But men say it would be very indelicate for woman to go to the ballot-box or sit in the Legislature. Well, what would she see there? Why, she would see men. (Laughter). She sees men now. In "Cranford Village," that sweet little sketch by Mrs. Gaskill, one of the characters says, "I know these men--my father was a man."
(Laughter). I think every woman can say the same. She meets men now; she could meet nothing but men at the ballot-box, or, if she meets brutes, they ought not to be there. (Applause). Indelicate for her to go to the ballot-box!--but you may walk up and down Broadway any time from nine o"clock in the morning until nine at night, and you will find about equal numbers of men and women crowding that thoroughfare, which is never still. You may get into an omnibus--women are there, crowding us out, sometimes.
(Laughter). You can not go into a theater without being crowded to death by two women to one man. If you go to the lyceum, woman is there. I have stood on this very platform, and seen as many women as men before me, and one time, at least, when they could not have met any worse men at the ballot-box than they met in this hall. (Laughter and applause). You may go to church, and you will find her facing men of all cla.s.ses--ignorant and wise, saints and sinners. I do not know anywhere that woman is not. It is too late now to say that she can not go to the ballot-box. Go back to Turkey, and shut her up in a harem; go back to Greece, and shut her up in the private apartments of women; go back to the old Oriental phases of civilization, that never allowed woman"s eyes to light a man"s pathway, unless he owned her, and you are consistent; but you see, we have broken down the bulwark, centuries ago. You know they used to let a man be hung in public, and said that it was for the sake of the example. They got ashamed of it, and banished the gallows to the jail-yard, and allowed only twelve men to witness an execution. It is too late to say that you hang men for the example, because the example you are ashamed to have public can not be a wholesome example. So it is with this question of woman. You have granted so much, that you have left yourselves no ground to stand on. My dear, delicate friend, you are out of your sphere; you ought to be in Turkey. My dear, religiously, scrupulously fashionable, exquisitely anxious hearer, fearful lest your wife, or daughter, or sister shall be sullied by looking into your neighbors" faces at the ballot-box, you do not belong to the century that has ballot-boxes. You belong to the century of Tamerlane and Timour the Tartar; you belong to China, where the women have no feet, because it is not meant that they shall walk. You belong anywhere but in America; and if you want an answer, walk down Broadway, and meet a hundred thousand petticoats, and they are a hundred thousand answers; for if woman can walk the streets, she can go to the ballot-box, and any reason of indelicacy that forbids the one covers the other.
Men say, "Why do you come here? What good are you going to do?
You do nothing but talk." Oh, yes, we have done a great deal besides talk! But suppose we had done nothing but talk? I saw a poor man the other day, and said he (speaking of a certain period in his life), "I felt very friendless and alone--I had only G.o.d with me"; and he seemed to think that was not much. And so thirty millions of thinking, reading people are constantly throwing it in the teeth of reformers that they rely upon talk! What is talk?
Why, it is the representative of brains. And what is the characteristic glory of the nineteenth century? That it is ruled by brains, and not by muscle; that rifles are gone by, and ideas have come in; and, of course, in such an era, talk is the fountain-head of all things. But we have done a great deal. In the first place, you will meet dozens of men who say, "Oh, woman"s right to property, the right of the wife to her own earnings, we grant that; we always thought that; we have had that idea for a dozen years." I met a man the other day in the cars, and we read the statute of your New York Legislature. "Why," said he, "that is nothing; I have a.s.sented to that for these fifteen years." All I could say to that was this: "This agitation has either given you the idea, or it has given you the courage to utter it, for n.o.body ever heard it from you until to-day." ...
