Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
The question of Woman's Rights is a practical one. The notion has
prevailed that it was only an ephemeral idea; that it was but
women claiming the right to smoke cigars in the streets, and to
frequent bar-rooms. Others have supposed it a question of
comparative intellect; others still, of sphere. Too much has
already been said and written about woman's sphere. Trace all the
doctrines to their source and they will be found to have no basis
except in the usages and prejudices of the age. This is seen in
the fact that what is tolerated in woman in one country is not
tolerated in another. In this country women may hold
prayer-meetings, etc., but in Mohammedan countries it is written
upon their mosques, "Women and dogs, and other impure animals,
are not permitted to enter." Wendell Phillips says, "The best and
greatest thing one is capable of doing, that is his sphere." I
have confidence in the Father to believe that when He gives us
the capacity to do anything He does not make a blunder. Leave
women, then, to find their sphere. And do not tell us before we
are born even, that our province is to cook dinners, darn
stockings, and sew on buttons. We are told woman has all the
rights she wants; and even women, I am ashamed to say, tell us
so. They mistake the politeness of men for rights--seats while
men stand in this hall to-night, and their adulations; but these
are mere courtesies. We want rights. The flour-merchant, the
house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of
our sex; but when we endeavor to earn money to pay all these,
then, indeed, we find the difference. Man, if he have energy, may
hew out for himself a path where no mortal has ever trod, held
back by nothing but what is in himself; the world is all before
him, where to choose; and we are glad for you, brothers, men,
that it is so. But the same society that drives forth the young
man, keeps woman at home--a dependent--working little cats on
worsted, and little dogs on punctured paper; but if she goes
heartily and bravely to give herself to some worthy purpose, she
is out of her sphere and she loses caste. Women working in
tailor-shops are paid one-third as much as men. Some one in
Philadelphia has stated that women make fine shirts for twelve
and a half cents apiece; that no woman can make more than nine a
week, and the sum thus earned, after deducting rent, fuel, etc.,
leaves her just three and a half cents a day for bread. Is it a
wonder that women are driven to prostitution? Female teachers in
New York are paid fifty dollars a year, and for every such
situation there are five hundred applicants. I know not what you
believe of God, but I believe He gave yearnings and longings to
be filled, and that He did not mean all our time should be
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