Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Two novel evening programs were devoted to The New Woman and The New
Man, the first with the following speakers: Mrs. Helen Adelaide Shaw
of Boston; Mrs. Elizabeth M. Gilmer of New Orleans, known far and wide
as "Dorothy Dix," said to receive the highest salary of any woman
journalist; Dr. Cora Smith Eaton, a prominent physician and surgeon of
Minneapolis; Miss Gail Laughlin (N. Y.) who had taken the highest
honors in the Law Class of Cornell University; the Rev. Ida C. Hultin,
a successful Unitarian minister of Boston. Miss Margaret Haley of
Chicago, who led the great fight of the Teachers' Federation of that
city to compel the big corporations to pay their taxes in order that
the public schools should not be crippled for lack of funds, could not
be present because of a crisis in the legal proceedings. Each of the
women representing the four professions of law, medicine, theology and
journalism, in addresses scintillating with humor, reviewed the early
prejudices which had been overcome, told of the large number of women
who had entered the field when the opportunity came but showed that
they could never have an even chance until there was complete
obliteration of sex prejudice. Little idea of their interest could be
obtained from fragmentary paragraphs.
The house was crowded to hear about The New Man,[20] represented first
on the program by Oswald Garrison Villard, grandson of William Lloyd
Garrison and owner and editor of the New York _Evening Post_, who gave
a spirited and effective account of Women in the New York Municipal
Campaign. This was the first in which women ever had taken a
prominent part and it had attracted wide attention, a revolt against
Tammany corruption under Richard Croker. Mr. Villard told of the
remarkable work done by the Women's Municipal League under direction
of the Citizen's Union for the election of Seth Low as Mayor and a
reform ticket. He paid a sarcastic tribute to the assistance of the
women anti-suffragists. "To have been really consistent," he said,
"they should have urged upon their more emancipated sisters that
woman's sphere is the home and any steps that lead beyond it tend in
the long run to the destruction both of the home and of the eternal
feminine." He closed by declaring that "the Titanic struggle between
right and wrong in the great cities can not be won without the
cooperation of that half of the nation's citizens in whose hearts are
ever found the truest ideals of family and society, of city life and
State life and of national existence." At its conclusion Mrs. Catt
said: "And yet after Mr. Low was elected Mayor of Greater New York a
large number of the women who had helped him win the victory urged him
to appoint some women on the school board and he refused. So we must
suppose that he is willing to have women pull the chestnuts out of the
fire for men but is not willing to give them a share of the
chestnuts."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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