What do we toil for? Why, my friends, I do not care much whether a woman actually goes to the ballot-box and votes--that is a slight matter; and I shall not wait, either, to know whether every woman in this audience wants to vote. Some of you were saying to-day, in these very seats, coming here out of mere curiosity, to see what certain fanatics could find to say, "Why, I don"t want any more rights; I have got rights enough." Many a lady, whose husband is what he ought to be, whose father is what fathers ought to be, feeling no want unsupplied, is ready to say, "I have all the rights I want." So the daughter of Louis Sixteenth, in the troublous time of 1791, when somebody told her that the people were starving in the streets of Paris, exclaimed, "What fools! I would eat bread first!" Thus wealth, comfort, and ease say, "I have rights enough." n.o.body doubted it, madam! But the question is not of you; the question is of some houseless wife of a drunkard; the question is of some ground-down daughter of toil, whose earnings are filched from her by the rum debts of a selfishness which the law makes to have a right over her, in the person of a husband. The question is not of you, it is of some friendless woman of twenty, standing at the door of the world, educated, capable, desirous of serving her time and her race, and saying, "Where shall I use these talents? How shall I earn bread?" And orthodox society, cabined and cribbed in St.
Paul, cries out, "Go sew, jade! We have no other channel for you.
Go to the needle, or wear yourself to death as a school-mistress." We come here to endeavor to convince you, and so to shape our inst.i.tutions that public opinion, following in the wake, shall be willing to open channels for the agreeable and profitable occupation of women as much as for men. People blame the shirt-makers and tailors because they pay two cents where they ought to pay fifty. It is not their fault. They are nothing but the weatherc.o.c.ks, and society is the wind. Trade does not grow out of the Sermon on the Mount; merchants never have any hearts, they have only ledgers; two per cent. a month is their Sermon on the Mount, and a balance on the wrong side of the ledger is their demonstration. (Laughter). n.o.body finds fault with them for it. Everything according to the law of its life. A man pays as much for making shirts or coats as it is necessary to pay, and he would be a fool and a bankrupt if he paid any more.
He needs only a hundred workwomen; there are a thousand women standing at his door saying, "Give us work; and if it is worth ten cents to do it, we will do it for two"; and a hundred get the work, and nine hundred are turned into the street, to drag down this city into the pit that it deserves. (Loud applause).
Now, what is the remedy? To take that tailor by the throat, and gibbet him in _The New York Tribune_? Not at all; it does the women no good, and he does not deserve it. I will tell you what is to be done. Behind the door at which those women stand asking for work, on one side stands an orthodox disciple of St. Paul, and on the other a dainty exquisite; and the one says, it is not religious, and the other says, it is not fashionable, for woman to be anything but a drudge. Now, strangle the one in his own creed, and smother the other in his own perfumes, and give to those thousand women freedom to toil. Let public opinion only grant that, like their thousand brothers, those thousand women may go out, and wherever they find work to do, do it, without a stigma being set upon them. Let the educated girl of twenty have the same liberty to use the pen, to practice law, to write books, to attend the telegraph, to go into the artist"s studio, to serve in a library, to tend in a gallery of art, to do anything that her brother can do. St. Paul is dead and rotten, and ought to be forgotten--(Applause, laughter, and a few hisses)--so far as this doctrine goes, mark you! for his is the n.o.blest figure in all history, except that of Christ, the broadest and most masterly intellect of any age; but he was a Jew and not a Christian; he lived under Jewish civilization and not ours, and was speaking by his own light, and not by inspiration of G.o.d.
This is all we claim; and we claim the ballot for this reason; the moment you give woman power, that moment men will see to it that she has the way cleared for her. There are two sources of power: one is civil, the ballot; the other is physical, the rifle. I do not believe that the upper cla.s.ses--education, wealth, aristocracy, conservatism--the men that are in--ever yielded, except to fear. I think the history of the race shows that the upper cla.s.ses never granted a privilege to the lower out of love. As Jeremy Bentham says, "The upper cla.s.ses never yielded a privilege without being bullied out of it." When man rises in revolution, with the sword in his right hand, trembling wealth and conservatism say, "What do you want? Take it; but grant me my life." The Duke of Tuscany, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has told us, swore to a dozen const.i.tutions when the Tuscans stood armed in the streets of Florence, and he forgot them when the Austrians came in and took the rifles out of the Tuscans" hands. You must force the upper cla.s.ses to do justice by physical or some other power. The age of physical power is gone, and we want to put ballots into the hands of women....
