assisted Martha Souder in securing signatures to the petition to Congress and the President of the United States, urging immediate submission to the states of the Equal Rights Amendment. Several groups, through their representatives, were presented to the public at the television studios. Mrs. Robert Nelson Errington was interviewed and televised. She told of work in New York. Through this medium Mary Murray spoke for the National Industrial Council and Isabel Bruyere of Ohio for the College Group. Saturday, October 28th, was National Women's Party Officers' Day, National State and local representatives gathered for luncheon at the National Advisory Committee Building. Mrs. Linda Littlejohn of Australia, President of Equal Rights International was the guest speaker. Questions of greatest interest to visitors at the booth have been the right of married women to work and special labor laws for women. Speakers at the luncheon discussed these issues. There were three minute speeches by various National Woman's Party Committee representative and others interested in equal rights. It was arranged, with the studios of the Radio Corporation of America, to entertain the guests with a private view of one or two of the National Woman's Party officers interviewed by Television. In the afternoon a tea was sponsored by the New York Club of the American Association of the University Women in their hospitality room in the Home Furnishings Building, where a speaker told of the world movement for women. Through the courtesy of the Pennsylvania Building space on the balcony was reserved for Woman's Party members to view the Fountain Lights at the Lagoon of Nations. During the day members called at their respective State buildings, leaving literature as a souvenir of the World's Fair. Those who have worked with Miss Paul in Geneva for the World's Woman Party, and those who have appeared before the International Labor Organization called at various foreign pavilions leaving leaflets printed in the language of the country represented. _____ Why dig frozen potatoes in Alaska When ONE ACRE in WYOMING will produce all the fruit and vegetables a family can eat in a year? MAKE ME PROVE IT! Lizabeth Wiley, Realtor Greybull, Wyoming 130 EQUAL RIGHTS November, 1939 _____ How Women Began To Fight For Equal Rights (Continued from Page 125) suffrage, we undertake the following program: The securing of an amendment to the United States Constitution stating" 'Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United State and every place subject to its jurisdiction.'" Miss Paul explained that the plan of removing the disabilities of women by state had been found intolerably slow and insecure. "If we keep on in this way," she said, "we will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1848 Convention without being much further advanced in equal rights than we are now. We have much the same feeling now that we had in the beginning of the suffrage movement, that in many groups, working in many states, all for different measures, there is much waste of effort. If we had not concentrated on the Federal amendment we should be still working for woman suffrage today." Ninety-one years have passed since the original Seneca Falls Convention. Sixteen years since its dramatic re-enactment which I have just described, when the National Woman's Party rededicated itself to ideals of the Founders. In these years great strides have been taken. To mention a few - we have our historic and beautiful Headquarters. It stands immediately across the street from the Supreme Court of the United States, as a constant reminder that "Equal Justice under Law" is not yet accomplished. Yes, the Bible is right. "They also serve who only stand and wait." The Justices of the Supreme Court cannot look out of their windows or go out for a bit of a stroll without being reminded that women still wait for equal justice under law. But let us recall with thankfulness that on March 30, 1937, despite the majority opinion in the United States Supreme Court that women are subject to arbitrary wage regulations not imposed upon their men competitors, the Justices Sutherland, Van Devanter, McReynolds, and Butler stood firm in their view, earlier expressed in 1923, that minimum wage fixing for women only is an unconstitutional discrimination. The 5 to 4 decision of 1937 upholding wage legislation based on sex superseded the 5 to 4 decision of 1923 and 1936 rejecting such legislation. Of the five Justices who in 1936 declared unconstitutional minimum wage legislation for women only, 80 per cent stood firm in 1937 (Sutherland, Van Devanter, McReynolds and Butler), while one (Justice Owen Roberts) switched his vote, thus making it possible for a state to bar women's employment unless it is at or above a fixed wage. We must not be discouraged over that temporary defeat. A splendid and ever-growing group of members of each House of Congress believes in the principle of equality of opportunity for men and women. Our amendment for equal rights is nearer passage than ever before. We must recall that all great things in life are of slow growth - character, knowledge and understanding. We would not have our crusade contrary to God's law. As we struggle we grow. What if there are some great names in the list against us. Lucretia Mott said: "Right principles are stronger than great names. If our principles are right why should we be cowards?" In history there are stories of great conversion; of people turning diametrically around and changing their entire belief and mode of conduct. The greater the character the greater the change and its result on society. St. Paul, who was brought up in the strictest sect of the Jews of his day to persecute the Christians, who consented to the death of St. Stephen, after a miraculous conversion became the chief apostle to the Gentiles and more than any one else cause the spread of Christianity in the first century. And 300 years later, Constantine the Great, who also persecuted the Christians, saw a vision in the sky which told him in the sign of the Cross he would conquer. He became a Christian and his conversion marked the downfall of paganism in Europe. "God has mysterious ways His wonders to perform," the hymn book tells us. I for one do not believe that the day of miracles is past. Some may be against us but the number is daily diminishing and the number for us is daily increasing. The equal rights amendment has not been endorsed by 16 national organizations and hundreds of state and local ones. Then let us believe in the words of our song: "Life, strife - these two are one; Naught can yet win but by faith and daring. On, on - what we have done But for the work of today is preparing. Firm in reliance, laugh a defiance (Laugh in hope, for sure is the end), March, march - many as one, Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend." _____ November, 1939 EQUAL RIGHTS 129 She Believed In Women (Continued from page 123) town, New York, on November 12, 1815, the world offered a very limited career to woman. Educational opportunities for girls were meager, for it was generally believed that their minds were capable of absorbing little beyond the reading, writing, and arithmetic of the elementary schools. A woman did not earn her living. She was supported by her father, her husband, or her nearest male relative. Therefore marriage, which meant a husband to protect her and a home to shelter her, was the one great event toward which the hopes of every young girl were directed. That this event might not prove adequate to protect, shelter, and support was disregarded. In fact, to be born a woman was to live un the shadow of a "defect of sex," as Blackstone expressed it in his Commentaries. As the daughter of an able lawyer, Elizabeth Cady was confronted very early in life with Blackstone's interpretation of woman's status. She rebelled instinctively even before she knew how laws were made or what it all meant, and when she grew to womanhood, she dedicated herself to the task of freeing women from the bonds which custom and common law had fastened upon them. She made the first public demand for woman suffrage Association, and lastly of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. But her interest in the emancipation of women went far beyond woman suffrage to equal rights for woman under the law and in all human relationships. She saw what women suffered under prevailing marriage laws and in spite of the fact that divorce was a forbidden subject for a good woman to discuss, she publically advocated more liberal divorce laws. She asked for equal rights for women in the Church and for equal educational opportunities. She recognized women's needs for economic independence and rejoiced when they entered new fields in business and the professions. She also saw that before women could be completely liberated there must be a great change in their own thinking. She urged them to discard false traditions, to be wary of cultivating so-called womanly qualities which had been held up as virtues and as substitutes for equality. She urged them to question the edicts of the Church regarding woman's sphere. It often took more courage to denounce women's foibles than to ask for the ballot, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton was equal to the task, and all through her life she waged war against women's self-inflicted frailty and inferiority. She believed in women and was confident that with education, training, and a new outlook, with the power that the ballot would give them, they would contribute much to their country and the world. _____ For a gift . . . SEND wit, cheer, courage done up attractively in CHINS UP! By MILDRED SEYDELL Short Stories with Long Morals A way of thinking that will lead to happiness and success GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers $1.00 _____ Miami Bound? When you feel the lure of warm sand and leave the cold North or Miami, you will be assured of a hearty welcome at ELEANOR'S - Miami's most exclusive dress shop. Clothes of simple distinction for the career woman with an instinctive sense of style. Wait until you arrive before assembling your winter vacation wardrobe and achieve true individuality with clothes from "The House of Fashion." Eleanor's Prices Never More Than Elsewhere. _____ The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States E Jeannette Love, Representative Woodward Bldg. Phone Nat. 4703 Washington, D. C. _____ Elizabeth Cady Stanton Boston Evening Globe, July 20, 1946 with picture, "Mother of Woman Suffrage", with Lucretia Mott conceived and managed that very first of all women's conventions, at Seneca Falls, N.Y. July 19-20, 1848. Its Declaration of Sentiments lambasted legal and educational restrictions upon the fair sex, complained that mere men then "monopolized nearly all the profitable employment" and concluded: "It is the duty of women to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise." [*First Woman's Rights address ever made to a legislature, arranged for by Susan B. Anthony*] [*(Eliz Cady Stanton's handwriting)*] ADDRESS to the Legislature of New-York adopted by the STATE WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION, HELD AT ALBANY, Tuesday and Wednesday, February 14 and 15, 1854 prepared by ELIZABETH CADY STANTON Of Seneca Falls, N. Y. ALBANY: WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY. 1854. ADDRESS. To the Legislature of the State of New York: "The thinking minds of all nations call for change. There is a deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless, grinding collision of the New with the Old." The tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of Common Sense. His Majesty no longer awes the multitude— his sceptre is broken—his crown is trampled in the dust—the sentence of his death is pronounced upon him. All nations, ranks and classes have, in turn, questioned and repudiated his authority; and now, that the monster is chained and caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to demand of her brave sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for liberty, if, in this change of dynasty, she, too shall find relief. Yes, gentlemen, in republican America, in the 19th century, we, the daughters of revolutionary heroes of '76, demand at your hands the redress o our grievances—a revision of your state constitution—a new code of laws. Permit us then, as briefly as possible, to call your attention to the legal disabilities under which we labor. 1st. Look at the position of woman as woman. It is not enough for us that by your laws we are permitted to live and breathe, to claim the necessaries of life from our legal protectors —to pay the penalty of our crimes; we demand the full recognition of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons; native, free-born citizens; property-holders, tax-payers; yet are we denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We support ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges, churches, your poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery of government, and yet we have no 4 voice in your councils. We have every qualification required by the constitution, necessary to the legal voter, but the one of sex. We are moral, virtuous and intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man himself, and yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics and negroes; and though we do not feel honored by the place assigned us, yet, in fact, our legal position is lower than that of either; for the negro can be raised to the dignity of a voter if he possess himself of $250; the lunatic can vote in his moments of sanity, and the idiot, too, if he be a male one, and not more than nine-tenths a fool; but we, who have guided great movements of charity, established missions, edited journals, published works on history, economy and statistics; who have governed nations, led armies, filled the professor's chair, taught philosophy and mathematics to the savans of our age, discovered planets, piloted ships across the sea, are denied the most sacred rights of citizens because, forsooth, we came not into this republic crowned with the dignity of manhood! Woman is theoretically absolved from all allegiance to the laws of the state. Sec. 1, Bill of Rights, 2 R. S., 201, says that no authority can, on any pretence whatever, be exercised over the citizens of this state but such as is or shall be derived from, and granted by, the people of this state. Now, gentlemen, we would fain know by what authority you have disfranchised one-half of the people of this state? You who have so boldly taken possession of the bulwarks of this republic, show us your credentials, and thus prove your exclusive right to govern, not only yourselves, but us. Judge Hurlburt, who has long occupied a high place at the bar in this state, and who recently retired with honor from the bench of the Supreme Court, in his profound work on human rights, has pronounced your present position rank usurpation. Can it be that here, where are acknowledged no royal blood, no apostolic descent, that you, who have declared that all men were created equal—the government derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, would willingly build up an aristocracy that places the ignorant and vulgar above the educated and refined —the alien and the ditch-digger above the authors and 5 poets of the day—an aristocracy that would raise the sons above the mothers that bore them? Would that the men who can sanction a constitution so opposed to the genius of this government, who can enact and execute laws so degrading to womankind, has sprung, Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, that the matrons of this republic need not blush to own their sons! Woman's position, under our free institutions, is much lower than under the monarchy of England. "In England "the idea of woman holding official station is not so strange as "in the United States. The Countess of Pembroke, Dorset "and Montgomery held the office of hereditary sheriff of "Westmoreland, and exercised it in person. At the assizes at "Appleby, she sat with the judges on the bench. In a reported "case, it is stated by counsel, and substantially assented to "by the court, that a woman