The Complete History of the Women's Suffrage Movement in U.S.. Jane Addams
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in the Senate Chamber.—The Senate was alarmed yesterday afternoon. It surrendered to progress. The Select Committee to whom the women's rights petitions had been referred, took their seats on the president's platform, looking as grave as possible. Never had Senators Robertson, Yost, and Field been in such responsible circumstances. They were calm, but evidently felt themselves in great peril.
In the circle of the Senate, ranged in invincible row, sat seven ladies, from quite pretty to quite plain.
Ernestine L. Rose and Rev. William Henry Channing presented the arguments and appeals to the Committee, and Mrs. Rose invited them to ask questions. The Register concludes:
The Honorable Senators quailed beneath the trial. There was a terrible silence, and the audience eager to hear what the other ladies had to say, were wretched when they found that the Committee had silently dissolved—surrendered. Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
The Albany Argus of March 4th, says: The Rights of Women Defined by Themselves.—Miss Anthony and Mrs. Rose before the House Committee, March 3d. The Committee took their seats in the clerk's desk, and the ladies took possession of the members' seats, filling the chamber, many members of the Legislature being present. Miss Anthony presented a paper prepared by Judge William Hay, of Saratoga, asking that husband and wife should be tenants in common of property without survivorship, but with a partition on the death of one; that a wife shall be competent to discharge trusts and powers the same as a single woman; that the statute in respect to a married woman's property descend as though she had been unmarried; that married women shall be entitled to execute letters testamentary, and of administration; that married women shall have power to make contracts and transact business as though unmarried; that they shall be entitled to their own earnings, subject to their proportionable liability for support of children; that post-nuptial acquisitions shall belong equally to husband and wife; that married women shall stand on the same footing with single women, as parties or witnesses in legal proceedings; that they shall be sole guardians of their minor children; that the homestead shall be inviolable and inalienable for widows and children; that the laws in relation to divorce shall be revised, and drunkenness made cause for absolute divorce; that better care shall be taken of single women's property, that their rights may not be lost through ignorance, that the preference of males in descent of real estate shall be abolished; that women shall exercise "the right of suffrage," and be eligible to all offices, occupations, and professions; entitled to act as jurors; eligible to all public offices; that courts of conciliation shall be organized as peace-makers; that a law shall be enacted extending the masculine designation in all statutes of the State to females.
Mrs. Rose then addressed the Committee, saying: The right of petition is of no avail unless the reform demanded be candidly considered by the legislators. We judge of the intellectual inferiority of our fellow-men by the amount of resistance they oppose to oppression, and to some extent we judge correctly by this test. The same rule holds good for women; while they tamely submit to the many inequalities under which they labor, they scarcely deserve to be freed from them.... These are not the demands of the moment or the few; they are the demands of the age; of the second half of the nineteenth century. The world will endure after us, and future generations may look back to this meeting to acknowledge that a great onward step was here taken in the cause of human progress.
Mrs. Rose took her seat amidst great applause from the galleries and lobbies. The Committee adjourned.
Albany Register, March 7: Woman's Rights in the Legislature.—While the feminine propagandists of women's rights confined themselves to the exhibition of short petticoats and long-legged boots, and to the holding of Conventions, and speech-making in concert-rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances, and are looking for some healthier and more intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is wearing away, and disgust is taking the place of pleasurable sensations, arising from the novelty of this new phase of hypocrisy and infidel fanaticism. People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment should sanction or tolerate these unsexed women, who make a scoff of religion, who repudiate the Bible and blaspheme God; who would step out from the true sphere of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, and taking upon themselves the duties and the business of men, stalk into the public gaze, and by engaging in the politics, the rough controversies, and trafficking of the world, upheave existing institutions, and overturn all the social relations of life.
It is a melancholy reflection, that among our American women who have been educated to better things, there should be found any who are willing to follow the lead of such foreign propagandists as the ringleted, glove-handed exotic, Ernestine L. Rose. We can understand how such men as the Rev. Mr. May, or the sleek-headed Dr. Channing may be deluded by her to becoming her disciples. They are not the first instances of infatuation that may overtake weak-minded men, if they are honest in their devotion to her and her doctrines. Nor would they be the first examples of a low ambition that seeks notoriety as a substitute for true fame, if they are dishonest. Such men there are always, and honest or dishonest, their true position is that of being tied to the apron-strings of some "strong-minded woman," and to be exhibited as rare specimens of human wickedness, or human weakness and folly. But, that one educated American woman should become her disciple and follow her infidel and insane teachings, is a marvel.
Ernestine L. Rose came to this country, as she says, from Poland, whence she was compelled to fly in pursuit of freedom. Seeing her course here, we can well imagine this to be true. In no other country in the world, save possibly one, would her infidel propagandism and preachings in regard to the social relations of life be tolerated. She would be prohibited by the powers of government from her efforts to obliterate from the world the religion of the Cross—to banish the Bible as a text-book of faith, and to overturn social institutions that have existed through all political and governmental revolutions from the remotest time. The strong hand of the law would be laid upon her, and she would be compelled back to her woman's sphere. But in this country, such is the freedom of our institutions, and we rejoice that it should be so, that she, and such as she, can give their genius for intrigue full sway. They can exhibit their flowing ringlets and beautiful hands, their winning smiles and charming stage attitudes to admiring audiences, who, while they are willing to be amused, are in the main safe from their corrupting theories and demoralizing propagandism.
The laws and the theory of our government suppose that the people are capable of taking care of themselves, and hence need no protection against the wiles of domestic or foreign mountebanks, whether in petticoats or in breeches and boots. But it never was contemplated that these exotic agitators would come up to our legislators and ask for the passage of laws upholding and sanctioning their wild and foolish doctrines. That was a stretch of folly, a flight of impudence which was hardly regarded as possible. It was to be imagined, of course, that they would enlist as their followers, here and there one among the restless old maids and visionary wives who chanced to be unevenly tempered, as well as unevenly yoked. It was also to be assumed, as within the range of possibility, that they might bring within the sphere of their attractions, weak-minded, restless men, who think in their vanity that they have been marked out for great things, and failed to be appreciated by the world, men who comb their hair smoothly back, and with fingers locked across their stomachs, speak in a soft voice, and with upturned eyes. But no man supposed they would abandon their "private theatricals" and walk up to the Capitol, and insist that the performances shall be held in legislative halls. And yet so it is.
This Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, with a train of followers, like a great kite with a very long tail, has, for a week, been amusing Senatorial and Assembly Committees, with her woman's rights performances, free of charge, unless the waste of time that might be better employed in the necessary and legitimate business of legislation, may be regarded as a charge. Those committees have sat for hours, grave and solemn as owls, listening to the outpourings of fanaticism and folly of this Polish propagandist, Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, and her followers in pantalets and short gowns. The people outside, and especially those interested in the progress of legislation, are beginning to ask one another how long this farce is to continue. How long this most egregious and ridiculous humbug