Political economy puts in every man"s hand, by the labor of half a day, money enough to be drunk a week. There is one temptation, dragging down the possibility of self-government into the pit of imbruted humanity; and on the other side, is that hideous problem of modern civilized life--prost.i.tution--born of orthodox scruples and aristocratic fastidiousness--born of that fastidious denial of the right of woman to choose her own work, and, like her brother, to satiate her ambition, her love of luxury, her love of material gratifications, by fair wages for fair work. As long as you deny it, as long as the pulpit covers with its fastidious orthodoxy this question from the consideration of the public, it is but a concealed brothel, although it calls itself an orthodox pulpit. (Applause and hisses). I know what I say; your hisses can not change it. Go, clean out the Gehenna of New York! (Applause).
Go, sweep the Augean stable that makes New York the lazar-house of corruption! You know that on one side or the other of these temptations lies very much of the evil of modern civilized life.
You know that before them, statesmanship folds its hands in despair. Here is a method by which to take care of at least one.
Give men fair wages, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will disdain to steal. The way to prevent dishonesty is to let every man have a field for his work, and honest wages; the way to prevent licentiousness is to give to woman"s capacity free play.
Give to the higher powers activity, and they will choke down the animal. The man who loves thinking, disdains to be the victim of appet.i.te. It is a law of our nature. Give a hundred women honest wages for capacity and toil, and ninety-nine out of the hundred will disdain to win it by vice. _That_ is a cure for licentiousness. (Applause).
I wish to put into our civil life the element of woman"s right to shape the laws, for all our social life copies largely from the statute-book. Let woman dictate at the capital, let her say to Wall Street, "My votes on finance are to make stocks rise and fall," and Wall Street will say to Columbia College, "Open your cla.s.ses to woman; it needs be that she should learn." The moment you give her the ballot, you take bonds of wealth and fashion and conservatism, that they will educate this power, which is holding their interest in its right hand. I want to spike the gun of selfishness; or rather, I want to double-shot the cannon of selfishness. Let Wall Street say, "Look you! whether the New York Central stock shall have a toll placed upon it, whether my million shares shall be worth sixty cents in the market or eighty, depends upon whether certain women up there at Albany know the laws of trade and the secrets of political economy"--and Wall Street will say, "Get out of the way, Dr. Adams!--absent yourself, Dr. Spring!--we don"t care for Jewish prejudices; these women must have education!" (Loud applause). Show me the necessity in civil life, and I will find you forty thousand pulpits that will say St. Paul meant just that. (Renewed applause). Now, I am orthodox; I believe in the Bible; I reverence St. Paul; I believe his was the most masterly intellect that G.o.d ever gave to the race; I believe he was the connecting link, the bridge, by which the Asiatic and European mind were joined; I believe that Plato ministers at his feet; but, after all, he was a man, and not G.o.d. (Applause). He was limited, and made mistakes. You can not anchor this western continent to the Jewish footstool of St. Paul; and, after all, that is the difficulty--religious prejudice. It is not fashion--we shall beat it; it is not the fastidiousness of the exquisite--we shall smother it; it is the religious prejudice, borrowed from a mistaken interpretation of the New Testament. That is the real Gibraltar with which we are to grapple, and my argument with that is simply this: You left it when you founded a republic; you left it when you inaugurated Western civilization; we must grow out of one root.
Let me, in closing, show you, by one single anecdote, how mean a thing a man can be. You have heard of Mrs. Norton, "the woman Byron," as critics call her--the granddaughter of Sheridan, and the one on whose shoulders his mantle has rested--a genius by right of inheritance and by G.o.d"s own gift. Perhaps you may remember that when the Tories wanted to break down the reform administration of Lord Melbourne, they brought her husband to feign to believe his wife unfaithful, and to sue her before a jury. He did so, brought an action, and an English jury said she was innocent; and his own counsel has since admitted, in writing, under his own signature, that during the time he prosecuted that trial, the Honorable Mr. Norton (for so he is in the Herald"s Book) confessed all the time that he did not believe a word against his wife, and knew she was innocent. She is a writer. The profits of her books, by the law of England, belong to her husband. She has not lived with him--of course not, for she is a woman!--since that trial; but the brute goes every six months to John Murray, and eats the profits of the brain of the wife whom he tried to disgrace. (Loud cries of "shame," "shame"). And the law of England says it is right; the orthodox pulpit says, "If you change it, it will be the pulling down of the stars and St.