is capable of serving in almost all "the offices of the kingdom, such as those of queen, marshal, "great chamberlain and constable of England, the champion "of England, commissioner of sewers, governor of work "house, sexton, keeper of the prison, of the gate house of "the dean and chapter of Westminister, returning officer for "members of parliament, and constable, the latter of which is "in some respects judicial. The office of jailor is frequently "exercised by a woman. In the United States a woman may "administer on the effects of her deceased husband, and she "has occasionally held a subordinate place in the post office "department. She has therefore a sort of post mortem, post "mistress notoriety; but with the exception of handling letters "of administration and letters mailed, she is the submissive "creature of the old common law." True, the unmarried woman has a right to the property she inherits and the money she earns, but she is taxed without representation. And here again you place the negro, so unjustly degraded by you, in a superior position to your own wives and mothers; for colored males, if possessed of a certain amount of property and certain other qualifications, can vote, but if they do not have these qualifications they are not subject to direct taxation; wherein they have the advantage of woman, she bring subject to taxation for whatever amount she may possess. (Constitution of N. Y., 6 article 2, sec. 2) But say, you, are not all women sufficiently represented by their fathers, husbands and brothers? Let your statute books answer the question. Again we demand, in criminal cases, that most sacred of all rights, trial by jury of our own peers. The establishment of trial by jury is of so early a date the its beginning is lost in antiquity; but the right of trial by jury of one's own peers is a great progressive step of advanced civilization. No rank of men have ever been satisfied with being tried by jurors higher or lower or lower in the civil or political scale than themselves; for jealousy on the one hand, and contempt on the other, has ever effectually blinded the eyes of justice. Hence, all along the pages of history, we find the king, the noble, the peasant, the cardinal, the priest, the layman, each in turn protesting against the authority of the tribunal before which they were summoned to appear. Charles the First refused to recognize the competency of the tribunal which condemned him: For how, said he, can subjects judge a king? The stern descendants of our Pilgrim Fathers refused to answer for their crimes before an English Parliament: For how, said they, can a kin judge rebels? And shall woman here consent to be tried by her liege lord, who has dubbed himself law-marker, judge, juror, and sheriff, too?—whose power, though sanctioned by Church and State, has no foundation in justice and equity, is a bold assumption of our inalienable rights. In England a parliament-lord could challenge a jury where a knight was not empanneled. An alien could demand a jury composed half of his own countrymen; or, in some special cases, juries were even constituted entirely of women. Having seen that man fails to do justice to woman in her best estate, to the virtuous, the noble, the true of our sex, should we trust to his tender mercies the weak, the ignorant, the morally insane? It is not to be denied that the interests of man and woman in the present undeveloped state of the race, and under the existing social arrangements, are and must be antagonistic. The nobleman cannot make just laws for the peasant; the slave-holder for the slave; neither can man make and execute just laws for woman, because in each case, the one in power fails to 7 apply the immutable principles of right to any grade but his own. Shall an erring woman be dragged before a bar of grim-visaged judges, lawyers and jurors, there to be grossly questioned in public on subjects which women scarce breathe in secret to one another? Shall the most sacred relations of life be called up and rudely scanned by men who, by their own admission, are so coarse that women could not meet them even at the polls without contamination? and yet shall she find there no woman's face or voice to pity and defend? Shall the frenzied mother, who, to save herself and child from exposure and disgrace, ended the life that had but just begun, be dragged before such a tribunal to answer for her crime? How can man enter into the feelings of that mother? How can he judge the mighty agonies of soul that impelled her to such an outrage of maternal instincts? How can he weight the mountain of sorrow that crush that mother's heart when she wildly tossed her helpless babe into the cold waters of the midnight sea? Where is he who by false vows thus blasted this trusting woman? Had that helpless child not claims on his protection? Ah, he is freely abroad in the dignity of manhood, in the pulpit, on the bench, in the professor's chair. The imprisonment of his victim and the death of his child, detract not a tithe from his standing and complacency. His peers made the law, and shall law-makers lay nets for those of their own rank? Shall laws which come from the logical brain of man take cognizance of violence done to the moral and affectional nature which predominates, as is said, in woman? Statesmen of New-York, whose daughters, guarded by your affection, and lapped amidst luxuries which your indulgence spreads, care more for their nodding plumes and velvet trains than for the statute laws by which their persons and properties are held—who, blinded by custom and prejudice to the degraded position which they and their sisters occupy in the civil scale, haughtily claim that they already have all rights they want, how think ye, you would feel to see a daughter summoned for such a crime—and remember these daughters are but human —before such a tribunal? Would it not, in that hour, be some consolation to see that she was surrounded by the wise 8 and virtuous of her own sex; by those who had known the depth of a mother's love and the misery of a lover's falsehood; to know that to these she could make her confession, and from them receive her sentence? If so, then listen to our just demands and make such a change in your laws as will secure to every woman tried in your courts, an impartial jury. At this moment, among the hundreds of women who are shut up in prisons in this state, not one has enjoyed the most sacred of all rights— the right which you would die to defend for yourselves—trial by a jury of one's peers. 2d. Look at the position of woman as wife. Your laws relating to marriage—founded as they are on the old common law of England, a compound of barbarous usages, but partially modified by progressive civilization—are in open violation of our enlightened ideas of justice, and of the holiest feelings of our nature. If you take the highest view of marriage, as a Divine relation, which love alone can constitute and sanctify, then of course human legislation can only recognize it. Man can neither bind nor loose its ties, for that prerogative belongs to God alone, who makes man and woman, and the laws of attraction by which they are united. But if you regard marriage as a civil contract, then let it be subject to the same laws which control all other contracts. Do not make it a kind of half-human, half-divine institution, which you may build up but cannot regulate. Do not, by your special legislation for this one kind of contract, involve yourselves in the grossest absurdities and contradictions. So long as by your laws no man can make a contract for a horse or a piece of land until he is twenty-one years of age, and by which contract he is not bound if any deception has been practiced, or if the party contracting has not fulfilled his part of the agreement—so long as the parties in all mere civil contracts retain their identity and all the power and independence they had before contracting, with the full right to dissolve all partnerships and contracts for any reason, at the will and option of the parties themselves, upon what principle of civil jurisprudence do you permit the boy of fourteen and the girl of twelve in violation of every natural law, to make a contract more 9 momentous in importance than any other, and then hold them to it, come what may, the whole of their natural lives, in spite of disappointment, deception and misery? Then, too, the signing of this contract is instant civil death to one of the parties. The woman who but yesterday was sued on bended knee, who stood so high in the scale of being as to make an agreement on equal terms with a proud Saxon man, to-day has no civil existence, no social freedom. The wife who inherits no property holds about the same legal position that does the slave on the southern plantation. She can own nothing, sell nothing. She has no right even to the wages she earns; her person, her time, her services are the property of another. She cannot testify, in many cases, against her husband. She can get no redress for wrongs in her own name in any court of justice. She can neither sue nor be sued. She is not held morally responsible for any crime committed in the presence of her husband, so completely is her very existence supposed by the law to be merged in that of another. Think of it; your wives may be thieves, libellers, burglars, incendiaries, and for crimes like these they are not held amenable to the laws of the land, if they but commit them in your dread presence. For them, alas! there is no higher law than the will of man. Herein behold the bloated conceit of these Petruchios of the law, who seem to say: "Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret, I will be the master of what is mine own; She is my goods, my chattel; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything; And here she stands, touch her whoever dare; I'll bring my actions on the proudest he, That stops my way, in Padua." How could man ever look thus on woman?—She, at whose feet Socrates learned wisdom—she, who gave to the world a Saviour, and witnessed alike the adoration of the Magi and the agonies of the Cross. How could such a bring, so blessed and honored, ever become the ignoble, servile, cringing slave, with whom the fear of man could be paramount to the sacred [LEFT SIDE] 10 dictates of conscience and the holy love of Heaven? By the common law of England, the spirit of which has been but too faithfully incorporated into our statute law, a husband has a right to whip his wife with a rod not larger than his thumb, to shut her up in a room, and administer whatever moderate chastisement he may deem necessary whatever moderate chastisement he may deem necessary to insure obedience to his wishes, and for her healthful moral development! He can forbid all persons harboring or trusting her on his account. He can deprive her of all social intercourse with her nearest and dearest friends. If by great economy she accumulates a small sum, which for future need she deposit, little by little, in a savings bank, the husband has a right to draw it out, at his option, to use it as he may see fit. "Husband is entitled to the wife's credit of business talents "(whenever their intermarriage may have occurred); and goods "purchased by her on her own credit, with his consent, while "cohabiting with him, can be seized and sold in execution against "him for his own debts, and this, though she carry on business "in her own name." - 7 Howard's Practice Reports, 105, Lovett Agt. Robinson and Witbeck, sheriff, &c. "No letters of administration shall be granted to a person con- "victed of infamous crime; nor to any one incapable by law of "making a contract; nor to a person not a citizen of the United "States, unless such person reside within this state; nor to any "one who is under twenty-one years of age; nor to any person "who shall be adjudged incompetent by the surrogate to execute "duties of such trust, by reason of drunkenness, improvidence, "or want of understanding, nor any married woman; but where "a married woman is entitled to administration, the same may "be granted to her husband in her right and behalf." There is nothing that an unruly wife might do against which the husband has not sufficient protection in the law. But not so with the wife. If she have a worthless husband, a confirmed drunkard, a villain or vagrant, he has still all the rights of a man, a husband and a father. Though the whole support of the family be thrown upon the wife, if the wages she earns be paid to her by her employer, the husband can receive them again. If, by unwearied industry and perseverance, she can 11 earn for herself and children a patch of ground and a shed to cover them, the husband can strip her of all her hard earnings, turn her and her little ones out in the cold northern blast, take the clothes from their backs, the bread from their mouths; all this by your laws may he do, and has he done, oft and again, to satisfy the rapacity of that monster in human form, the rum-seller. But the wife who is so fortunate as to have inherited property, has, by the new law in this state, been redeemed from her lost condition. She is no longer a legal nonentity. This property law, if fairly construed, will overturn the whole code relating to woman and property. The right to property implies the right to buy and sell, to will and bequeath, and herein is the dawning of a civil existence for woman, for now the "femme covert" must have the right to make contracts. So, get ready, gentlemen; the "little justice" will be coming to you one day, deed in hand, for your acknowledgment. When he asks you "if you sign without fear or compulsion," say yes, boldly, as we do. Then, too, the right to will is ours. Now what becomes of the "tenant for life?" Shall he, the happy husband of a millionaire, who has lived in yonder princely mansion in the midst of plenty and elegance, by cut down in a day to the use of one-third of this estate and a few hundred a year, as long as he remains her widower? And should he, in spite of this bounty on celibacy, impelled by his affections, marry again, choosing for a wife a woman as poor as himself, shall he be thrown penniless on the cold world - this child of fortune, enervated by ease and luxury, henceforth to be dependent wholly on his own resources? Poor man! He would be rich, though, in the sympathies of many women who have passed through just an ordeal. But what is property without the right to protect that property by law? It is mockery to say a certain estate is mine, if, without my consent, you have the right to tax me when and how you please, while i have no voice in making the tax-gatherer, the legislator or the law. The right to property will, of necessity, compel us in due time to the exercise of our right to the elective franchise, and then naturally follows the right to hold office. 