The History of Woman Suffrage Volume I Part 69

E. A. HOPKINS, a lawyer of Rochester, spoke to the eighth resolution, which asks fora committee to examine the whole subject; he said: I believe if this question was properly presented to the Legislature, we might have well grounded hope for the relief of women from their legal disabilities, and indicated the amendments which ought to be made in the present laws regulating the relations of the married state. He argued against making the man and wife joint owners of property, execpt in certain specific cases.

Rev. Mr. CHANNING said that in Louisiana and California this joint owners.h.i.+p was recognized by the laws.

Mr. HOPKINS was not aware of that; and he did not see why labor, worth in the market no more than one or two dollars per week, should be paid for at the rate of, it may be, $200 per week. He thought the law should be altered so that the widow may have control of property while her children are minors. The right to vote, which was claimed under the idea that representation should go before taxation, he discussed with ability, taking ground against women voting. The arguments used by the other side were shown to be fallacious, or at least partaking of the aristocratic element. Women are already tried by "their peers," though not by those of their own s.e.x. As to women holding office, this movement had proved the position of Dr. Channing, in his discussion with Miss Martineau, that "influence was good, and office bad." Women should be content to exercise influence, without seeking for the spoils and risking the temptations of office. He argued upon the maxim that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," contending that it was not true; those powers are derived from the majority who are brave enough to set up and sustain the government.[124]

Frederick Dougla.s.s, in the course of his remarks, said he had seen two young women a.s.sistants in the County Clerk's office, also young women going into printing-offices to set type; and he might have added the following, which we clip from the _The Una_ of the same date:

Female compositors have been employed in the offices of the three Cincinnati daily papers which stood out against the demands of the Printer's Union. The Pittsburg _Daily Dispatch_ is also set up entirely by females. The experiment was commenced on that paper two months ago, and the proprietors now announce its entire success. The Louisville _Courier_ announces its intentions to try the experiment in the spring.

Wherever the change has been made it seems to be completely successful.--_Courier and Enquirer_.

Mr. MAY said: If a woman should not leave her family to go to the Legislature, neither should a man. The obligation is mutual: and while children require the care of both parents, both should share the duty, and not leave them from ambitious motives. It is only those who have well discharged their duties to their families who are fit to become legislators. We are now giving the nation into the hands of boys and half-grown men. Had we such women as Lucretia Mott and Angelina Grimke in the Legislature, there would be more wisdom there than we have to-day. When I look through the nation and see the shameful mismanagement, I am convinced that it is the result, in part, of the absence of the feminine element in high stations; it is because the maternal influence is wanting that we run riot as we do. The State is in a condition of half orphanage, and needs the care and guidance of a mother.

E. A. HOPKINS, Esq.: Thought the movement was not entirely timely, wise, and practicable, though parts of it might be. He took Up and answered each of the questions appended to the call for the Convention. His speech was characteristic of the lawyer, and the frequent recurrence of the idea, _it is right because it is customary_, will ill.u.s.trate its moral character. He stated three several points where he thought woman was aggrieved and should have legislative redress. Office was a temptation, and he thought woman was better off without it.

Miss BROWN proposed that the men, for a while, be relieved from this great evil, and excused from the burdens of office. If this necessary duty was so burdensome, woman should be a helper and share its burdens with him. We are taught to be grateful for small favors. Our friend has been giving you milk, but to me it seems, even at that, diluted with water. There is one law, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." When our brothers are ready to be paid a dollar a week for keeping house and nursing the children, let them dictate this also to us. We women now offer to take the burden and responsibility of government upon ourselves. We would be willing to save our friends for a time from temptation and care, as they have so generously done by us; if we are to be satisfied with things as they are, so should the slave be. He should be grateful for the care of his master, for according to the established price paid for labor, he does not earn enough to take care of himself. We should be satisfied with our present license laws; they are right, just, and good, judged by our friend's reasoning.

If our offer to rule alone is not liked, we are ready, then, to co-operate with man in this according to the original design and arrangement of the Creator.

Mr. HOPKINS opposed with several objections, one of which was, that private stations demand as high qualifications, and more surely command a just recompense, than public offices; woman has yet taken few lucrative private employments; why, then, till these are taken, should she seek for public office?