Paul." I do not believe that the Honorable Mr. Norton is half as near to the mind of St. Paul as the Honorable Mrs. Norton. I go, therefore, for woman having her right to her brain, to her hands, to her toil, to her ballot. "The tools to him that can use them"--and let G.o.d settle the rest. If He made it just that we should have democratic inst.i.tutions, then He made it just that everybody who is to suffer under the law should have a voice in making it; and if it is indelicate for woman to vote, then let Him stop making women (applause and laughter), because republicanism and such women are not consistent. I say it reverently; and I only say it to show you the absurdity. Why, my dear man and woman, we are not to help G.o.d govern the world by telling lies! He can take care of it Himself. If He made it just, you may be certain that He saw to it that it should be delicate; and you need not insert your little tiny roots of fastidious delicacy into the great giant rifts of G.o.d"s world--they are only in the way. (Applause).
The first evening session was called to order at 7-1/2 o"clock. The President in the chair. The audience was very large, the hall being uncomfortably full, and the attention unremitting and profound. The most excellent order was preserved; the meeting, in this respect, furnishing a marked and gratifying contrast with the evening sessions of the last two years at Mozart Hall.
Mrs. Rose, from the Business Committee, presented a series of resolutions[167], which were read by Miss Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the first speaker of the evening. By particular request she gave the same address recently delivered before the Legislature at Albany, and was followed by Ernestine L. Rose with one of her logical and convincing arguments.
Susan B. Anthony then read the following letters:
LETTER FROM HON. GERRIT SMITH.
PETERBORO, _May 3, 1860_.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON:
MY VERY DEAR COUSIN:--It is proper that one of the first letters which I write in my new life, should be to the cousin whose views are most in harmony with my own. I call it my new life, because I have come up into it from the gates of death. May it prove a new life also, in being a far better and n.o.bler one than that which I had hitherto lived!
I wake up with joy to see my old fellow-laborers still in their work of honoring G.o.d, in benefiting and blessing man. Your own zeal for truth is unabated. I see that you are still laboring to free the slave from his chains, and woman from her social, civil, and political disabilities; and to preserve both man and woman from defiling and debasing themselves with intoxicating liquors and tobacco. Precious reforms are these which have enlisted your powers! It is true that they do not cover the whole ground of religious duty. But it is also true that the religion, which, like the current one, opposes or ignores them all, is spurious; and so, too, that the religion which opposes or ignores any one of them is always sadly defective, if not always spurious.
Please add the inclosed draft for $25 to the fund for serving the cause of woman"s rights. To no better cause can money, time, or talents be appropriated. I am in high, health, compared with any I have enjoyed since the succession of my frightful diseases, begun two and a half years ago. My nerves, however, are still weak, and most of the year 1859 is still full of confusion and darkness to me.
Your friend and cousin, GERRIT SMITH.
LETTER FROM FRANCIS JACKSON, ESQ.
BOSTON, _May 6, 1860_.
LUCY STONE:
DEAR FRIEND:--I intend to be at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, but my engagements are such that I shall not stop long enough in New York to attend your meeting of Woman"s Rights. I herewith inclose you $20 to help the cause along.
FRANCIS JACKSON.
