Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
We are scarcely able today to understand what those brave
pioneers endured to secure the things which we accept as a matter
of course. They started the greatest revolution the world has
ever witnessed. During these last sixty years more changes have
been wrought for the benefit of women, more opportunities for
education have been secured and more all-round enlightenment than
in the 6,000 years preceding. There are women who accept these
advantages and the positions that have been obtained because of
this early movement who have no conception of what it has meant
to open the highways of progress for them. Some of those who
oppose the suffrage say: "These things would have come; men would
have given woman these opportunities as civilization advanced."
Why did they not come sooner if men were so willing? Why should
they have grown more in the last sixty years than in all the
years before?... But the women in all this long time of struggle
have not stood entirely alone. There have always been some men to
stand by their side and they owed it to do so, for ever since the
world began women have stood by men in their efforts to achieve
the right. Never was there a great leader who had not some woman
by his side. Woman was first at the cradle, last at the cross and
first at the tomb. Women have stood shoulder to shoulder with men
always in their efforts.... Some tell us that we have not made
great progress. It is impossible to change the attitude of all
the conflicting elements of humanity in three-score years. If
Christianity in 1900 years, with the teaching of such a Leader,
has not yet made Peace Congresses unnecessary, what can be
expected of other reforms?
The secretary's report of Miss Gordon contributed this bit of history:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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