FREDERICK DOUGLa.s.s again raised the inquiry, in the investment of money or the use of property, where there is joint owners.h.i.+p, and in regard to which there may be disagreement between husband and wife, how shall the matter be settled between them? Law is not a necessity of human nature; if love ruled, statutes would be obsolete; genuine marriages and harmonious co-operations would prevent any such necessity.

Miss BROWN proposed to reply in a word: Law must regulate differences where there is not true union, and as a business copartners.h.i.+p, if the matter could not be adjusted between themselves to mutual satisfaction, let it be referred to a third person; where it is a property transaction, let the usual business custom be observed; but if there be a difficulty of a different nature, so serious that the parties, bound to each other for life, can not enjoy existence together if they can not make each other happy, but are to each other a mutual source of discomfort, why, let them separate; let them not be divorced, but let them each be content to live alone for the good of society.

Mrs. LOVE, of Randolph, read an address, flowery in style, but full of truth, upon the discord that pervades social life. Homes should be reformed; from domestic uncongeniality spring the chief evils of society. She advised men and women to beware of inharmonious alliances, and made a touching appeal in behalf of the fallen of her s.e.x.

Mr. CHANNING said: Whenever he heard a woman, in face of existing prejudices, speak the simple truth in regard to the social wrongs of her sisters, as Mrs. Love had done, asking no leave of the Convention, and making no apology for her sincere words, however they might startle false delicacy, he felt bound as a man, and in the name of man, to offer her the tribute of his hearty respect.

Mr. Channing presented two forms of pet.i.tions--one for property rights, the other for suffrage--which were adopted. Rev. Lydia A.

Jenkins read a carefully prepared address. Emma R. Coe made a full review of the laws, which, at that early day, was the burden of almost every speech. At the close of the sixth session, the audiences having grown larger and larger, until the s.p.a.cious and beautiful Corinthian Hall was packed to its utmost, the Convention adjourned, to begin its real work in canva.s.sing the State with lectures and pet.i.tions, preparing an address to the Legislature, securing a hearing, and holding a Convention at Albany during the coming session of that body.

An appeal[125] to the women of the State was at once issued, and all editors requested to publish it with the forms of pet.i.tions. The responses came back in the form of 13,000 signatures in two months, gathered in thirty out of the sixty counties of the Empire State. The lecturers were: Susan B. Anthony, Mary F. Love, Sarah Pellet, Lydia A.

Jenkins, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Over sixty women were engaged in the work of circulating the pet.i.tions.

Horace Greeley, chairman of the Committee on Industry, published in _The New York Tribune_ the following report:

WOMAN AND WORK.

Whether women should or should not be permitted to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and to officiate as lawyers, doctors, or divines, are questions about which a diversity of opinions is likely long to exist. But that the current rates of remuneration for woman's work are entirely, unjustly inadequate, is a proposition which needs only to be considered to insure its hearty acceptance by every intelligent, justice-loving human being. Consider a few facts:

Every able-bodied man inured to labor, though of the rudest sort, who steps on sh.o.r.e in America from Europe, is worth a dollar per day, and can readily command it. Though he only knows how to wield such rude, clumsy implements as the pick and spade, there are dozens of places where his services are in request at a dollar per day the year through, and he can even be transported hence to the place where his services are wanted, on the strength of his contract to work and the credit of his future earnings. We do not say this is the case every day in the year, for it may not be at this most inclement and forbidding season; but it is the general fact, as every one knows. And any careful, intelligent, resolute male laborer is morally certain to rise out of the condition of a mere shoveler, into a position where the work is lighter and the pay better after a year or two of faithful service.

But the sister of this same faithful worker, equally careful, intelligent, and willing to do anything honest and reputable for a living, finds no such chances proffered her. No agent meets her on the dock to persuade her to accept a pa.s.sage to Illinois or Upper Canada, there to be employed on fair work at a dollar per day and expectations. On the contrary, she may think herself fortunate if a week's search opens to her a place where by the devotion of all her waking hours she can earn five to six dollars per month, with a chance of its increase, after several years'

faithful service, to seven or eight dollars at most.