12 3d. Look at the position of woman as widow. Whenever we attempt to point out the wrongs of life, those who would have us believe that the laws cannot be improved, point us to the privileges, powers and claims of the widow. Let us look into these a little. Behold in yonder humble house a married pair, who, for long years, have lived together, childless and alone. Those few acres of well-tilled land, with the small white house that looks so cheerful through its vines and flowers, attest the honest thrift and simple taste of its owners. This man and woman, by their hard days' labor, have made this home their own. Here they live in peace and plenty, happy in the hope that they may dwell together securely under their own vine and fig tree for the few years that remain to them, and that under the shadow of these trees, planted by their own hands, and in the midst of their household gods, so loved and familiar, here may take their last farewell of earth. But, alas, for human hopes! the husband dies, and without will, and the stricken widow, at one fell blow, loses the companion of her youth, her house and home, and half the little sum she had in bank. For the law, which takes no cognizance of widows left twelve children and not one cent, instantly spies out this widow, takes account of her effects, and announces to her the startling intelligence that but one-third of the house and lot, and one-half of the personal property, are hers. The law has other favorites with whom she must share the hard-earned savings of years. In this dark hour of grief, the coarse minions of the law gather round the widow's hearth-stone, and, in the name of justice, outrage all natural sense of right; mock at the sacredness of human love, and with cold familiarity proceed to place a moneyed value on the old arm chair, in which, but a few brief hours since, she closed the eyes that had ever beamed on her with kindness and affection' on the solemn clock in the corner, that told the hour he passed away; on every garment with which his form and presence were associated, and on every article of comfort and convenience that the house contained, even down to the knives and forks and spoons - and the widow saw it all - and when the work was done, she gathered up what the law allowed her and 13 went forth to seek her another home! This is the much talked of widow's dower. Behold the magnanimity of the law in allowing the widow to retain a life interest in one-third the landed estate, and one-half the personal property of her husband, and taking the lion's share to itself! Had she died first, the house and land would all have been the husband's still. No one would have dared to intrude upon the privacy of his home or to molest him in his sacred retreat of sorrow. How, I ask you, can that be called justice, which makes such a distinction as this between man and woman? By management, economy and industry, our widow is able in a few years, to redeem her house and home. But the law never loses sight of the purse, no matter how low in the scale of being its owner might be. It sends its officers round every year to gather in the harvest for the public crib, and no widow who owns a piece of land two feet square ever escapes this reckoning. Our widow, too, who has no twice earned her home, has her annual tax to pay also - a tribute of gratitude that she is permitted to breathe the free air of this republic, where "taxation without representation," by such worthies as John Hancock and Samuel Adams, has been declared "intolerable tyranny." Having glanced at the magnanimity of the law in its dealings with the widow, let us see how the individual man, under the influence of such laws, doles out justice to his helpmate. The husband has the absolute right to will away his property as he may see fit. If he has children, he can divide his property among them, leaving his wife her third only of the landed estate, thus making her a dependent on the bounty of her own children. A man with thirty thousand dollars in personal property, may leave his wife but a few hundred a year, as long as she remains his widow. The cases are without number where women, who have lived in ease and elegance, at the death of their husbands have, by will, been reduced to the bare necessaries of life. The man who leaves his wife the sole guardian of his property and children is an exception to the general rule. Man has ever manifested a wish that the world should indeed be a blank to the companion who leaves behind him. The Hindoo 14 makes that wish a law, and burns the widow on the funeral pile of her husband; but the civilized man, impressed with a different view of the sacredness of life, takes a less summary mode of drawing his beloved partner after him; he does it by the deprivation and starvation of the flesh, and the humiliation and mortification of the spirit. In bequeathing to the wife just enough to keep soul and body together, man seems to lose sight of the fact that woman, like himself, takes great pleasure in acts of benevolence and charity. It is but just, therefore, that she should have it in her power to give during her life, and to will away at her death, as her benevolence and obligations might prompt her to do. 4th. Look at the position of woman as mother. There is no human love so generous, strong and steadfast as that of the mother for her child; yet behold how cruel and ruthless are your laws touching this most sacred relation. Nature has clearly made the mother the guardian of the child; but man, in his inordinate love of power, does continually set nature and nature's laws at open defiance. The father may apprentice his child, bind him out to a trade or labor, without the mother's consent - yea, in direct opposition to her most earnest entreaties, her prayers and tears. He may apprentice his son to a gamester or rumseller, and thus cancel his debts of honor. By the abuse of this absolute power, he may bind his daughter to the owner of a brothel, and by the degradation of his child, supply his daily wants; and such things, gentlemen, have been done in our very midst. Moreover, the father, about to die, may bind out all his children wherever and to whomsoever he may see fit, and thus, in fact, will away the guardianship of all his children from the mother. The Revised States of New-York provide that "every father, "whether of full age or a minor, of a child to be born, or of an "living child under the age of twenty-one years, and unmarried, "may by his deed or last will, duly executed, dispose of the cus- "today and tuition of such child during its minority, or for any "less time, to any person or persons, in possession or remain- "der." 2 R. S, page 150, sec. 1. 15 Thus, by your laws, the child is the absolute property of the father, wholly at his disposal in life or at death. In the case of separation, the law gives the children to the father; no matter what his character or condition. At this very time we can point you to noble, virtuous, well educated mothers in this state, who have abandoned their husbands for their profligacy and confirmed drunkenness. All these have been robbed of their children, who are in the custody of the husband, under the care of his relatives, whilst the mothers are permitted to see the but at stated intervals. But, said one of these mothers, with a grandeur attitude and manner worthy the noble Roman matron in the palmiest days of that republic, I would rather never see my child again, than be the medium to hand down the low animal nature of its father, to stamp degradation on the brow of another innocent being. It is enough that one child of his shall call me mother. If you are far sighted statesmen, you will so shape your future laws as to encourage woman to take the high moral ground that the father of her children must be great and good. Instead of your present laws, which make the mother and her children the victims of vice and license, you might rather pass laws prohibiting to all drunkards, libertines and fools, the rights of husbands and fathers. DO not the hundred of laughing idiots that are crowding into our asylums, appeal to the wisdom of our statesmen for some new laws on marriage - to the mothers of this day for a lighter, purer morality? Again, as the condition of the child always follows that of the mother, and as by the abuse of your laws the fathers may beat the mother, so may he the child. What mother cannot bear me witness to untold sufferings which cruel, vindictive fathers have visited upon their helpless children? Who ever saw a human being that would not abuse unlimited power? Base and ignoble must that man be, who, let the provocation be what it may, would strike a woman; but he who would lacerate a trembling child is unworthy of the name of man. A mother's love can be no protection to a child; she cannot appeal to you to save it from a father's cruelty, for the laws take no 16 cognizance of the mother's most grievous wrongs. Neither at home nor abroad can a mother protect her son. Look at the temptations that surround the paths of our youth at every step; look at the gambling and drinking saloons, the club rooms, the dens of infamy and abomination that infest all our villages and cities - slowly but surely sapping the very foundations of all virtue and strength. By your laws, all these abominable resorts are permitted. It is folly to talk of a mother moulding the character of her son, when all mankind, backed up by law and public sentiment, conspire to destroy her influence. But when woman's moral power shall speak through the ballot-box, then shall her influence be seen and felt; then, in our legislative debates, such questions as the canal tolls on salt, the improvement of rivers and harbors, and the claims of Mr. Smith for damages against the state, would be secondary to the consideration of the legal existence of all these public resorts, which lure our youth on to excessive indulgence and destruction. Many times and oft it has been asked us, with unaffected seriousness, "what do you women want? What are you aiming at?" Many have manifested a laudable curiosity to know what the wives and daughters could complain of in republican America, where their sires and sons have so bravely fought for freedom and gloriously secured their independence, trampling all tyranny, bigotry and caste in the dust, and declaring to a waiting world the divine truth that all men are created equal. What can woman want under such a government? Admit a radical difference in sex and you demand different spheres - water for fish, and air for birds. It is impossible to make the southern planted believe that his slave feels and reasons just as he does - that injustice and subjection are as galling as to him - that the degradation of living by the will of another, the mere dependent on his caprice, at the mercy of his passions, is as keenly felt by him as his master. If you can force on his unwilling vision a vivid picture of the negro's wrongs, and for a moment touch his soul, his logic brings him instant consolation. He says, the slave does not feel this as I would. Here, gentlemen, is our difficulty: When 17 we plead our cause before the law makers and savans of the republic, they cannot take in the idea that men and woman are alike; and so long as the mass rest in this delusion, the public mind will not be so much startled by the revelations made of the injustice and degradation of woman's position as by the fact that she should length wake up to a sense of it. If you, too, are thus deluded, what avails it that we show by your statute books that your laws are unjust - that woman is the victim of avarice and power? What avails it that we point out the wrongs of woman in social life; the victim of passion and lust? You scorn the thought that she has any natural love of freedom burning in her breast, and clear perception of justice urging her on to demand her rights. Would to God you could know the burning indignation that fills a woman's soul when she turns over the pages of your statute books, and sees there how like feudal barons you freemen hold your women. Would that you could know the humiliation she feels for her sex, when she things of all the beardless boys in your law offices, learning these ideas of one-sided justice - taking their first lessons in contempt for all womankind - being indoctrinated into the incapacities of their mothers, and the lordly, absolute rights of man over all women, children and property, and to know that these are to be our future Presidents, Judges, Husbands and Fathers; in sorrow we claim, alas! for that nation whose sons bow not in loyalty to woman. The mother is the first object of the child's veneration and love, and they who root out this holy sentiment, dream not of the blighting effect it has on the boy and the man. The impression left on law students, fresh from your statute books, is most unfavorable to woman's influence; hence you see but a few lawyers chivalrous and high-toned in their sentiments towards woman. They cannot escape the legal view which, by constant reading, has become familiarized to their minds: "Femme covert," "dower," "widow's claims," "protection," "incapacities," "incumbrance," is written on the brow of every woman they meet. But if, gentlemen, you take the ground that the sexes are alike, and therefore, you are our faithful representatives - then why all these special laws for woman? Would not one code 3 18 answer for all of the like needs and wants? Christ's golden rule is better than all the special legislation that the ingenuity of man can devise: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This, men and brethren, is all we ask at your hands. We ask no better laws than those you have made for yourselves. We need no other protection than that which your present laws secure to you. In conclusion, then, let us say, in behalf of the women of this state, we ask for all that you have asked for yourselves in the progress of your development, since the May Flower cast anchor side Plymouth rock; and simply on the ground that the rights of every human being are the same and identical. You may say that the mass of women of this state do not make the demand; it comes from a few sour, disappointed old maids and childless women. You are mistaken; the mass speak through us. A very large majority of the women of this state support themselves and their children, and may their husbands too. Go into any village you please, o three or four thousand inhabitants, and you will find as many as fifty men or more, whose only business is to discuss religion and politics, as they watch the trains a=come and go at the depot, or the passage of a canal boat through a lock; to laugh at the vagaries of some drunken brother, or the capers of a monkey, dancing to the music of his master's organ. All these are supported by their mothers, wives or sisters. Now, do you candidly think these wives do not wish to control the wages they earn - to own the land they buy - the houses they build? to have at their disposal their own children, without being subject to the constant interference and tyranny of an idle, worthless profligate? Do you suppose that any woman is such a pattern of devotion and submission that she willingly stitches all day for the small sum of fifty cents, that she may enjoy the unspeakable privilege, in obedience to your laws, of paying for her husband's tobacco and rum? Think you the wife of the confirmed, beastly drunkard would consent to share with him her home and bed, if law and public sentiment would release her from such gross companionship? Verily, no! Think you 19 the wife, with whom endurance has ceased to be a virtue, who through much suffering has lost all faith in the justice of both Heaven and earth, takes the law into her own hand, severs the unholy bond and turns her back forever upon him whom she once called husband, consents to the law that in such an hour tears her child from her - all that she has left on earth to love and cherish? The drunkards' wives speak through us, and they number 50,000. Think you that the woman who has worked hard all her days, in helping her husband accumulate large property, consents to the law that places this wholly at his disposal? Would not the mother, whose only child is bound out for a term of years, against her expressed wishes, deprive the father of this absolute power if she could? For all these, then, we speak. If to this long list you add all the laboring women, who are loudly demanding remuneration for their unending toil - those women who teach in our seminaries, academies and commons schools for a miserable pittance; the widows, who are taxed without mercy; the unfortunate ones in our work houses, poor houses and prisons; who are they that we do not now represent? But a small class of fashionable butterflies, who, through the short summer days, seek the sunshine and the flowers; but the cool breezes of autumn and the hoary frosts of winter will soon chase all these away; then, they too will need and seek protections, and through other lips demand, in their turn, justice and equity at your hands. APPENDIX. This Address was laid upon the members' desks, Monday morning, Feb. 20, 1854. When the order of petitions was reached, Mr. D. P. WOOD, of Onondaga, presented in the Assembly a petition signed by 5931 men and women, praying for the just and equal rights of women, which, after a spicy debate, was referred to the following select committee: JAMES L. ANGLE, of Monroe Co., GEORGE W. THORN, of Washington Co., DERRICK K. BOARDMAN, of Oneida Co., GEORGE H. RICHARDS, of New-York, JAMES M. MUNRO, of Onondaga, WESLEY GLEASON, of Fulton, ALEXANDER P. SHARPE, of New-York. In the Senate, on the same day, Mr. RICHARDS, of