Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
In case a man receives a trifle from a departed friend or any
other source, the wife's signature is not required. Recently a
poor man left his daughter twenty dollars, of which her husband
allowed her ten, retaining the remainder for acknowledging its
receipt. It was probably the only ten dollars the woman ever
received, except for her own exertions, which were constantly
required to supply the necessities of her family, her husband
being very intemperate and abusive, often pulling her by the ears
so as to cause the blood to flow freely.
No bodily pain, however intense, can compare with the mental
suffering which we witness and experience, and which would long
since have filled our Insane Asylums to overflowing, were it not
for the unceasing drudgery to which we are subjected, in order to
save ourselves and families from starvation.
Often does the drunkard bestow upon his wife from one to a dozen
children to rear and support until old enough to render her a
little assistance, when they are compelled to seek service in
order to clothe themselves decently, and often are their
earnings, with those of their mother, appropriated to pay for
rum, tobacco, gambling, and other vices. "Say not that we
exaggerate these evils; neither tongue nor pen can do it!" says
the unfortunate wife of a man whose moral character, so far as
she knew, was unimpeachable, but who proved to be an insufferable
tyrant, depriving her of the necessaries of life, and often
ordering her out of the house which her friends provided for them
to live in, using the most abusive epithets which ingenuity, or
the want of it, could suggest. Intemperance degraded the
character of the man with whom she lived as long as apprehensions
for the safety of her life would warrant; from the fact that her
health was rapidly failing under the severity and deprivation to
which she was subjected, and the repeated threats of violence to
her own life and that of her friends. "But one step farther and
you drive us to desperation! Sooner would I pour out my heart's
blood, drop by drop, than suffer again what I have hitherto
experienced, or that my female friends should suffer as I have
done, and I know that many of them do. Yet, neither sacrifice,
sympathy, argument, or influence can avail us anything under
existing circumstances."
Such an appeal from helpless, down-trodden humanity, though it
were made to a council of the most benighted North American
savages, would not pass unheeded. Shall it be made in vain to
you?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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