The brother is in many respects the equal of his employer; may sit down beside him at the hotel where they both stop for dinner; their votes may balance each other at any election; the laborer lives with those whose company suits him, and needs no character from his last place to secure him employment or a new job when he gets tired of the old one. But the sister never pa.s.ses out of the atmosphere of caste--of conscious and galling inferiority to those with whom her days must be spent. There is no election day in her year, and but the ghost of a Fourth of July. She must live not with those she likes, but with those who want her; she is not always safe from libertine insult in what serves her for a home; she knows no ten-hour rule, and would not dare to claim its protection if one were enacted. Though not a slave by law, she is too often as near it in practice as one legally free can be.

Now this disparity between the rewards of man's and woman's labor at the base of the social edifice, is carried up to its very pinnacle. Of a brother and sister equally qualified and effective as teachers, the brother will receive twice as much compensation as the sister. The mistress who conducts the rural district school in summer, usually receives less than half the monthly stipend that her brother does for teaching that same school in winter, when time and work are far less valuable; and here there can be no pretence of a disparity in capacity justifying that in wages. Between male and female workers in the factories and mills, the same difference is enforced.

Who does not feel that this is intrinsically wrong? that the sister ought to have equal (not necessarily identical) opportunities with the brother--should be as well taught, industrially as well as intellectually, and her compensation made to correspond with her capacity, upon a clear understanding of the fact that, though her muscular power is less than his, yet her dexterity and celerity of manipulation are greater?

Where does the wrong originate? Suppose that, by some inexorable law in the spirit of Hindoo caste, it were settled that negroes, regardless of personal capacity, could do nothing for a living but black boots, and that red-haired men were allowed to engage in no avocation except horse-currying; who does not perceive that, though boot-blacking and horse-currying might be well and cheaply done, black-skinned and also red-haired men would have but a sorry chance for making a living? Who does not see that their wages, social standing, and means of securing independence, would be far inferior to those they now enjoy?

The one great cause, therefore, of the inadequate compensation and inferior position of woman, is the unjust apportionment of avocation. Man has taken the lion's share to himself, and allotted the residue to woman, telling her to take that and be content with it, if she don't want to be regarded as a forward, indelicate, presuming, unwomanly creature, who is evidently no better than she should be. And woman has come for the most part to accept the lot thus a.s.signed her, with thankfulness, or, rather, without thought, just as the Mussulman's wife rejoices in her sense of propriety which will not permit her to show her face in the street, and the Brahmin widow immolates herself on the funeral pyre of her husband.

What is the appropriate remedy?

Primarily and mainly, a more rational and healthful public sentiment with regard to woman's work; a sentiment which shall welcome her to every employment wherein she may be useful and efficient without necessarily compromising her purity or overtasking her strength. Let her be encouraged to open a store, to work a garden, plant and tend an orchard, to learn any of the lighter mechanical trades, to study for a profession, whenever her circ.u.mstances and her tastes shall render any of these desirable. Let woman, and the advocates of justice to women, encourage and patronize her in whatever laudable pursuits she may thus undertake; let them give a preference to dry-goods stores wherein the clerks are mainly women; and so as to hotels where they wait at table, mechanics' shops in which they are extensively employed and fairly paid. Let the ablest of the s.e.x be called to the lecture-room, to the temperance rostrum, etc.; and whenever a post-office falls vacant and a deserving woman is competent to fill and willing to take it, let her be appointed, as a very few have already been. There will always be some widow of a poor clergyman, doctor, lawyer, or other citizens prematurely cut off, who will be found qualified for and glad to accept such a post if others will suggest her name and procure her appointment. Thus abstracting more and more of the competent and energetic from the restricted sphere wherein they now struggle with their sister for a meager and precarious subsistence, the greater ma.s.s of self-subsisting women will find the demand for their labor gradually increasing and its recompense proportionally enhancing. With a larger field and more decided usefulness will come a truer and deeper respect; and woman, no longer constrained to marry for a position, may always wait to marry worthily and in obedience to the dictates of sincere affection. Hence constancy, purity, mutual respect, a just independence and a little of happiness, may be reasonably antic.i.p.ated.

HORACE GREELEY, MARY VAUGHAN, ABRAHAM PRYNE, SARAH PELLET, MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.

ALBANY CONVENTION.

FEBRUARY 14 AND 15, 1854.