Warren county, presented a petition signed by 4164 men and women, praying for the extension of the right of suffrage to women, and on his motion it was referred to the following select committee: GEORGE YOST, of Montgomery Co., BEN FIELD, of Orleans Co., W. H. ROBERTSON, of Westchester Co. The following are the forms of the petitions, as agreed upon at the Convention held at Rochester, November 30 and December 1, 1853. The signatures were obtained in some thirty counties, by a few individuals during this short period: Petition for the Just and Equal Rights of Women. The Legislature of the State of New-York have, by the Acts of 1848 and 1849, testified the purpose of the People of this State to place Married Women on an equality with Married Men in regard to the holding, conveying and devising of real and personal property. We, therefore, the undersigned Petitioners, inhabitants of the State of New-York, male and female, having attained to the age of legal majority, believing that Women, alike married and single, do still suffer under many and grievous LEGAL DISABILITIES, do earnestly request the Senate and Assembly of the State of New-York to appoint a joint committee of both Houses to review the Statutes of New-York, and to propose such amendments as will fully establish the LEGAL EQUALITY of Women with Men; and do hereby ask a hearing before such committee by our accredited Representatives. Petition for Woman's Right to Suffrage. Whereas, according to the Declaration of our National Independence, Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we earnestly request the Legislature of New-York to propose to the People of the State such amendments of the Constitution of the State as will secure to Females an equal right to the Elective Franchise with Males; and we do hereby request a hearing before the Legislature by our accredited Representatives. Stanton March 15/61 E C S - W Dall - (Seneca Falls) May 1863 - Ibid - about his oppostion when Wms re-election Apr 30/66 ibid - about Dall's report Feb 29/68 - ibid - W Dall - about a hcog out for the Resolution Mar 8/68 - E C S - Dall Letter to Garrin about his sketch of Wm Dall July 1/76 - E C S - Dall about the Woman's Declaration of Ind - [LEFT SIDE] W. S. Con. Worcester 1850 " " Cleveland 1853 Meeting Mercantile Hall, Boston 1859 W. R. Con. N. Y. C. 1859 Const. Am. W. S. A. & Hist. 1881 Speech by W. I. Bowditch 1882 {check mark} Women's Vote in Kansas. Test of 25 Prom. Men. 1858 {check mark} [RIGHT SIDE] Womans R. Con, Worchester 1850 " " " New York. 1859 Address {underlined} W. Suf. in New Jersey, Lugstone. 1867 Constitution of Am W S A & History of the formation - Put 1881 Address {underlined} E. C. Stanton Const. Conv N. Y. 1867 Report of W. R. Meeting Mercantile Hall Boston May - 1859 Testimonals of 25 Prominent Men Worchester 1858 Adams Adx The Women's Vote in Kansas 1887 Woman's Rights Alumnae 1858 Worchester Mass ______________ Mrs Stanton's meeting June 23, 1934 165 control his wife's property with the sole right to rents and profits. Inheritance laws discriminate against women in Arkansas, New Mexico and Nevada, divorce laws are much more difficult for the wife than the husband in Texas. In more than half the States, including New York and Maryland, women have not the right to serve on juries. Women are not eligible to various State offices, as Governors, Superintendent of Public Instruction, etc., in Oklahoma. Women teachers in public schools have not the same pay for equal work as men. Women are forbidden to enter certain occupations. _____ Q. But, Miss Winsor, these laws to which you refer do not express the convictions of our modern men, in your opinion? Do they? A. No, but Feminists receive sympathetic cooperation from intelligent men in their efforts to improve women's status. These laws express the sex prejudices of our ancestors. _____ Q. As regards these laws, what is the status of Pennsylvania? A. Pennsylvania, thanks to the work of the National Woman's Party with the State Legislature, has comparatively few discriminations. _____ Q. Then you consider that progress has been made since the vote was won? A. Yes, Miss Grey, it has. Twenty-three States have improved the position of millions of women by sweeping away many of these mediaeval laws. But hundreds still remain, and work in each of the forty-eight States to remove one law after another is slow, and so we demand this Equal Rights Amendment which would make all these unjust laws unconstitutional and prevent future discrimination against women. _____ Q. Has the National Woman's Party attempted any international work? A. Yes, our latest triumph was at the Pan-American Conference at Montevideo where the Inter American Commission of Women, headed by Doris Stevens, obtained the passage of a treaty giving equal nationality rights to women. This treaty has just been ratified by the United States Senate. Formerly, if a woman married a foreigner, she lost her citizenship, thus setting up an unnatural conflict between a woman's love for her country and for her husband. No such conflict exists for an American man; he is free to marry whom he chooses - a Hottentot or an Eskimo. Now for the first time women have been made the subject of an international treaty covering practically the whole of the western hemisphere. And Congress has passed unanimously the Dickstein bill giving complete equal nationality to the American woman including the right to transmit her previous American citizenship to her children even if she is married to a foreigner and living in a foreign country. _____ Q. Isn't that reason, then, to be content with the present? A. No, Miss Grey. The economic crisis is causing desperate competition for jobs; men wherever possible are sweeping their male competitors out of the way. But there is a double incentive to drive women out of all wage-earning occupations, for then they do not only cease to compete with men economically, but they are in the power of men sexually, for they then would have no way to support themselves except by marriage which thus becomes a trade. _____ Q. Is this movement wide-spread? A. It is world-wide. Hitler proclaims that the German woman's sole sphere is that of housekeeper and mother. Even women scientists of the highest standing have given up on their positions in German universities and left their native land. A bill has been introduced in the Belgian Parliament to drive unmarried women out of offices and shops. The Bulgarian Minister of Education recently dismissed all women employed in his ministry and many women teachers in the schools, and the Austrian Government discharges its married female employees. _____ Q. But do you consider such a movement possible in the United States? A. It is well under way. A psychological atmosphere is being created here as well as in Europe - showing that there is undue emphasis on exaggerated femininity, keeping women busy at home with work that has little practical value and brings in no money. Q. Do you think present-day tendencies are threatening woman's position as a wage-earner? A. Yes, recent legislation shows this ominously - Section 213 of the National Economy Act of 1932 makes it impossible for both husband and wife to hold government positions. Women employees of thirty years standing are compelled to resign. The National Woman's Party has defeated legislation against married women teachers in Delaware and Maryland and, under the leadership of Sara B. Cummings, in Pennsylvania. Public utilities and corporations also appear to consider marriage a crime for women although it used to be thought their highest ideal, for certain railroads and corporations have dismissed married women. As marriage today is often only made possible by the ability of both spouses to earn, this practically constitutes an attack on marriage. In Hungary, such a law caused seven hundred divorces in one week. _____ Q. But have you found that these dismissals from occupations are limited to married woman? A. No. Laws ousting all woman for government positions have been proposed in California and Colorado. Senator Bratton of New Mexico said recently that in ten years no woman would employed by national, State or local governments. Would it not seem that work has been taken away from woman to make more work for men - the Civilian Conservation Camps employing half a million men while no provisions has been made for woman? _____ Q. How does the National Woman's Party feel about the NRA? A. We are fully aware that the NRA discriminates against women in regard to minimum wages, more than one hundred temporary codes giving female employees lower wages than men in many industries. This is the first time that the United States Government has set its seal on such injustice. _____ Q. Has no one spoken in behalf of women? A. Yes, Mrs. Roosevelt advocates equal wages for men and women and says that if it is necessary for the moment to ask anyone to give up wage-earning, such a request should be made of both sexes alike. But the permanent codes still contains these discriminations, and handicap women by prohibiting night work and overtime in many occupations. _____ Q. Then I take it you regard these trends as alarming to the welfare of women? A. Very, but a more subtle danger comes from the so-called protective laws. Minimum wage laws for women but not for men throw women out of their jobs. Laws regulating hours for females but not for males cause wholesale dismissal of women, and prohibition of overtime and night work takes away their best paid jobs. Is it surprising that California employers dismissed women to whom they were obliged to pay $16.00 a week minimum wage and preferred men and boys at $9.00 a week? _____ Q. And now, Miss Winsor, resulting from your wide experience and activity for this cause, cannot you advise a helpful course of action for women today? A. I should advise all women to stand together and to enlist the cooperation of intelligent, progressive men in behalf of this great Amendment to the Constitution which would prevent forever discrimination against women and would establish perfect equality. [*E. C. Stanton*] 166 Equal Rights Equal Rights in 1860 IN many quarters, even among our own members, the opinion prevails that the Equal Rights movement grew out of the Suffrage Movement. The fact is, as pointed out by Mildred V. Palmer, Executive Secretary of the New York City Committee of the Woman's Party, the two movements began simultaneously or rather - as shown in a old document which, she explains, was sent to the New York Committee by a collector of antiques - the Suffrage Movement was embraced in the more comprehensive movement for Equal Rights. Mrs. Palmer suggests that the text of the document be re-printed in EQUAL RIGHTS, "as it bears the signatures of the pioneers and furthermore is a brilliant piece of Feminist literature. "In addition it would be well," she continues, "for those members of the Woman's Party who are quite new in the movement to have called to their attention the fact that what we are working for today was the objective of those brilliant women who first organized women for equality - that our present program is not new but this work has been going on for a very long time. And they asked for equality for all women and, dared to demand and not request that these rights be granted them. "Another significant fast is brought out in this leaflet. These women were not asking for piecemeal legislation, but a constitutional amendment, although it was the State constitution they wished to amend at that time. How far ahead of their time! What vision!" The document reads: APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF NEW YORK Women of New York: Once more we appeal to you to make renewed efforts for the elevation of our sex. In our marital laws, we are now in advance of every State in the Union. Twelve years ago New York took the initiative step, and secured to married women their property, received by gift or inheritance. Our last Legislature passed a most liberal act, giving married women their rights, to sue for damages of person or property, to their separate earnings and their children; and to the widow, the possession and control of the entire estate during the minority of the youngest child. Women of New York! You can no longer be insulted in the first days of your widowed grief by the coarse minions of the law at your fireside, coolly taking an inventory of your household goods, or robbing your children of their natural guardian. While we rejoice in this progress made in our laws, we see also a change in the employment of women. They are coming down from the garrets and up from the cellars to occupy more profitable posts in every department of industry, literature, science and art. In the church, too behold the spirit of freedom at work. Within the past year, the very altar has been the scene of well-fought battles; women claiming and exercising their right to vote in church matters, in defiance of precedent, priest or Paul. Another evidence of the importance of our cause is seen in the deep interest men of wealth are manifesting in it. Three great bequests have been given to us in the past year. Five thousand dollars from an unknown hand, a share in the munificent fund left by that nobleman of Boston, Charles F. Hovey, and found hundred thousand dollars by Mr. Vassar of Poughkeepsie, to found a college for girls, equal in all respects to Yale and Harvard. Is it not strange that women of wealth are constantly giving large sums of money to endow professorships and colleges for boys exclusively - to churches and to the education of the ministry, and yet give no thought to their own sex - crushed in ignorance, poverty and prostitution - the hopeless victims of custom, law and Gospel, with few to offer a helping hand, while the whole world combines to aid the boy and glorify the man? Our movement is already felt in the old world. The nobility of England, with Lord Brougham at their head, have recently formed a "Society for Promoting the Employments of Women." All this is the result of agitation, technically called "Woman's Rights," through conventions, lectures, circulation of tracts and petitions, and by the faithful word uttered in the privacy of home. The few who stand forth to meet the world's cold gaze, its ridicule, its contumely and its scorn, are urged onward by the praters and tears, crushed hopes and withered hearts of sad daughters of the race. The wretched will not let them falter; and they who seem to do the work, ever and anon draw fresh courage and inspiration from the noblest women of the age, who, from behind the scene, send forth good words of cheer and heartfelt thanks. Six years hence, the men of New York purpose to revise our State Constitution. Among other changes demanded, is the right of suffrage for women - which right will surely be granted, if through all the intervening years, every woman does her duty. Again, do we appeal to each and all - to every class and condition - to inform themselves on this question, that woman may no longer publish her degradation by declaring herself satisfied in her present position, nor her ignorance by asserting that she has "all the rights she wants." Any person who ponders the startling fact that there are four millions o African slaves in this Republic, will instantly put the question to himself, "Why do these people submit to the cruel tyranny that our Government exercises over them?" The answer is apparent - "Simply because they are ignorant of their power." Should they rise en masse, assert and demand their rights, their freedom would be secure. It is the same with woman. Why is it, that one-half the people of this nation are held in abject dependence - civilly, politically, socially, the slaves of man? Simply because woman knows not her power. To find out her natural rights, she must travel through such labyrinths of falsehood that most minds stand appalled before the dark mysteries of life - the seeming contradictions in all laws, both human and divine. But, because woman cannot solve the whole problem of life to her satisfaction, because she cannot prove to a demonstration the rottenness and falsehood of our present customs, shall she, without protest, supinely endure evils she cannot at once redress? The silkworm in its many wrappings knows not it yet shall fly. The woman in her ignorance, her drapery and her chains, knows now that in advancing civilization, she, too, must soon be free, to counsel with her conscience and her God. The religion of our day teaches that in the most sacred relations of the race, the woman must ever be subject to the man; that in the husband centres all power and learning; that the difference in position between husband and wife, is as vast as that between Christ and the church; and woman struggles to hold the noble impulse of her nature in abeyance to opinions uttered by a Jewish teacher, which alas the mass believe to be the will of God. Woman turns from what she is taught to believe are God's laws to the laws of man; and in his written codes she finds herself still a slave. No girl of fifteen could read the laws concerning woman, made, executed and defended by those who are bound to her by every tie of affection, without a burst of righteous indignation. Few have ever read or heard of the barbarous laws that govern the mothers of this Christian Republic - and fewer still care, until misfortune brings them into the iron grip of the law. It is the imperative duty of educated women to study the Constitution and statutes under which they live, that when they shall have a voice in the government, they may bring wisdom and not folly into its councils. We now demand the ballot, trial by a jury of our peers, and an equal right to the joint earnings of the marriage co-partnership. And, until the Constitution be so changed as to give us a voice in the Government, we demand that man shall make all his laws on Property, Marriage, and Divorce, to bear equally on man and woman. New York State Woman's Rights Committee. E. CADY STANTON, President LYDIA MOTT, Secty. and Treas. ERNESTINE L. ROSE, MARTHA C. WRIGHT, SUSAN B. ANTHONY. November, 1869 N/ B/ - Below is the form of Petition for this year. Let every friend commence to get signatures to it without delay, and send up to Albany early in January, either to your representative or to Lydia Mott. Copy for Mrs. Park (Program of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 80th birthday at Cadilac Hotel, Detroit Michigan.) 