Hon. Erastus D. Culver, of Brooklyn, New York, being present among that portion of the audience seated upon the platform, was recognized and loudly called for, and came forward in response to the call, and spoke as follows:
Mrs. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN:--They used to have, in old times, in the country where I was brought up, a minister, who, after delivering his sermon, would call upon some brother to get up and make the application. Now, I want to give you an application of what I have heard to-night, and there seems to be a sort of providence in it. This very day, since I opened my court this morning, three cases have come in review before me, each one of them directly connected with the subject matter of this evening"s deliberations, and with the law which has been alluded to to-night. The first was the case of a woman who had brought a suit, in conjunction with her husband (as she had to do, as the law was) against the city of Brooklyn, for personal injuries, received by falling into a hole; and on the first trial, it was found very difficult to make out the case, because we were obliged to exclude the woman as a witness. If her husband had fallen into that hole, and hurt his side, making him a cripple for life, he might have brought a suit, and he would have been by law a competent witness: but his wife was not; and as he was not with her at the time of the accident, of course he could not testify. To-day the case came on again, and they were making a very poor show at proving the accident, when the lawyer for the lady said, "I will offer the lady as a witness." The other lawyer started up (he is an old fogy, who does not keep up with the times) and said, "She is a party out of sight in law; in law, she is one of the invisibles"; when, to my great surprise and joy (for I had lost track of it myself) the lady"s lawyer pulled out from his pocket a slip from a newspaper, which contained the n.o.ble law of the 20th of March, 1860, and that law says that "any married woman may bring and maintain an action in her own name for damages against any person or body corporate for any injury to her person or character." That obviated the difficulty. The law was handed to the opposite lawyer, and when he had read it through, with a frown on his face, he said, ill-naturedly, "If your honor please, it is so; they have emanc.i.p.ated the women from all obligations to their husbands." Now, just look at that old presumption of the law, that a married woman could not tell the truth, even in a matter about which she knew better than any one else, on the ground that she was a _feme covert_, and was _nil_--nothing!
That was one case. Another was that of a woman who made a bitter complaint against her husband, saying that he had become a drunkard, and was squandering her estate, and threatened to take their two children away. I signed the writ, and the husband and two children were brought in. He addressed the Court in his own defence, and I have not heard such eloquence in court for many a year. He told how he loved his wife, how devoted he was, and that it would ruin him for ever to be separated from her. He said to his lawyer, "Do you keep still; I can talk better than you can." "Now," said he to the Court, "I adjure you, by the feelings of a father and a man, restore to me my wife and children! Do not disgrace me in this way!" All present were deeply affected, and it seemed as if he had carried the people with him, whether he had the Court or not. His speech sounded admirably; but I am sorry to say, that when his wife"s turn came, she had not spoken five minutes before she had taken the wind entirely out of his sails. "I was married," she said, "eleven years ago, and not a fortnight after, he beat me, and left his bruises upon me. He has p.a.w.ned all my clothes, everything I have in the house has been pledged, and I am left dest.i.tute; and here, your honor, are the wounds upon my head, here are the bruises that he has left. I can not live with him any longer; I can not be reconciled, until he abjures rum and comes home resolved to live a sober life."
"Well," said the husband"s lawyer, "we claim our paramount rights--that the father shall have the custody of the children."
Then came up this very law again, and this lawyer was as much surprised as the one to whom I first referred. There is a clause in that law which declares that, from this time forward, there shall be no such thing as "paramount rights." It is declared in that statute that from this day "every married woman is const.i.tuted and declared to be the joint guardian of her children, with equal powers, rights, and duties in regard to them, with her husband." In view of that law, I said, "I can not take the children away from the mother; she has just as much right to them as her husband, and if she says she must have them, I will let her have them." (Loud applause).
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have never been identified with this Woman"s Rights movement, but I tell you what it is, we have got to admit some things. We have got to admit that these indefatigable laborers, amid obloquy and reproach, in Church and State, by buffoons and by men, have at last set the under-current in motion. The statute-book is their vindication to-night. The last measure pa.s.sed has relieved woman, to a great extent, from the disabilities under which she was placed. I am one who believes that she may go forward. There will come a time, friends, when we shall see the ballot-box open, and one particular department (as we have at the post-office) where the ladies will all march up and vote. (Applause, and a few hisses).
Now, you men that hiss, you would like to have them help you elect your candidate this year, wouldn"t you? I wish most sincerely that they could help elect our Republican candidate.
(Applause). There is to be a still further advance in this matter. I do not think it at all degrading to say, that there will come a time when ladies will sit in the jury-box, to pa.s.s upon certain cases that come particularly within their sphere; and I will say (now that I am off the bench) that they would make better judges than some who are on the benches now. (Laughter and applause).