Although the weather was inclement, a large audience a.s.sembled in a.s.sociation Hall on the morning of the 14th, representing the different portions of the State. Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to order and read the call, which had been written by Rev.

Wm. Henry Channing, and published in all the leading papers of the State.

JUSTICE TO WOMEN--CONVENTION AT ALBANY, FEB. 14 AND 15, 1854.

The pet.i.tion asking for such amendments in the Statutes and Const.i.tution of New York as will secure to the women of the State legal equality with the men, and to females equally with the males a right to suffrage, will be presented to the Legislature about the middle of February. We, the Committee appointed at the Convention held at Rochester in December--by whose authority these pet.i.tions were issued--do hereby invite all fellow-citizens, of either s.e.x, who are in favor of these measures, to a.s.semble in Convention, at Albany, on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 14th and 15th.

The so-called "Woman's Rights Movement" has been so much misrepresented, that it is desirable to make the appeal for justice earnest, imposing, and effective, by showing how eminently equitable are its principles, how wise and practical are its measures. Let the serious-minded, generous, hopeful men and women of New York then gather in council, to determine whether there is anything irrational or revolutionary in the proposal that fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, should treat their daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers as their peers. This reform is designed, by its originators, to make woman womanly in the highest sense of that term--to exalt, not to degrade--to perfect, not to impair her refining influence in every sphere.

The demand is made only to take off burdens, to remove hindrances, to leave women free as men are free, to follow conscience and judgment in all scenes of duty. On what ground--except the right of might--do men, claiming to be Republicans and Christians, deny to woman privileges which they would die to gain and keep for themselves? What evil--what but good can come from enlarging woman's power of usefulness? How can society be otherwise than a gainer by the increased moral and mental influence of one-half of its members? Let these and similar questions be fairly, candidly, thoroughly discussed in the hearing of the Legislature of New York.

Come then, fellow-citizens, to this Convention prepared to speak, to hear, to act. Lucy Stone, Wendell Phillips, Mrs. C. I. H.

Nichols, and other earnest friends of the cause from New England and the West, as well as from our own State, are to be with us.

And may the spirit of Truth preside over all.

ELIZABETH C. STANTON, SAMUEL J. MAY, ERNESTINE L. ROSE, ANTOINETTE L. BROWN, WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING, WM. HAY, BURROUGHS PHILLIPS, LYDIA ANN JENKINS, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

Those having pet.i.tions in their hands will please send them to Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, until the first of February, after which they should be forwarded to Lydia Mott, Albany.

N. B.--Editors please copy.

_January 23, 1854._

The officers[126] of the Convention being reported, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (President) took the chair, and after returning her acknowledgments for the honor conferred, introduced Rev. Antoinette L.

Brown, who read a series of resolutions:

1. _Resolved_, That the men who claim to be Christian Republicans, and yet cla.s.s their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters among aliens, criminals, idiots, and minors, unfit to be their coequal citizens, are guilty of absurd inconsistency and presumption; that for males to govern females, without consent asked or granted, is to perpetuate an aristocracy, utterly hostile to the principles and spirit of free inst.i.tutions; and that it is time for the people of the United States and every State in the Union to put away forever that remnant of despotism and feudal oligarchy, the caste of s.e.x.

2. _Resolved_, That women are human beings whose rights correspond with their duties; that they are endowed with conscience, reason, affection, and energy, for the use of which they are individually responsible; that like men they are bound to advance the cause of truth, justice, and universal good in the society and nation of which they are members; that in these United States women const.i.tute one-half the people; men const.i.tute the other half; that women are no more free in honor than men are to withhold their influence and example from patriotic and philanthropic movements, and that men who deny women to be their peers, and who shut them out from exercising a fair share of power in the body politic, are arrogant usurpers, whose only apology is to be found in prejudices transmitted from half-civilized and half-christianized ages.

WHEREAS, The family is the nursery of the State and the Church--the G.o.d-appointed seminary of the human race. Therefore

3. _Resolved_, That the family, by men as well as women, should be held more sacred than all other inst.i.tutions; that it may not, without sin, be abandoned or neglected by fathers any more than by mothers, for the sake of any of the inst.i.tutions devised by men--for the government of the State or the Nation any more than for the voluntary a.s.sociation of social reformers.