1815 November 12 1895 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON'S Eightieth Birthday "Fearless Minds Climb Soonest unto Crowns" - Henry VI. The Day We Celebrate . . . . . . . . Mrs. Ella B. Morrison PIONEERS Frances Wright . . . . . . . . Mrs. Florence J. Spalding Angelina Grimke Abby Kelly Foster Emma Willard Margaret Fuller Lucretia Mott Song, "Battle Hymn of the Republic" ELIZABETH CADY STANTON . . . . . . . . Mrs. E. C. Skinner Acrostic . . . . . . . . Mrs. Frank Nichols CO-TEMPORARIES Susan B. Anthony Lucy Stone Matilda Joselyn Gage Emily Blackwell, M. D. Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell Mary A. Livermore Julia Ward Howe Anna Dickinson France Willard Rev. Anna Shaw Alice Stone Blackwell Mrs. Chapman Catt Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby Poem, "Women's Work" Mrs. Jennie Webber Fox OUR KNIGHTS Henry B. Blackwell Wendell Phillips George W. Curtis Henry Ward Beecher Thomas Wentworth Higginson Thomas W. Palmer THE NATIONAL BULLETIN. _____ Governments Derive Their Just Powers From the Consent of the Governed. _____ Vol. 2. WASHINGTON, D. C., JUNE 1893. No. 6. _____ Published monthly at the office of THE WOMAN'S TRIBUNE, Washington, D. C. Subscription price 15 cents per annum; 10 cts.; for 25 copies of each number; 30 cts. per 100; $2.50 per 1,000. THE NATIONAL BULLETIN is to supply Woman Suffrage Societies with information and argumeut at a low price. Each month something of interest will be presented which should have a wide distribution. _____ The Antagonism of Sex. _ [Given at the World's Congress of Representative Women, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, May 16, 1893.] Much as the antagonism of different tribes, families, nations and religious, has done all along the line of progress to check human development, the antagonism of sex has been more bitter and insidious, more dangerous and demoralizing than all other influences together. Historians tell us there was a period in evolution of the race, when women reigned supreme, deciding not only the limitations of her own rights and duties, but of man's also, treating him with more or less tyranny, as the customs of the time permitted. Woman's dynasty lasted for centuries, when through many and protracted struggles, man gained supremacy, and used his power with ten-fold more tyranny over woman than he had suffered at her hands. These two experiments have proved equally unsatisfactory to the subject sex, and now fair minded men and women are advocating [*|*]a united government in State and Church, in which the sexes will be equally represented. In reply to this demand, we are told that woman always has been, and always must be in subordination to man. Neither of these assertions is true. All the signs of the times point to the decadence of the Patriarchate or the father-age and to woman's speedy emancipation. The long period of freedom that woman enjoyed at the dawn of civilization, called the Matriarchate or mother-age, is no mere dream of the past but a fact well established by modern historians. The period of woman's supremacy lasted through the many centuries undisputed, accepted as natural and proper wherever it existed. It was plainly traceable among the Aryans, the Germans, the Persians, and indications of it are still seen among the uncivilized tribes and nations. Careful historians now show that the greatest civilizing power all along the pathway of natural development has been found in the wisdom and tender sentiments growing out of motherhood. For the protection of herself and her children, woman made the first caves of the earth; then huts with trees in the sunshine. She made the first attempts at agriculture, [*:*] raised grain, fruits and herbs which she learned to use in sickness. She was her own physician; all that was known of the medical art was in her hands. She domesticated the cow and goat and from the necessities of her children learned the use of milk. The women cultivated the arts of peace, the sentiments of kinship and all there was of human love and home life. The necessities of motherhood were the real source of all the attempts at civilization. What man achieved at that period was due to the contest for food with his fellows and the wild beasts. He simply invented and improved the weapons of warfare; but the woman, handicapped as [*^*] he appeared to be by child bearing, became on this very account the main factor in human progress. The man's contributions at this early period are nothing as compared to woman's. Her varied responsibilities as mother, bread winner, protector, defender of a group of helpless children, raised her to intellectual and industrial supremacy and made her the teacher and ruler of man. With such perfect freedom; independent, self-reliant, strong and vigorous in mind and body, the old legends of contest between men and women for supremacy are not such idle dreams as some would have us suppose. Very dark shadows indeed do such figures as those of Ildico, Fredegunde and Brunhilde cast across the pages of history. Such women are only paralleled by the Clytemnestra and Medea of a like phase in Greek development. Among the Germans, too, the poets represent the contest between men and women for the mastery. Woudan replaces Helleja; Siegfried conquers Brunhilde; Beobulf, the offspring of Grindel and Thor, fights with Gialp and Griep, the daughters of Geirrod. One great element of physical and mental vigor is freedom, which woman have never enjoyed except under the Matriarchate. The Amazons, the present body guard of the King of Dahomey, the astounding powers of endurance exhibited by domestic servants, the peasant girls of South Germany and Italy, and the fishwomen at Boulogne, all point to the great strength when once the physique has been developed. With such personal independence and superiority, such authority in the national councils, in religious faith, and at the fireside, with the absolute control of her own home, property and children, how did it come to pass that the mother was at last dethroned and womanhood degraded in every nation on the globe? The mother's labors had from an early period been re-inforced by those of her sons whose tastes led them to agriculture and the herding of cattle, to domestic life rather than that of the wandering nomad existence of the wily hunter, but this class was proportionally small. However, in the process of time the home with its increasing comforts and attractions, fire, cooked food, and woman's tender care in old age, sickness and death, the innocent prattle of children, the mother's songs and stories, her religious faith and services, all appealed to the better feelings of the wily hunter also, and men began to think, when weary of the battled and the chase, that they would like a permanent foothold in some family group besides the one into which they were born. As soon as the monogamic marriage appeared, with property and descent in the male line, and men found themselves comfortably ensconced in a home of their own, the began little by little to make aggressions, and in time completely dominated woman, leaving her no remnant of authority anywhere, neither in the home, at the altar, nor in the councils of the nation. But the victory of man over woman was not easily accomplished. It took long centuries to fully confirm it, and traces of the mother age remained throughout Mediaeval times. The permanency of sex relations among the agriculturalists and the necessity for organization in matters of defence, which must be entrusted mainly to men, were the beginnings of the father age. For though women had been compelled to fight for their own protection and were abundantly able to maintain the contest, yet wars for the territory and conquests over other tribes and nations were opposed by all the tenderest sentiments of their nature. Hence they naturally of their own accord withdrew from the councils of war and the battle-field, and still acted as angels of mercy to minister to the wounded and the dying. Thus man became the ruler, tribal organizer, tribal father, before his position of sexual father was recognized. While the mother still ruled the house, "the Alvater" ruled the fight, though oftimes guided by the women. Driven from the commanding position of home mother, and deprived her rights to property and children, the last fortress of the Teutonic woman was her sacerdotal privileges. She remained [*holy*] as priestess. She had charge of the tribal sacrifice and the tribunal religion. From this last refuge she was driven by the introduction of the Christian religion, with its narrow Pauline doctrine, which made women mentally and physically the inferior of man, and lawfully in subjection to him. The spirit of the church in its contempt for the women, as shown in the Scriptures, in the Paul's Epistles and the Pentateuch, the hatred of the fathers manifested in their ecclesiastical canons, and in the doctrines of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft, destroyed man's respect for woman and legalized the burning, drowning and torturing of woman by the thousands. Women and their religious duties became objects of hatred to the Christian missionaries and of alternate scorn and fear to pious ascetics and monks. The priestess mother became something impure, associated with the devil; her lore an infernal incantation, and her cooking a brewing of poison, nay her very existence a source of sin to man. Thus woman, as mother and priestess, became woman as witch. The witch trials of the Middle ages, wherein thousands of women were condemned to the stake, were the very real traces of the contest between man and women. Christianity putting the religious weapon into man's hand, made his conquest complete. But woman did not yield without prolonged resistance and a courageous final struggle. Driven from the home an outlaw and wanderer everywhere, ostracized by the State, condemned by the courts, crucified by the church, the supreme power of the mother of the race was conquered only by the angel of death; and the dark ages [*tolled*] her funeral knell. Thus in fraud, violence and superstition, the Patriarchate or father age, was established in a more cruel antagonism of sex than ever known before. With the scepter of power in his hands, man enforced one lesson in government and religion, in the civil and canon law, the subordination of woman. While they chanted the glory of motherhood in all their cathedrals around the globe, the contempt they taught for womankind was only equalled by the fear of her as a spirit of evil. Church and State united to make her subjection sure; Catholic and Protestant alike joined in the persecution. Luther and Calvin vied with St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine in their denunciations of the sex, while bishops and judged presided over witch trials far into the eighteenth century. The antagonism of sex under the Patriarchate has been so pronounced and persistent that the hateful fact cannot be doubted or denied. In the general advancement of civilization in the last century, women has of necessity had some share. Laws and customs have been modified; opinions as to her nature and capacity essentially liberalized, but owing to the artificial conditions of her life, her civil and social evolution has been as unnatural, as would be that of a flower from its bud, or a bird from its egg, under an exhausted receiver. Hence her idiosyncrasies have been the puzzle of philosophers and the jest of wits in all ages. Ever step in [the] she has taken has been met with ridicule, and opposition. Men have been unwilling to have her play a part in any role in which they were successful. Even such men as Carlyle and Wordsworth, of our own times had no patience with the literary ambition of women. The antagonism of sex amounted to such personal dislike, that they could hardly tolerate the presence of an authoress. It is said that after Miss Martineau took up her residence in Wordsworth's neighborhoods, [t]his abhorrence to authoresses sometimes took such active expression that the deaf lady was frequently obliged to see what she could not hear, and perforce to recognize that her presence was unwelcome at Rydal Mount. On one occasion, after unsparingly condemning the work of Miss Sedgwick, he concludes his criticism thus: "Such productions add to my dislike of literary ladies - indeed, make me almost detest the name." And farther on, we find the rather sweeping announcement that "blue stockingism is at enmity with true refinement of mind." This last was said in reference to Sara Coleridge. On several occasions, of late years, French students in various institutions of learning have openly manifested their hostility to the presence of women at their lectures. Some eight years ago, when the late Prof. Caro, author of "L'Idee de Dieu," drew from his philosophic lectures such as fashionable and feminine crowds to the College de France, the students who were neither fashionable nor feminine invented a nickname for the ladies whose worship of M. Caro was the joke of the period. They were called the "Carolines." But the ladies were not be ridiculed out of their taste for philosophy which they had so suddenly acquired; the lecture room became more than ever crowded by them. At length the students' displeasure at this invasion broke out in a demonstration against the lecturer, whose attempts to speak were met with cries of "A bas Caro!" What took place then has been repeated recently at the Sorbonne. The students, becoming more and more irritated by the presence of ladies at M. Laroumet's lectures on French literature, interrupted the proceedings by singing songs which it is said were not selected on account of their fitness for feminine ears. They also imitated the clucking of hens with a very-similitude that would have caused complete deception in the poultry-yard. When the lecturer asked for an explanation of this demonstration, the students shouted in reply, "No women, no women!" Over 200 young men united [*;*] in these vulgar