Mrs. ROSE added: I have been most happy to hear the remarks of Judge Culver. Who can doubt of our success, when judges, and n.o.ble ones, too--for it is only n.o.ble ones who are ready to identify themselves with this cause before it becomes fully successful--come forward to endorse our movement! All we now have to do is, to continue in the good cause, and, depend upon it, the time will come when we shall look back to this last spring"s enactment of the Legislature, as the commencement of the real "good time coming." But we have yet some duties to perform. What we have gained, has not been gained without labor. Freedom, my friends, does not come from the clouds, like a meteor; it does not bloom in one night; it does not come without great efforts and great sacrifices; all who love liberty, have to labor for it.
We expect that from this hour, you will all help us to work out that glorious problem, whether or not woman can govern herself quite as well as man can govern her. Give us the elective franchise, and we ask for no more. When we have obtained that, it shall be our fault if we do not take all the rights we now claim.
(Applause).
ELIZABETH JONES said: The adoption of the plans now proposed would place woman above the necessity of any mercenary marriages.
She could leave her father"s home if she didn"t like it, and engage in business and support herself. Who cared for the husband of Jenny Lind, or of Mrs. Norton? It was not necessary for Florence Nightingale, Harriet Hosmer, or Elizabeth Blackwell to marry to secure the world"s consideration. The wife should have equal and joint proprietorship with her husband. Two brothers, John and Henry, go to California and form a partnership; John cooks while Henry digs. Henry finds one day a lump of gold worth a hundred dollars. Will he pay John fifty cents for cooking, and take the rest himself? Of course not; he will divide with him. So the husband should regard the property that he acc.u.mulates as owned by his wife jointly and equally with himself. Woman would have her rights, let man do what he might. She asked no rights from man, for man had none to give her--none to spare from himself. Satan promised Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, if He would fall down and worship him; but it was well known that the poor devil had not a foot to give. And so man could give no rights to woman. She was born with rights, and only wanted man to recognize them. Her purpose was to demand them persistently, or, if need be, like the Prince of Orange, die in the last ditch before she surrendered them. (Applause).
Rev. Samuel Longfellow, of Brooklyn, N. Y., brother of the poet, was next introduced, and spoke as follows:
Mrs. PRESIDENT:--It might seem, that on a platform like this, when a woman speaks, her presence is not merely a plea and an argument, but also a proof. When a woman speaks, and speaks well, speaks so as to interest and move and persuade men, there is no need of any argument back of that to prove that she has the liberty and the right, and that it is a part of her sphere to do it. She has done it; and that of itself is the whole argument--both premise and conclusion in one. And I think if there were none but men present here, it would be better that only women should speak; for there is a subtle power which G.o.d implanted from the first in woman over man, so that the thought of her mind and the tone of her voice are more powerful over us than almost any man, be he eloquent as he may; but not only men are here, but women, also; and as our friend who has just spoken has addressed herself to men, I will address myself to women.
I have often thought that the obstacle in the way of a full allowance and recognition of woman"s right to stand side by side with man in all the departments of life, and to add her feminine influence and fiber twined in with man"s influence and fiber, in all things that are thought and done, that the obstacle lay more in woman than in man. I have often thought that men were more willing to accept these ideas and grant these claims than women were even to make the claims for themselves; and I have no doubt that those women who have labored, through so much difficulty, through so much scorn and obloquy, in behalf of these simple rights, will tell you that they have often found the greatest opposition among their own s.e.x.
The simple proposition which, it seems to me, includes the whole of this matter, is, what I should call a self-evident truth--that, in all departments of life, men and women, made from the first to be co-mates and partners, should stand side by side, and work hand to hand. Not because men and women are identical, not because they are not different, but because they are different; because each has a special quality running through the whole organization of the man and the woman, which quality is needed to make a complete manhood and womanhood. And then there is another proposition, which is this: that whatever any human being can do well, that being has a right to do, and the ability of any person marks the sphere of that person. ("Hear"--"hear").
This, I say, I count to be strictly a self-evident proposition.
