Teachers' conventions, however, were only a minor part of her new crusade, plans for which were still simmering in her mind and developing from day to day. Going back to many of the towns where she had held temperance meetings, she found that most of the societies she had organized had disbanded because women lacked the money to engage speakers or to subscribe to temperance papers. If they were married, they had no money of their own and no right to any interest outside their homes, unless their husbands consented. Discouraged, she wrote in her diary, "As I passed from town to town I was made to feel the great evil of woman's entire dependency upon man for the necessary means to aid on any and every reform movement. Though I had long admitted the wrong, I never until this time so fully took in the grand idea of pecuniary and personal independence. It matters not how overflowing with benevolence toward suffering humanity may be the heart of woman, it avails nothing so long as she possesses not the power to act in accordance with these promptings. Woman must have a purse of her own, and how can this be, so long as the _Wife_ is denied the right to her individual and joint earnings. Reflections like these, caused me to see and really feel that there was no true freedom for Woman without the possession of all her property rights, and that these rights could be obtained through legislation only, and so, the sooner the demand was made of the Legislature, the sooner would we be likely to obtain them."[42] FOOTNOTES: [33] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 65. [34] _The Lily_, May, 1852. [35] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, _History of Woman Suffrage_ (New York, 1881), I, p. 489. [36] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 77. [37] _Ibid._, p. 78. [38] _Ibid._, p. 90. [39] Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, Eds., _Elizabeth Cady Stanton, As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary, and Reminiscences_ (New York, 1922), II, p. 52. [40] Aug., 1853, Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 98-99; _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, pp. 513-515. [41] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress. [42] Ms., Diary, 1853. A PURSE OF HER OWN