demonstrations. Similar insults have been offered women in London, Edinburg, Philadelphia and New York. While some men with untiring patience train elephants, horses and dogs to perform all manner of wonderful feats, others do all in their power to repress the ambition of women for higher educational advantages; and such is the conceit of these literary gentlemen that they imagine that women are struggling, not so much for a complete development of all their own faculties, as to rival men in their attainments. Heine the German poet, says, "all authoresses write with one eye on their paper, and one on some man, except the Countess Hahn Hahn and she has but one eye." Of women, as orators, men with no gift in that art themselves, have been equally free in their criticisms. Old Sam Johnson once said, "Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog standing on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised that it is done at all." A complete collection of the says of great men about women, would make a very amusing document. I hope some of our younger coadjutors will make the attempt for our next national convention. Occupying the vantage ground we do to-day, we can afford to laugh at these spiteful criticisms. Voltaire's satires on the antagonism of sex are worth of note even in our day. "For more than a thousand years," he says, "women have had the right to burn themselves' who of you would dare change a law consecrated by time? Is there anything more respectable than ancient abuse?" "Reason is more respectable than ancient abuse," replied Zadig, one of Voltaire's heroes. But alas! how few will use their reason in combating the prejudices of custom and education. The antagonism of sex is so subtle and contradictory in its influences, that philosophers prefer to deny the hateful fact, instead of explaining the cause of its existence. But a little observation of national and family life shows us, that the more intimate the personal interests, the more bitter the antagonism, when roused by the love of domination. In church and family, quarters where all the most spiritual and tender influences are supposed to govern, we find the most irreconcilable hostility; and still more between the sexes by just so much as the relations of man and woman are identical and productive of the highest happiness of the race. Discord in the family produces disorder in all human affairs. If the masculine and feminine elements are not evenly balanced, we have just that disturbance in the world of thought, that we should have in the material world if it were possible to disturb the equilibrium of the centripetal and centrifugal forces. It is this antagonism of sex that is the chief cause of the present chaotic conditions of society. I think all reasonable men and women must be ready for the third experiment in government, in which {*:*} the sexes shall have equal power. As their interests are identical, their highest happiness is in their perfect union with each other, no longer rivals striving for supremacy, but mutual helpers to a higher development, co-workers for a purer civilization. Having rehearsed the wrongs of women on our platform for the last half century, they are too well known to need repetition at this time. Mid the grandeur of our surroundings, and the great events we are here to celebrate, let us forget the sorrows and struggles of the past and turn with pleasure to the next form of civilization, whose rising sun already gilds the mountain tops of Wyoming and the venerable dome of St. Paul's. England and America have vied with each other during the past half century in extending the civil and political rights of women. It is now four centuries since Columbus discovered America, and it has taken the descendants of the little colonies that followed in his wake all these years to discover that the chief factor in civilization is the mother of the race. Such has been woman's progress in the last century, that it is too late now for her enemies to discuss her disabilities; the size of her brain, her emotional tendencies, her lack of reason, or to call "halt" to her onward march. Her recognition as a citizen in Wyoming has changed her status in the State from a subject to a sovereign; her states in the church has changed from a penitent at the confessional and the veiled soprano in the choir, to a priest at the altar, administering the sacraments and expounding the Scriptures; in the college she takes the highest prizes, in literature and mathematics; in the courts she has shown her knowledge of jurisprudence and constitutional laws; and as physician she has an assured place in every nation on the globe. Thus she has proved her capacity wherever she has had the opportunity. With gymnasiums and the many schools we now have for physical culture, another generation will give us the grand women of the Matriarchate once more. And now woman claims her title deed to one half of this Western Continent, which but for the faith and the jewels of Queen Isabella, the brave discoverer might never have reached. The honor accord to woman in this great Exposition in the Queen City of the West, is one of the most encouraging signs of the times and marks the coming of that era prophecied by one of America's greatest orators; "The first glimpse we get of Saxon blood in history" said Wendell Phillips" is that line of Tacitus in his 'Germany' which reads, 'In all grave matters they consult their women.' Years hence when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot squeamish scholarship and fastidious fashion, some second Tacitus, from the valley of the Mississippi, will answer to him of the Seven Hills, 'In all grave questions we consult our women." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton. _____ Readers of the TRIBUNE should order a supply of the NATIONAL BULLETIN to enclose in letters of hand to friends. Special issues in stock are: "The Degradation of Disfranchisement," by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "The Matriarchate," by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "Voluntary Motherhood," by Hariot Stanton Blatch. "Why Democratic Women Want the Ballot." "Federal Suffrage Report and Argument," by Clara Bewick Colby. "Sanitary Work for Women," by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "How Women Voted in Washington," Democratic Testimony from Wyoming," "Vote of Kansas Women." _____ The Woman's Tribune Published Weekly at Washington, D. C, _ Is the only Woman Suffrage Paper contributed to by ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. Has full reports of important features of NATIONAL and STATE WORK of Woman Suffrage Associations. Has a summary of whatever is of interest relating to the ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN. Has many able contributors who treat of GENERAL TOPICS, Has a weekly record of DOINGS IN CONGRESS. ONE DOLLAR A YEAR Send ten cents for Five Sample Copies. CLARA BEWICK COLBY, Editor and Published. The three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, price $15.00, offered for twenty yearly subscribers to the WOMAN'S TRIBUNE. _____ SPECIAL NEW PREMIUM. "The Woman WHo Dares," by Ursula N. Gestefield. "Here we have a well-written story with a noble purpose. It is a woman's novel, and by that I do not mean that it is intended only for women; on the contrary, it ought to be read by every man in America who has the brain, conscience, and refinement of nature to appreciate its masterly presentation of what is the simple right, nay, more, is the sacred duty of every woman, to demand the absolute right to her own person in wedlock no less than out of wedlock, * * * In the presentation of the vital thought found in these pages, Mrs. Gestefield has given us a superb piece of work. It is a story of great vitality. The author is a thoughtful and a deeply spiritual woman. With the keen intuitive insight so often met with in profoundly spiritual natures, she has discerned one of the greatest moral crimes of the present." - The Arena. Offered post-paid for four new subscribers to the WOMAN'S TRIBUNE or for $1.25. MRS. STANTON AND HER CHILDREN About 1848, the Time of the Seneca Falls Convention Mother's Day was observed by the National Woman's Party by honoring the memory of two famous mothers among pioneer feminists—Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. (See story on page 77) _____ TRIBUTING EDITORS INEZ HAYNES IRWIN H HOUGHTON HOOKER _____ L EXECUTIVE COUNCIL ATIONAL OFFICERS phen Pell, N. Y. , Jane Norman Smith, N. Y. an, Mrs Harvey W. WIley, D. C. n, Mrs. Amy C. Ransome, Calif. ara M. Berrien, Ga. Ashby Moncure _____ Anita Pollitzer, S. C. Margaret C. Williams, Conn. Clara Snell Wolfe, Ohio fficio as President of World Woman's Party) _____ NAL WOMAN'S PARTY OBJECT mplete equality with men under the law and in particular to secure the adoption of the Equal Constitution, and the adherence of the United Treaty. The Woman's Party also supports the nts to the Covenant of the League of Nations. D EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT shall have Equal Rights throughout the United place subject to its jurisdiction. ve power to enforce this article by appropriate or John G. Townsend, (Del.), and Senator Ed- ke, (Neb.), Jan. 4, 1939, (Senate Joint Resolu- sentative Louis Ludlow, (Ind.), Jan. 3, 1939, se Joint Resolution No. 2). sentative U. S Guyer, (Kans.), Jan. 3, 1939, se Joint Resolution No. 27). sentative Ambrose J. Kennedy, (Md.), Jan. 3, (House Joint Resolution No. 25). diciary Sub-Committee. dciary Committee. action by Sub-Committee April 26, 1939. EQUAL RIGHTS TREATY States agree that upon the ratification of this women shall have Equal Rights throughout the o their respective jurisdictions." seeing mothers their ideas of m Boys and girls whose trainin and whom mothers found equa ented, failed to receive identical in the schools. Girls were pr business and the professions a them as inferiors and mental The pioneer feminist mothers the world were convinced tha unwarranted. Just as the kind of home is de and mother, so these intelligent the kind of world awaiting th mined by the mother as well as Accordingly, they extended t homemaking to the community world. They demanded for the and their boys, equal rights an The believed the sphere of the world. They did not believe oly on this sphere. They believed to be a home for their children, for them by both men and wom about to broaden the scope of th Analytically they undertook that politics dictated the educa and the conditions surrounding They found the law to be un to their boys and girls. They higher learning closed to their thus denied preparation for t mothers of the next generation. hood to be a more important job The believed that equally intell boys became better parents. The franchise, they decided n must be armed with the ballot. resentation" was tyranny for w Enfranchised, they could expres polls and thus begin their home These famous mothers - Super -envisioned better mothers for ters and a better nation and wo Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the (1) Mrs. Maria Remington Hemiup; the [?al] discoverer that there is no exception to the law of heat in regard to ice, as previously taught. (2) See, "Life and Work, of Susan B. Anthony," by Ida Harper, Vol. 1st, Page 463, (3) Passing Lochland by steamer on the morning subsequent to the arrival of its distinguished guest, was seen a pillow sunning in window, Lochland is the home of Elizabeth Smith Miller, the daughter of Gerrit Smith, the noted abolitionist. [From the Boston Woman's Journal.] Important Discovery by a Woman. GENEVA, N. Y., Sept. 1, 1899. Editors Woman's Journal: In a recent visit to Geneva I had the pleasure of meeting a very remarkable woman, who claimed to have made one of the great discoveries of the century. The fact that "water not only expands with heat but also in the process of freezing," she claims was unknown to scientists in both England and America, until she discovered and published it. They said that according to natural law, ice, being heavier than water, must sink to the bottom of our rivers and lakes, which in time would become one solid mass of ice which no summer sun could melt. As this was not the case, and as they did not know that heat was generated in the process of freezing, they said there was "a deviation from nature's law." If a woman made this discovery, for the glory of her sex we want the fact known and distinetly stated. Mrs. Maria Remington Hemiup, born near Silver Creek, Chautauqua County, N. Y., in 1833, moved to Geneva in 1850. She married here and made here her first observations on the freezing of ice. She was without scientific education, but from a child was always asking the reason for what she saw. Some students went to her house to borrow a boat; they left there a book on chemistry which she looked over in their absence. Her attention was drawn to the statement that "all bodies contract with the cold and expand with heat ; a great general law of nature except in the formation of ice, where there is an apparent deviation." Mrs. Hemiup, in thinking of this statement, doubted that there ever could be a deviation from a natural law. With thought, observation and study, she discovered in the process of freezing, ice also expanded. In surface ice, it is first little particles of water that freeze and form ice crystals ; electrical heat is engendered, which sets the centre of each crystal free ; the centre passes out in the form of vapor. Mrs, Hemiup, living on the banks of Seneca Lake, noticed a vapor arising in cold weather, and the colder the weather the more vapor arose. She began to reason about this phenomenon, and discovered that cold will produce heat, a law unknown to scientists thus far. She announced it to the public on May 5, 1866, in the Rochester Express, under the heading, "Do God's Laws Conflict, or Man's Reasonings?" In 1886, twenty years after making this discovery, she published a book, entitled "The Law of Heat," more fully elaborating her ideas. Although the press gave the book complimentary notices, the scientist thus far, though adopting her theory, have not as yet given her credit for the discovery. This matter is worthy of investigation, as it reflects a glory on all women. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. _____ about the church door watching the woman who sat stiffly erect in the carriage, the minister facing her, at her side the woman who seemed to have so strange a love for the dean. This woman sat with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, as if she must needs make amends for the other's stony composure. The road, after leaving the village in the bottom lands along the river wound up the side of the bluff upon which the burying ground was situated. It was an autumn day, and the golden hazes that most glorious of season in the Missouri valley bathed the wide stretch of country upon which the cemetery looked down. A sky of marvelous blue spread its canopy above them, which the bright glow of the western sun brought out the pitiless detail the dreary little home of the dead, with its uptilted monuments and scattered, sunken graves, its rays infolding with no mellowing touch the group of sallow faced men and women in rusty and shapeless garb who clustered about the newly made grave. They lifted their voices and sang quaveringly amid the strangely deathlike stillness of the declining day. It was a dismal tune plaintive minors, and as they dragged it out in unmusical and uncertain tones it seemed a fitting symbol of their narrow lives. When the last clod of reddish clay had fallen upon the oblong mound they turned and walked away to leave their dead unnoticed until another of the living should pass into the, to them, greater grimness of death. As the procession crawled along the heavy road toward the cluster houses upon the river's bank the minister, his great hands resting upon his knees, his pale eyes blinking solemnly, began: "E-eliz'beth, you are left alone now." She nodded her head in affirmation. "You haven't much this world's goods." "I"ve kept two of us from starving for five years. I reckon I can keep myself," she replied stiffly. "Yo'h father was well fixed once but the Lord seen fit to deprive him of his earthly treasures that he might ly more store by them given which is above earthly price." "He was a graspin man and over reached himself." The women beside her sniffed reproachfully and glanced at the minister with a sorrowful air. The man stirred uneasily and lifted a hand in exposultation. "A daughter shouldn't jedge. If you was enlightened by the spirit you wouldn't be so lackin in Christina charity." She had ensured much that long afternoon, and she raised her eyes now defiantly. "I've done my duty by him - I've done my duty for 20 years without complainin." "The pride of the onregeneration must be humbled," returned the minister. She vouchsafed no reply, as they went on in silence, the setting sun touching with softening light her worn face and tired eyes. The sun was low in the western sky when the two women reached the small house, once white, now a dirty gray, with great yellow streaks following the lnes of overlapping clapboards. The blue waters of the swiftly flowing river _______________ NOT LESS ENTHUSIASTIC. _____ Savoy Hotel Reception to Mrs. Stanton Less Formal Than That of Tuesday Night. (Special Dispatch to the Boston Herald.) NEW YORK, Nov. 13, 1895. The reception which was given to Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the Savoy this afternoon was less formal than the one of last night given at the Metropolitan Opera House, but not in any degree less enthusiastic. Among the many women who called between 3 and 4 o'clock to offer her congratulations were the pioneers in a great many lines of woman's advancement. Mrs. Stanton said to them, with a peaceful smile: "You must think it strange to see this demonstration in my honor when I tell you that years ago I have seen men and women cross the streets and go blocks out of their way to avoid meeting me." She continued with some of her experiences as a public speaker abroad. Mrs. Fannie Garrison Villard, the daughter of the elder William Lloyd Garrison, followed with reminiscences of her father in connection with the memorable campaign in which Mr. Garrison was among the few men who supported Mrs. Stanton. William Lloyd Garrison, the younger, read a poem in commemoration of Mrs. Stanton's birthday. EAST COAST NOTES. CHATHAM, Nov 13. Passed south, steamer Jos L Colby, Boston for Norfolk, towing barges Sarah A Staples for Newport News and Moonbeam for Phila; tug Colon, Boston for Vineyard Haven, towing bark Nemesi (Ital), do for Phila. CITY ISLAND, NY, Nov 13. Bound south, steamer Salamanca, Boston; schs Earl of Aberdeen, Windsor, NS; Wandrian, Shulee, NS; Myronus, Mt Desert, Me; Cumberland, Somes Sound, Me; Anna W Parker and J R Bodwell, Rockland, Me; James Young, Thomaston, Me; Melissa Trask, Maud Briggs, Bangor, Me; Lillie O Wells, East Greenwich; Thos B Garland, Hurricane Island, Me; bark L M Smith, Cheverie, NS; schs Idaho and Mary Brewer, Rockland, Me; Ira B Ellems, Vinal Haven; D. E. Akin, Yarmouth, Mass; Alice Belle, Cohasset, Mass; Hannah E Brown, Brandywine, Gen Torbert, Providence; Sylvester Hale, R. S Dean, Taunton; George A Pierce, Ida L Ray, Cora Green, Bangor Me; Anna V Lamson, New Bedford; Stony Brook, Hyannis. Passed east, steamer Gen Whitney, for Boston. Came to anchor here, bound east, bark Perfection, for Halifax. NOBSKA, Nov 13. Passed north, sch Bertha Dean, Newport News for Boston; steamers Manhattan, New York for Portland; 12th (7 PM), County of York, Boston for Philadelphia. ——— SPOKEN. Ship George Stetson, from Baltimore for San Francisco, Sept 11, S lat 43 deg 44 min, W lon 58 deg 35 min. Ship Emily Reed, from Philadelphia for Hiogo, Sept 30, S lat 8 deg, W long 29 deg. Bark Edith Sheraton, from San Domingo City via Macoris for New York, Nov 11, noon, 20 miles SE of Five Fathom bank. ——— NOTICE TO MARINERS. Notice is given that, on or about Nov 20, 1895 the two fixed red lantern lights on Rockland breakwater, N side of the entrance to Rockland harbor, will be moved to the beacon at the end of the finished work for the break- Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Blankenburg were lifelong friends and co-workers in the cause of equal rights. Mrs. Blankenburg, a friend of Mrs. Schnabel, said to her one day: "Do you know, I've a lot of letters which my old friend Susan wrote me in the long years of our friendship, and if it will help you to interest other in the cause, I'm going to give you a couple. I'll ask you one thing. Don't destroy them when you have finished with them. Give them to the Historical Society or the National Woman's Party for permanent keeping." Faithful to the trust, Mrs. Schnabel is presenting one of the letters to the Pennsylvania Historical Society and the other to the National Woman's Party. The letter is dated Riggs House, Washington, D. C., March 11, 1891. It is on the stationery of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association and carried on the letterhead the following list of officers: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, president; Susan B. Anthony, vice-president at large; Lucy Stone, chairman executive committee; Jane H. Spofford, treasurer; Alice Stone Blackwell, corresponding secretary; Rachel Foster Avery, recording secretary; Eliza Titus Ward and Rev F. A. Hinckley, auditors; Rev. Annie H. Shaw, national lecturer and Lucy R. Anthony, private secretary. The letter is of an intimate nature and in it she refers to "our old friend Anna Dickinson." Speaking of her desire to help those in need she says: "I have so little - so little - that this A. M. I am deep in sadness over the many things I would do to others and can't!" Discussing the plight of a mutual friend she says: "Frances WIllard writes and has pledged $100." The characteristically brief and very direct letter closes with: "So tell me - what I can get other to help to do, and believe me, lovingly yours, Susan B. Anthony." have male employees, as women are not allowed to work on night shifts in factories in the State. Because of this State-sponsored condition, skilled, unionized women get from 2 to 8 hours work per day on such days as they are employed, but are unemployed the greater part of the time. A few men and many boys get their work. This is a typical example of how men are enabled to "encroach in women's traditional fields." Instead of calmly accepting the encroachment and devising new fields of employment for women on which men would immediately encroach, it would seem just, and common sense would indicate that the following steps be taken: (1) States should repeal laws distinguishing between women's employment and men's employment and enact in their place State laws in line with the Federal Wages and Hours Law which would apply to all workers. (2) New fields of employment should be devised for both men and women workers. (3) Vocational training facilities should be extended to meet the needs of all unemployed persons, whether they are men or women. _______________ Figures Tell The Story By Alma Lutz There are 35,886,867 women over 21 years of age in the United States, according to the 1930 census. Of this number 14%, or 5,591,086 are gainfully employed. One-fifth of those gainfully employed are in manufacturing and mechanical industries. In other words, about 3% of the women of the United States over 21 years of age are employed in manufacturing or mechanical industries. One of the chief arguments offered by opponents Equal Civil Rights for Women Demand Keynotes the Stanton Anniversary WASHINGTON, [underlined] {Nov. 15} [handwritten note] {1943] (AP) - Demands for a constitutional amendment grant women equal civil rights keynoted celebration Nov. 12 of the 128th anniversary of the birth of Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. More than 300 women, representing a score of organizations, paid tribute to the first woman to ask for a vote for her sex and the author of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution granting women he franchise. Within the semicircle of the ceremonies, held in the crypt of the Capitol, was the statue of America's three most famous women suffragists - bonneted Lucretia Mott, primly coiffured Susan B. Anthony and matronly Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Speakers, who included Representative Mary T. Norton of New Jersey, declared that political equality must be supplemented now by civil equality for women, which they described as the "last nail to be driven in the coffin of sex prejudice." The New Jersey Congresswoman, first Democrat of her sex to be elected to Congress and first woman to head a major House committee (Labor), rebuked women for their "indifferent" use of their right to vote. [HANDWRITTEN NOTES] {Christian Science Monitor} ge assembled for the e held in empty store halls there burned a hich I have never seen o, not at Oxford or the whose course required of Horace read all of assigned on play of Upheld by pillars of tall-shafted trees; The thin bird-pipe against the fuller sound Of wind among the pines - all - all of these Make manifest how plane and globe combine In geometric beauty of design. EDITH ADDISON THOMAS __________________________________________________ Three Discoveries That Change th ling to Bacon, distin- its predecessors: the which has revolution- ention of gunpowder, ed war; and the dis- which has revolution- y phrase them differ- he same: a complete of civilized man. The transferred literature ers: easing the strain or reperusal and more not only be single raries, but by a vast hem it conveyed the Humanism, and the mulus of the English gunpowder was one of a vast which incr far beyond anacrhonist totle's worl cause of a from these mously aug The effec of the strug was to con island into The first sig was the ap Principal N and Discove isthe hone deeds by lar RIGHTS 15 _______________ "Created Equal" (Continued from Front Page) were the first to realize these errors in judgment. Immediately they acknowledged them, wiped the slate clean and began again. The great friendship between those two women started as I have said with a casual meeting on a street corner. It ended, as far as this mortal life is concerned, fifty years later when Susan, having received the news of Elizabeth's death, sat for hours alone in her room, gazing numbly at her friend's picture. It was a magnificent period for women and so it produced magnificent women. Their name is legion. Do not believe because they were reformed, that they were stiff and humorless, that they lacked the juices and ardors of aliveness. Grace Channing Stetson told the present writer that her great father used once a year to invite both the crusaders for woman's rights and for the abolition of slavery to house parties at his home. "How we used to look forward to those gatherings!" she exclaimed. "They were the wittiest people we knew. The stories they told! The house rocked with laughter all the time they were there." But of all the magnificent women that the era produced - and there were a score of giants among them - Elizabeth and Susan were the most magnificent. Elizabeth was responsible for the inception in this country of the Woman's Rights movement. Susan brought it to with a double decade of its final triumph. Elizabeth was more richly endowed, more trained intellectually. She was facile, ardent, witty, brilliant, fascinating - more temperamental in short. Susan was cooler, wiser. She had greater concentration, better judgment, longer staying power, the wise patience of an unbreakable resolution. Elizabeth was the Thomas Jefferson of the movement and perhaps, a little, its Benjamin Franklin. Susan was its George Washington - America's greatest woman. This book tells the amazing life of an amazing woman and it is written with amazing skill. It is another shining milestone in the glowing annals of feminism. _______________ 16 EQUAL ______________ A Feminist Thinks It Over By ALMA LUTZ WOMEN AND LABOR UNIONS I HAVE recently seen some interesting figures showing the percentage of women in labor organizations. According to press reports there are about 4,000,000 paid workers in the A. F. of I. and about 4,000,000 in the C. I. O. Of this 8,000,000 about 1 in 15 is a woman. At the 1938 Convention of the A. F. of L. 14 of the 477 delegates were women. At the C. I. O. Convention in 1938, a negligible proportion of the 519 delegates were women. In view of these facts it is highly important that women see the necessity of taking their places in labor unions in much larger numbers. They cannot afford to delegate the looking after their labor interests to men Union members, any more than they could afford to be without the ballot and delegate their interest in the government of their country to men voters. Nor dare they delegate the looking after their interests to philanthropists and social service workers who have been instrumental in passing such hour laws as have recently protected women out of their jobs in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Welfare organizations, financed largely by wealthy men and women, are much more ready to work for so-called protective legislation for women, than to encourage the formation of unions. Much as the employer dislikes Government interference in the form of labor legislation, he dislikes unions more; and as long as labor legislation applies only to women, it leaves available to him plenty of men and boys to replace women workers, if labor laws affecting women became too much of a nuisance. Labor-union men are not averse to labor legislation for women. It is a chivalrous gesture, to favor seemingly benevolent legislation. And many of them admit [HAND WRITTEN IN THE TOP RIGHT CORNER] Elizabeth Cady [HANDWRITTEN TO LEFT OF THE HEADING] X A Leader in the Suffrage Cause CHALLENGING YEARS: The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch. By Harriot Stanton Blatch and Alma Lutz. Illustrated. 347 pp. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.50. The daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who at the age of 5 helped her mother and Susan Anthony strip lint for the Civil War's wounded, has, as she modestly puts it, "lived through" three great enfranchisements: of the American Negro, the English farm laborer, and the female sex in the United State. Harriot Stanton Blatch was in close touch with all three, and like her mother before her she was a great leader in the suffrage cause. Her memoirs tell the impressive story of that cause's triumph; and some of its most interesting features stand out when we glance at other movements as well. Women, Mrs. Blatch reminds her readers, formed "the first disfranchised class in history who unaided by any political party won enfranchisement by its own effort alone, and achieved the victory without the shedding of a drop of human blood." And in this country at least the suffragists did that, not by coming together in one welded mass of detailed agreement but by using various methods, adopting various plans, trying experiments, working in various organizations, democratically differing on some points, yet irresistibly united in the pursuit of their common goal. Among the leaders, Mrs. Blatch was one of the most fearlessly and rationally "advanced." And just as even Lucretia Mott had trembled f=before the effect of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's outspoken demand for the franchise in 1848, so even Anna Howard Shaw had grave doubts about "so radical a demonstration" when Harriot Stanton Blatch first proposed a suffrage parade. At the turn of the century the suffrage movement in New York State had, she says, got into a rut: "it bored its adherents and repelled its opponents." Mrs. Blatch, who married an Englishman, returned to her own country in 1902, "eager to finish the work my mother had begun." That work, she felt, needed dramatization. It got it. So it is that this serious and informative autobiography offers vivacity as well as earnestness to its readers. "My dear young man, I am a grandmother," Mrs. Blatch, in Union Square, answered a youthful but pompous heckler who "announced that suffragettes would neglect family life and bring forth a race of weaklings": and the crowd laughed with her as she continued, "All my progeny, although I was graduated from college, are bouncing and lusty." In recounting the oft-repeated struggles with Legislature she quotes