(Applause). If you want to know what the level of water is at any particular spot upon the face of the earth, you do not force the water up with a force-pump, you do not build a great reservoir with high stone walls, to hold it, you simply leave it alone, and it finds its level. So, if you want to know what is the true sphere of man or woman, just leave the man or the woman alone, and the natural law, and the divine law, which can not be broken, and which are as sure in the moral and human world as they are in the external world, will settle the matter. If you want to know, really and sincerely, what woman"s sphere is, leave her unhampered and untrammeled, and her own powers will find that sphere. She may make mistakes, and try, as man often does, to do things which she can not, but the experiment will settle the matter; and nothing can be more absurd than for man, especially, _a priori_, to establish the limits which shall bound woman"s sphere, or for woman, as a mere matter of speculation, to debate what her sphere shall be, since the natural laws are revealed, not to speculation, but to action.
The obstacle to the progress of the simple ideas which underlie this movement and to their being carried out into practice, I take to be nothing else than this--the _vis inertiae_ of prejudice, the dead-weight of the customary and familiar--that which has been; and that is simply the dead-weight which hangs upon the wheels of every movement of reform. A thing has not not been, it is not customary, it is strange, it disturbs our ordinary modes of thought, and we will have nothing to do with it. When you are driving with your carriage along the track of the horse-railroad, your wheels run very smoothly; but if you are obliged to turn out, it wrenches the wheels and jars your carriage; and the deeper the ruts, the more disturbance and trouble will you have if you are obliged to move out of them. We all move in the ruts of habit and custom; and it disturbs and troubles us to be asked to move out of them--to do or think anything unusual. This _vis inertiae_ is what stands in the way, first and most of all, of the success of this movement, of the reception of these ideas, as of every other movement of reform.
And this dead-weight of prejudice, this _vis inertiae_ of old and traditional thought, is concentrated in this phrase, uttered with tones of indifference or with tones of self-satisfaction and pride, "I think, for my part, that woman"s sphere is home." This phrase you hear everywhere--in the parlors, in the streets, in conventions, and in pulpits, and read in books--"Woman"s sphere is home!" (Applause). "Well, is it not?" some one asks among you, perhaps. Now, I have no desire to deny that the home is for woman, as for man, the most n.o.ble sphere of life. I am sure that there is not one who will stand upon this platform, or speak or write in this cause, who will deny that; not one but will declare that they count home a sacred and n.o.ble sphere for woman, as for man--a sphere for grand and high influence, for n.o.ble consecration and devoted work; whether it be the simple duties of housekeeping, which a high and cultivated soul can make beautiful by the spirit in which they are done--or whether it be the care of children and the training up of the youthful mind into n.o.ble thought and preparation for n.o.ble action, which is a sphere so high, that none of us, perhaps, know how high it is--or whether it be as the friend and comforter, encourager and inspirer, to all things n.o.ble in thought and grand in action, of man. But if home be the sphere of woman--as none of us deny or doubt for a moment--if it be a sphere for woman high and n.o.ble, and to some altogether sufficient to bound their capacities and bound their desires, it is also a sphere for man--a sphere which he altogether too much neglects, not knowing how high and n.o.ble it is, and that his duty lies at home, however much he ignores it, with his wife and with his children. But when it is said that home is woman"s only sphere--and that is what is meant--it is simply a mistake; it is simply a narrow statement. Take the very woman who says this. As she pa.s.ses along the street, she sees a placard for a Woman"s Rights meeting, and with scornful lip she says, "I think woman"s sphere is home"--and goes promenading up and down the street to meet acquaintances, and spends all the morning in shopping--because woman"s sphere is home! (Applause and laughter). And after dinner, she says to her husband, "Where shall we go this evening?" "I think we will go to the opera," he says; and so she leaves the children with the servant, and spends half the night at the opera, because woman"s sphere is home!
(Laughter). On Sunday she goes to church morning and evening, because woman"s sphere is home! and during the week goes to concerts and lectures and b.a.l.l.s, perhaps, because woman"s sphere is home! This is the answer to be given to all those who claim that woman can do nothing but attend to household affairs, or to those duties which are called especially the duties of home. No woman attends to these utterly. No woman need neglect the duties of home in order to fulfill duties in a wider sphere. It takes as much time to sit and hear a lecture as to stand and deliver it; to sit and hear a concert as to stand before the audience and sing. There is time enough, and if one has a talent for either, that is the sphere for him or her.
