Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
devoted to feeding and clothing the body. The present condition
of woman causes a horrible perversion of the marriage relation.
It is asked of a lady, "Has she married well?" "Oh, yes, her
husband is rich." Woman must marry for a home, and you men are
the sufferers by this; for a woman who loathes you may marry you
because you have the means to get money which she can not have.
But when woman can enter the lists with you and make money for
herself, she will marry you only for deep and earnest affection.
I am detaining you too long, many of you standing, that I ought
to apologize, but women have been wronged so long that I may
wrong you a little. (Applause). A woman undertook in Lowell to
sell shoes to ladies. Men laughed at her, but in six years she
has run them all out, and has a monopoly of the trade. Sarah
Tyndale, whose husband was an importer of china, and died
bankrupt, continued his business, paid off his debts, and has
made a fortune and built the largest china warehouse in the
world. (Mrs. Mott here corrected Lucy. Mrs. Tyndale has not the
largest china warehouse, but the largest assortment of china in
the world). Mrs. Tyndale, herself, drew the plan of her
warehouse, and it is the best plan ever drawn. A laborer to whom
the architect showed it, said: "Don't she know e'en as much as
some men?" I have seen a woman at manual labor turning out
chair-legs in a cabinet-shop, with a dress short enough not to
drag in the shavings. I wish other women would imitate her in
this. It made her hands harder and broader, it is true, but I
think a hand with a dollar and a quarter a day in it, better than
one with a crossed ninepence. The men in the shop didn't use
tobacco, nor swear--they can't do those things where there are
women, and we owe it to our brothers to go wherever they work to
keep them decent. The widening of woman's sphere is to improve
her lot. Let us do it, and if the world scoff, let it scoff--if
it sneer, let it sneer--but we will go on emulating the example
of the sisters Grimke and Abby Kelly. When they first lectured
against slavery they were not listened to as respectfully as you
listen to us. So the first female physician meets many
difficulties, but to the next the path will be made easy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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