solemn anti-suffrage speeches that are as funny as any caricature. And the suffragists could turn their opponents' very ignorance and stupidity to the service of their cause. When Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson was about to come to this country in 1907 few people here had ever heard of her, and even the name of her great father, Richard Cobden, would have arouse little if any popular response. Mrs. Blatch and a co-worked happened to go to Ellis Island at this very time, and meet the 100-per-cent American" who was Immigration Commissioner. So they told him about the prospective visitor - not that she had a famous father and a distinguished husband but, "inadvertently," and more than just once, that she had been jailed as a suffragette. The well-meaning official's reaction came up to their wildest dreams; newspaper men learned at once of his zealous effort "to save his country from being inundated with foreign criminals"; his determination to make the Immigration Department "a bulwark against subtle poisons" received wide publicity and brought forth discussion; by the time the British Ambassador, Lord Bryce (Richard Cobden's warm admirer and his daughter's close friend), had tactfully shepherded Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson into this country she needed, as the sayin is, "no further introduction to American audiences" when she spoke for suffrage. Mrs. Blatch's life has been vigorous and capacious, and her book is both. Her early reminiscences introduce important people and activities here and in England, and reflect opportunities of unusual acquaintance in Germany and France. The illustrations show suffragists in action. The autobiography is valuable history, and good reading. THE WOMAN'S COLUMN [HANDWRITTEN TO THE RIGHT OF THE HEADER] 1893 _______________ THE ABUSES OF CHRISTMAS. _____ While a chorus of voices are chanting the holiday joys, and the pleasant memories of childhood, I feel impelled to disturb the general harmony with one discordant note of protest and complaint. I fain would rouse my countrywomen to the thought of the serious abuses that have grown out of the once simple customs that made Christmas one of the most charming days of the year. Amusing letters, little tokens of affection, have all given place to the most extravagant presents, from those who have plenty of money, and elaborate pieces of embroidery and worsted work from those who have neither time nor strength to waste. The pleasure our mothers had in the give and take of a few trifles has now developed into a stern necessity, making wholesale Christmas presents as imperative as the laws of the Medes and Persians. The season is a great to Paterfamilias, because of the terrible strain on his purse-strings, and to the women of the household, because of the labor involved. How anxious they look, as they push their was through the crowds in Macy's from day to day! And though they go home with all the bundles they can carry, there is always some one forgotten, that compels another visit to the busy marts of trade, and another appeal to the well-drained purse of some long-suffering son of Adam. And although women seem wild with delight in spending every cent they can wring out of any one, you will hear them say, "Oh, dear me, there comes Christmas day again! I am hardly rested from last year, and now I must get presents some how for at least two dozen different friends. I can't afford to go to Tiffany's and buy beautiful presents, and so I must work early and late to make them." Who would value a present given as a necessity? It should be an offering of love, a real pleasure to both the giver and receiver. The delight of children in an ideal St. Nicholas, who puts a few little toys in their stockings, is all very well; but when the custom with a large circle of grown people becomes imperative, it is a tax on one's friendship, and an unmitigated nuisance. I spent a few weeks at a sanitarium one year, and noticed all the nervous women, whom the physicians were doing their utmost to restore health and comfort, sitting in the parlors with the thermometer up in the seventies, working away intently hour after hour to get some stain pin-cushion and velvet slippers embroidered for Christmas. I suggested to them to throw all their needles to the winds, and go on top of the house and lie down on their cots in the sunshine. They exclaimed, "What would you do about Christmas present?" "Give none", I replied. "There is no necessity in the case. If you wish to remind your friends of your existence, or to show that you remember them, send your card, with "Merry Christmas, and best wishes of the season." If you were my friends, I should rather get your cards than embroidery that had taxed your vital forces and optic nerves for weeks, in your present condition." If you are always troubled with spasms of emotional benevolence at Christmas, send some meat and vegetables to the poor, apples, nuts and candy to their children. The money you spend in satin, silks and bright worsteds would cheer many a fireside, and make the children inexpressibly happy. Christmas, wedding presents, and flowers at funerals have come to be such a tax and nuisance, in their extravagance and excess, that people, not wishing their friends to feel compelled to observe the custom, now say on their cards of invitation, "No present," and "No flowers." If rich friends wish to send us a check of a hundred dollars or more, we might receive ti with pleasure, as it requires no labor to draw a check, nor privation to give of their abundance. But a present of an elaborate piece of worsted work, say of "Rebecca at the well," over which a dear friend has strained her optic nerves for weeks, and inhaled impalpable pieces of arsenic from the bright green worsteds, would give me no pleasure. On the contrary, it would be a source of sorrow every time I looked at it. I would not work a cat on the toe of a slipped for the one I love best on earth; I would rather give or take a live cat. Standing in a book-store a few days before Christmas, one year, I heard a wife say to her young husband, "I must get a present for Lucy." "No," said he, "I have already spent much more than we can afford. Come, let us go." But she insisted, and lingered in spite of his appeals. I felt so sorry for the man, probably a clerk on a small salary, that I hurried away. Suppose, dear ladies, you try the experiment one year and give no present, and see what a relief it is, and what a saving to your husbands' pocket-books, as well as of your time and temper. At all events, in these hard times, curtail somewhat your expenses and labors in this direction. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in Woman's Journal [HANDWRITTEN AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE] {Mar 28, 1888 The World} VOL. XXVIII., NO. 9717. _______________ PLAIN TALK TO MISS TAYLOR. __________ ELIZABETH CADY STANTON TELLS HER SHE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF HERSELF. _____ Miss Taylor's Refusal to Lecture with Mrs. Ashton Dilke Excites a Torrent of Talk in the Women's Council at Washington - Miss Stanton Say Miss Taylor is None Too Good Herself. WASHINGTON, D. C., March 27. - The refusal of Miss Helen Taylor, John Stuart Mill's Stepdaughter, to attend the International Council of Women, now in session here, has, as could be gleaned from THE WORLD'S story of to-day, resulted already in a split in the English Woman Suffrage party that can hardly fail to end in total disruption. The effect is intensified by Miss Taylor's letters to Henry George and Miss Susan B. Anthony, indicative of her reasons for refusal. Miss Taylor had been advertised as one of the leading speakers of the council. Mrs. Ashton Wentworth Dilke was to be her co-lecturer and companion, and Henry George had engaged them to lecture on the land question. When Miss Anthony was informed by letter that Miss Taylor's aversion to Mrs. Ashton Dilke was her main reason for absence, and that she was surprised at Mrs. Ashton Dilke's being received by American women, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was called into council and Henry George was visited by Miss Rachel Foster, Secretary of the National Women's Suffrage Association, and besought him not to publish the explanatory letter Miss Taylor had sent him. The matter has been discussed here only in whispers and in secret conclave, but at the same time that story came to THE WORLD a letter from Mrs. McLaren, daughter of John Bright, came to Mrs. Stanton here, telling of new developments on the other side. There has been a feeling of jealousy between Miss Helen Taylor and her following and the first of Mrs. Ashton Dilke for some time, and this action on Miss Taylor's part is but a plain avowal of the bitterness of this feeling. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as President of the Council, is of course loath to say anything one either siad that shall create discussion, but she declared this afternoon that, now the matter has gotten out, she did not think it either right nor decent for her to keep silent longer, especially since silce might help to harm a woman's reputation. "I was in England," said Mrs. Stanton to THE WORLD'S representative, "when Miss Anthony sent me the letter she had received from Miss Taylor, and I was furious about it. "I have been in Mrs. Dilke's house, have seen her with her friends and her children, know her home life and her work and know how she is received on the other side. She was my companion on the voyage from England here, and I do not believe there is a spot on which they can put their finger. The Woman-Suffragists of England are friendly enough to Mrs. Dilke to forget their jealousy when taking her money, using her drawing-rooms for entertainments, and otherwise availing themselves of her wealth, but when it came to having so distinct an honor as this you see what a different matter it was. When I got that letter I didn't say a word to Mrs. Dilke about it, but I say down and wrote Miss Taylor a letter that she will never forget as long as she lives. She is a disagreeable, hategul old spinster anyway, and when I find one of these women that are so tremendously virtuous I always think there is a danger of overdoing. I am not saying anything to you I would not say to Miss Taylor, for it is just exactly what I wrote to Miss Taylor when I found what she had done. I told her what a mean thing I thought it was to do, and I told her in plain English that she herself had not lived a life that was above suspicion, not had her mother and John Stuart Mill before her. I told her that I did not say that to hurt her feelings in any way, but to show her what sort of ground she was treading on, and that she could be in better business than in slandering a younger and prettier woman for the sake of petty jealousy." "If Mrs. Dilke had been a man this would not have happened. Women, it seems to me, have not the slightest esprit de corps and they seize upon the fact that a woman has a brother-in-law who is an acknowledged rake as sufficient foundation on which to build a scandal like this. It is quite true that Sir Charles Dilke is Mrs. Dilke's brother-in-law but in marrying Ashton Dilke she certainly did not lay herself liable for his brother's sins. Sir Charles Dilke is the trustee of Mrs. Dilke's property and the guardian of her three beautiful children. When that great scandal came out about Sir Charles, Mrs. Ashton Dilke wished to change to her property into other hands, but good John Bright, who is her friend, told her not to do so. Sir Charles is an honest man in money matters, he said better be obliged to see him now and then than lose the all you have by putting your property in other hands. That was a great man's advice, and she took it, and if it had been a matter of men it would have been the last she would have heard it, but being a woman it would not down. Mrs. Dilke was reading the morning's WORLD when its representative joined her in the big red parlor of the Riggs House, and the scarlet color of her cheeks showed her annoyances at the story's having crept out. Her manner of dealing with it was not only characteristic, but, convincing as to the truth of Mrs. Stanton's view of the matter. She spoke quite frankly of the business, but the only thing she cared to say in the way of a public answer was that it was a matter which had been brewing for some time, she thought. "I am sure my labor friends all like me. I know that I have been forced to usurp places that had hitherto belong exclusively to Miss Taylor and Miss Decker, but I do not think that that is reason enough for one woman to make a personal attack on another. All I can say is that the whole matter must be considered as a matter of politics, and as being justifiable, perhaps, on that ground." "Shall you take any notice of it, Mrs. Dilke?" "Certainly not. Why should I? Miss Taylor chose to break her contract with Henry George and with Mrs. Stanton rather than come over here and speak in opposition to me. What have I to say about that? I am here. I am going to speak Saturday evening at the Council. I am going to lecture in New York and Boston. I have been invited out as much as any one could possibly desire to be, and everybody is as good to me as it is possible to be. I really cannot see that Miss Taylor's excuse can affect me in the least." _____*_*_____ SHE OBJECTED TO MRS. DILKE [HANDWRITTEN NOTES] {World Mar. 27 1888} Why Miss Taylor Stayed Away from the International Council. Miss Helen Taylor, who is John Stuart Mill's stepdaughter, will not attend the International Council of Women now in session in Washington D. C. She was extensively advertised to take part in the proceedings of the council, and was booked to make several speeches. Mrs. Ashton Wentworth Dilke was announced to be her companion and co-lecturer. Last week Miss Taylor sent the following cablegram to Henry George, who had engaged her to lecture in conjunction with Mrs. Ashton-Dilke on the land question: LONDON. To Henry George, Standard Office, New York: Please announce in the Standard from me that the circumstances connected with the Washington Convention have decided me to withdraw my acceptance of invitation. HELEN TAYLOR. Miss Taylor mailed a letter to Henry George and sent another communication to Susan B. Anthony, in both of which she detailed at length her reasons for not visiting America. The principal among these was her unconquerable objection to Mrs. Ashton-Dilke, whom she pointedly mentioned in her letter. She even declares that she is surprised that American ladies receive Mrs. Dilke. When this letter for declination was received by Susan B. Anthony, the President of the International Council of Women, she was much disturbed at the allegations against Mrs. Ashton-Dilke, and immediately held a conference with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These two discussed the letter at great length. Mrs. Dilke had already been favorably received in this country, and they could not very well turn their backs upon her. At the same time they were anxious to stand well with Miss Taylor; who represents an important woman's suffrage element in Great Britain. They were apprehensive that Henry George might make public in the Standard Miss Taylor's reasons for not visiting this country as the co-laborer of Mrs. Ashton-Dilke. Miss Rachel Foster, the Secretary of the National Women's Suffrage Association, was sent post-haste to New York to confer with Henry George. She arrived here on Wednesday last and had an interview with Mr. George, the result being that the Labor reformer consented to suppress the letter which had been received by him from Miss Taylor and make public only the cable message quoted above. Henry George when approached on the subject was non-committal. He acknowledged that he had received a cablegrame from Miss Taylor and that Miss Foster had paid him a visit, but he refused to admit that Miss Foster's visit had anything to do with Miss Helen Taylor's refusal to visit this country. THE ALICE STONE BLACKWELL FUND COMMITTEE 21 Ashmont Street, Melrose 76, Massachusetts Trustees Mrs. ADA COMSTOCK NOTESTEIN Mrs. MAUD WOOD PARK Mrs. EDNA LAMPREY STANTIAL Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.