But when this claim is made that woman"s sphere is at home, it is quite forgotten how many women there are who have not imposed upon them the cares of a home; what numbers there are who are not at the head of families; what numbers there are who have not these domestic ties to call upon them for effort; and it is also forgotten how many there are who can not possibly always remain at home, because upon their going forth depends the getting of the money that shall provide for the wants of the home--that shall bring the clothing and the bread that are to supply the home"s outward wants. To do this, these women must go from their homes; and oh! hundreds and thousands of working-women in this city are women whose sphere can not be home alone. It is upon this ground that there is pressed home upon us the consideration of the demands for a wider sphere of work for woman, that she shall not be cut off from this and that means of getting a living, which are freely opened to man, but from which woman is excluded, through prejudices and fears. Let the wide sphere of work be opened to woman, that she may select from it, just as man does, whatever her strength and skill are sufficient for her to accomplish. She is not to be shut up, it is claimed, and justly, to a few poor, small, and wretchedly-paid employments, by which she can, with her own hands and skill, gain a living, but is to be allowed and encouraged to open to herself every variety of employment wherein she shall be paid an equal sum with that which man is paid for doing the same work; a claim which has been too long ignored and set aside, but which will press itself until its manifest justice shall compel its admission. The woman who has not the care of a family is to be encouraged to expand her powers, her talents, and genius, and to apply them to the purpose of securing a livelihood, without any obstacle whatever being put in the way; for when we talk of man"s sphere and woman"s sphere, it is all a farce. There is no one sphere fitted for all men, any more than for all women. Some men can not make good business men, and must fail if they try; and some men can not possibly write books, or preach, or speak in public, and must fail if they try.
They do not try, because they have wisdom enough to know that they could not succeed. So it will be with women. People commonly think, that if you grant this claim of woman"s right to make her own sphere, that all women will immediately rush into public speaking, and be crowding to the platform, or into the pulpit, or writing books, or carving statues, or painting pictures. There is not the slightest danger of that. Of course, if either of these is the true sphere of any woman, she ought to go there; but those who have not a talent for these things will not try them.
If the right to vote was granted to woman--from which I do not see how we can escape--I do not suppose that all women would go to the polls, for I know that many men do not, although they have much to say about the great privilege which every man enjoys, of having a voice in the government, and the responsibility of a voter. Things would remain much as now if to-morrow every obstacle were removed from woman"s path. Only gradually would the change occur, as individual after individual found larger room for action than that in which she is now pent. As this discussion has been going on, woman after woman has been enlarging the sphere allowed her. Women write admirable books, paint admirable pictures, chisel admirable statues, make most excellent and well-instructed physicians. Women are doing everything which it is now claimed they have the right to do, except voting, which they are not yet permitted to do; and I am not sure, in regard to that, that the best plan would not be, as our Platonic friend in New England once said, for the women to go quietly and vote, without waiting to be asked or told that they would be permitted to do so. To be sure, he said, their votes could not be counted, but there they would be, and they would have their force. He thought that the moral influence of those votes would go a great ways, and it is quite possible that they would have that effect.
But I hope, whether in that way or some other--perhaps before that step is taken--men will be led to see, that in the sphere of politics, as well as in the sphere of literature and art, woman"s influence is needed; and all the objections that are made to woman"s voting are of the most trivial character, that would not stand a day before any serious desire that she should have her simple right in this matter, so far as she chooses to claim it.
And her right lies simply in these old propositions, so dear to our fathers--upon which they stood and fought an eight years"
war--"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and that "all just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed." And there is nothing in these two propositions which confines their application to man; there is nothing in them which does not demand that woman should be included as well as man.
Wherever woman is taxed, she has a right to vote, by this fundamental principle of our government; and wherever she is legislated for and governed, she is ent.i.tled to a voice in that legislation and government.