Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton presided over all of the sessions. Mrs.
Lillie Devereux Blake gave a full report of the legislative work done
in New York during the past year. In the address of Mrs. Harriette R.
Shattuck (Mass.) she laid especial stress on the need for women to be
invested with responsibility. Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage (N. Y.)
discussed the woman question from a scientific standpoint. She was
followed by Mrs. Laura de Force Gordon, the second woman admitted to
practice before the U. S. Supreme Court, who answered the question, Is
our Civilization Civilized? and described the legal status of women in
California. Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers (N. Y.) gave a spirited talk
on the Aristocracy of Sex. The principal address of the evening was by
Mrs. Stanton, a long and thoughtful paper in which she said:
Those people who declaim on the inequalities of sex, the
disabilities and limitations of one as against the other, show
themselves as ignorant of the first principles of life as would
that philosopher who should undertake to show the comparative
power of the positive as against the negative electricity, of the
centrifugal as against the centripetal force, the attraction of
the north as against the south end of the magnet. These great
natural forces must be perfectly balanced or the whole material
world would relapse into chaos. Just so the masculine and
feminine elements in humanity must be exactly balanced to redeem
the moral and social world from the chaos which surrounds it.
One might as well talk of separate spheres for the two ends of
the magnet as for man and woman; they may have separate duties in
the same sphere, but their true place is together everywhere.
Having different duties in the same sphere, neither can succeed
without the presence and influence of the other. To restore the
equilibrium of sex is the first step in social, religious and
political progress. It is by the constant repression of the best
elements in humanity, by our false customs, creeds and codes,
that we have thus far retarded civilization....
There would be more sense in insisting on man's limitations
because he can not be a mother, than on woman's because she can
be. Surely maternity is an added power and development of some of
the most tender sentiments of the human heart and not a
"limitation." "Yes," says another pertinacious reasoner, "but it
unfits woman for much of the world's work." Yes, and it fits her
for much of the world's work; a large share of human legislation
would be better done by her because of this deep experience....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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