"Don't think," says I, "that I go against female progress, or would stop its infinite capabilities--far from it. There are questions mixed up with this subject that ought to have our warmest sympathy and most ardent help. Female labor is one of them, and in that lies the greatest moral question of these times. "When a woman finds herself doing the work nature carved out for her, with a man crowding her out, doing no more, yet getting double pay, only because he happens to be a man, it is a burning shame and disgrace to both sexes. If that injustice can't be swept away by fair means, I go in for trying any that a female woman can handle without bringing herself down to a level with the males who seem to be as sick of being men as some of our sex are of being women. "Still, it seems to me that the best way of doing this is by such appeals for justice as have brought the women of New York State more freedom than they know what to do with. At this day there is no legal slavery for any woman in the great Empire State. The fact is, the women there have got their feet on the necks of the men. But this don't satisfy them, and they are all the time crying out for more, as the Scripture says, like the leeches--which is a passage of Scripture that I never have quite understood, because leeches in our day suck your _blood_ without asking, and I never yet heard of one who went farther than a bite in the way of crying out. "Excuse me," says I, drawing breath, "if I sometimes digress, and turn down a Scripture path in search of scientific truth or illustration. I was saying that a woman in New York State is to all intents and purposes master of herself--herself and husband too. If she has money when a poor fellow marries her, it is all her own to do with as she has a mind to, just as much as if she had never been married at all. But he has to support her, anyway, keep up the house, pay all the bills, settle her debts, if she is mean enough to make them, and she can be hoarding up her own money all the time, while he has no more right to touch a cent of it than the man in the moon. "More than this; when he dies, she comes in for a full third of his real estate for life, and has half his personal property, to sell, give away, or do with as she pleases. If _she_ dies, he cannot touch a red cent. Then, again, she can sell all the real estate that belongs to her, without so much as asking his advice, but he cannot sell an acre or a wood-shed, and give a clear title, without her written name to the deed. Then, again, if he earns money, the law makes him support her; if she earns money, he has no right to a cent of it.