Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
PROFESSOR SALMON: The personal experience will perhaps be
pardoned if it is considered representative of the possibly
changing attitude of other college women toward the subject. The
natural stages in the development seem to have been, opposition,
due to ignorance; rejection, due to conscientious disapproval;
indifference, due to preoccupation in other lines of work;
acceptance, due to appreciation of what the work for equal
suffrage has accomplished. It has been a work positive rather
than negative, active rather than destructive, and thus it is
coming to appeal to the judgment and reason of college women.
They are coming to realize that they have been taught by these
pioneers, both by precept and example, to look at the essential
things of life and to ignore the unessential and for this they
are grateful....
The college woman is beginning to wonder whether it is worth
while to reckon the mint, anise and cummin while the weightier
matters of the law are forgotten. For a larger outlook on life we
are all indebted to Miss Anthony, to Mrs. Howe and to their
colleagues. We are indebted to them in large measure for the
educational opportunities of today. We are indebted to them for
the theory, and in some places for the reality, of equal pay for
men and women when the work performed is the same. We are
indebted to them for making it possible for us to spend our lives
in fruitful work rather than in idle tears. We are indebted to
these pioneer women for the substitution of a positive creed for
inertia and indifference. From them we also inherit the weighty
responsibility of passing on to others, in degree if not in kind,
all that we have received from them.
Professor Jordan, after considering the woman's college, said: "The
suffragists lent us Maria Mitchell and they felt severely the loss
they sustained in her increasing absorption in the class room and in
the requirements of modern scientific work. When we had taken Maria
Mitchell they turned to us in friendship, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe, Miss Anthony, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. Cady Stanton,
Lucy Stone, Mrs. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lois Anna Green, Mary
Dame--and never failed to stir our minds with their urgent appeals for
our thoughtful consideration of the causes they presented and the
interest they took for granted. The last was their strong point. They
simply implicated us in whatever was good and true. Their enthusiasm
was infectious and we 'caught' it--to our own lasting spiritual
benefit.... I do not believe that I was over-fanciful when I used to
feel that Lucy Stone and you, Miss Anthony, looked at us as if you
would say, 'Make the best of your freedom for we have bought it with a
great price.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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