The Complete History of the Women's Suffrage Movement in U.S.. Jane Addams
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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 Grimké 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 illustrate 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 Douglass again raised the inquiry, in the investment of money or the use of property, where there is joint ownership, 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 copartnership, 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 sex.
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 petitions—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 spacious and beautiful Corinthian Hall was packed to its utmost, the Convention adjourned, to begin its real work in canvassing the State with lectures and petitions, preparing an address to the Legislature, securing a hearing, and holding a Convention at Albany during the coming session of that body.
An appeal125 to the women of the State was at once issued, and all editors requested to publish it with the forms of petitions. 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 petitions.
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 shore 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 passage 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 passes 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