The Complete History of the Women's Suffrage Movement in U.S.. Jane Addams
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of this period in the month of May. There were several persons at this Convention who had not before honored our platform.154 These, with the usual familiar speakers,155 filled the platform with quite a striking group of ladies and gentlemen. The morning session was occupied with the usual preliminary business matters, choosing officers, presenting resolutions, and planning new aggressive steps for the coming year. Susan B. Anthony was President on this occasion, and fulfilled her duties to the general satisfaction. During the evening session the hall was crowded, all the available space for either sitting or standing was occupied, the platform and steps were densely packed, and this at twenty-five cents admission.
Mr. Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Rose, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Higginson, Miss Brown, and Lucy Stone all spoke with their usual effect. Mrs. Eliza Woodson Farnham, the author of "Woman and her Era," spoke at length on the "Superiority of Woman."
She presented a series of resolutions, recognizing the right of man in the primary era in his physical and cerebral structure, to be the conqueror, the mechanic, the inventor, the clearer of forests, the pioneer of civilization, but she looked to the dawning of a higher era, when woman should assume her true position in harmony with her superior organism, her delicacy of structure, her beauty of person, her great powers of endurance, and thus prove herself not only man's equal in influence and power, but his superior in many of the noblest virtues. In woman's creative power during maternity, she recognized her as second only to God himself. Woman should recognize man as a John the Baptist, going before to prepare the world for her coming, he recognizing her greater divinity as equal in the Godhead, as heavenly mother as well as father.
Mrs. Farnham156 enforced her theory of woman's superiority in a long speech, which was received with apparent satisfaction by the audience, though several on the platform dissented from the claim of superiority, thinking it would be a sufficient triumph over the tyrannies of the past, if popular thought could be educated to the idea of the equality of the sexes.
Mrs. Sarah Hallock read an extract from the Statutes of New York, giving the items set aside by law for use of the wife and minor children, in case the husband died without a will.
(Extract from the Statutes of New York).
ARTICLES INVENTORIED, BUT NOT APPROVED, BELONGING TO THE WIDOW AND MINOR CHILDREN.
1st. All spinning-wheels, weaving-looms, or stoves put up for use.
2d. The family Bible, family pictures, school-books, and books not exceeding in value fifty dollars.
[Mrs. Hallock here interjected, husbands had better give their wives cheap books].
3d. Ten sheep and their fleeces, and the yarn and cloth manufactured from the same; one cow, two swine, and the pork of such swine. [Laughter],
4th. All necessary wearing apparel, beds, bedsteads, and bedding; the clothing of the widow and her ornaments proper to her station (as to ornaments, tastes differ as to those proper to her station), one table, six chairs (suppose there were seven or ten children, what then? queried Mrs. Hallock [Laughter],) six knives and forks, six tea-cups and saucers, one sugar-dish, one milk-pot, one tea-pot, and six spoons. "So great a favorite is the female sex of the laws of England and America," says Blackstone.
Mrs. Rose protested against one tea-pot; the law didn't mention tea-pot at all. [Great laughter].
Mrs. Hallock: Oh, yes! but not a coffee-pot. [Renewed laughter].
Mrs. Gage: In Ohio they give twelve spoons. [Convulsive laughter].
Mrs. Hallock: We'll get up a delegation to Ohio, then.
Mrs. Farnham: I would say that I will give up all these things if the State will only give us in return one of our children. [Applause and laughter].
Mrs. Hallock: Isn't it a pity that our laws—are they ours?
Mrs. Rose: No.
Mrs. Hallock: Well, then, your laws. It is a pity that those statutes should not be revised so as to give a widow a carpet and other smaller articles of luxury. [Great laughter].
And such was the boasted "protection" secured to the wives and mothers by the laws of the most civilized nations on the globe, and such the law-makers in whose hands woman's interests were supposed to be secure, when we began our battle for equality. Class laws, class legislation, legalized robbery from the unborn child, down to the commonest necessaries of life, has been the "protection" woman has complained of from fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Those just awaking to an interest in this reform, see but the smoke of the former battles; they can not appreciate all the tyranny from which this agitation has freed them. Step by step, custom by custom, law by law, a partial victory has been wrested, and a public opinion slowly created that promises other victories in the near future.
Those who have not been through the conflict will never realize how dark the prospect was in starting. Denied education, and a place in the world of work, denied the rights of property, whether of her own earnings, or her inheritance, with the press and the pulpit, custom, and public opinion sustaining the law, was there ever a struggle entered upon, which at its beginning seemed more hopeless than this for woman? But these constant presentations of the laws, with the comments and arguments in our Conventions, gradually appealed to the understanding of sensible men and women, and opened the eyes of the community to the wrongs of woman, perpetrated under the specious name of justice.
All the sessions of this Convention were interrupted by the rowdyism of a number of men occupying the rear part of the hall.
Parker Pillsbury said he had attended three of these Conventions, but had not spoken in one before. He thought the ladies encroached a little on the men's rights, as in the first and second, the Methodists gave the ladies the use of their church in a city of the West, on condition that Parker Pillsbury should not be allowed to speak. [Applause and laughter]. Now that the door was open, and he had ventured in, he did not know what to say. [Laughter and cries of "Go on"]. He would recommend the women to hold their next Convention at the ballot-box, as that would do more good than a hundred such as these. If their votes were refused, let them look the tax collectors in the face and defy them to come for taxes, as long as they were not allowed a voice in the Government. And carry the war into the Church, too, demand equality there as well as in the State.
He knew an orthodox church, consisting of twelve members. One was a man and a deacon, the remainder were women. A vote had to be taken for changing the day for the prayer-meeting, but some difficulty arose between the minister and the deacon, and the only way it could be settled was by the votes of the women. So the deacon went round on tip-toe, and put his head under each bonnet, and held a little private caucus meeting with one after another, and then returned to the altar and reported to the minister that the vote was unanimous. If women had any proper self-respect, they would scorn to remain one hour in any church in which they were not considered and recognized as equals.
Oliver Johnson said there was a new church formed called "Progressive Friends," in which men and women stood on perfect equality. He said there was another church (Henry Ward Beecher's) in Brooklyn, where women were expected to vote on all questions connected with the business affairs of the congregation. Another church in this city (Rev. Dr. Cheever's) had a difficulty in which the capitalists tried to dismiss the pastor, because he maintained the right of the slave to freedom, and of the woman to the elective franchise. He agreed with Mr. Pillsbury that it was woman's duty to test her equality in the Church as well as the State.
Aaron M. Powell took the same ground. As women made the large majority in the churches, they could easily secure equal rights there if united in an effort to do so. Why, said he, are there no young women sitting at the reporters' desks, taking note of the proceedings of this Convention? He advocated the elective franchise, saying that no class could be protected in all its rights without a voice in the laws.
A Mr. Warren said he had no objection to woman's claiming equality, but when they declared their superiority, they injured themselves and the rising generation in teaching the young to disrespect the men of the household. (Great laughter and hisses). Woman might be the savior of man, but was not God, and had no place in the Godhead. (Laughter and cheers). He spoke from experience when he said men had already suffered much