The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty YearsHarper, Ida Husted
History
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years
Harper, Ida Husted
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
The committee is composed of married and single gentlemen. The
bachelors, with becoming diffidence, have left the subject pretty
much to the married gentlemen. They have considered it with the aid
of the light they have before them and the experience married life
has given them. Thus aided, they are enabled to state that the
ladies always have the best place and choicest titbit at the table.
They have the best seat in the cars, carriages and sleighs; the
warmest place in winter and the coolest in summer. They have their
choice on which side of the bed they will lie, front or back. A
lady's dress costs three times as much as that of a gentleman; and
at the present time, with the prevailing fashion, one lady occupies
three times as much space in the world as a gentleman. It has thus
appeared to the married gentlemen of your committee, being a
majority (the bachelors being silent for the reason mentioned, and
also probably for the further reason that they are still suitors
for the favors of the gentler sex) that if there is any inequality
or oppression in the case, the gentlemen are the sufferers. They,
however, have presented no petitions for redress, having doubtless
made up their minds to yield to an inevitable destiny.
On the whole, the committee have concluded to recommend no measure,
except that they have observed several instances in which husband
and wife have both signed the same petition. In such case, they
would recommend the parties to apply for a law authorizing them to
change dresses, so that the husband may wear petticoats, and the
wife breeches, and thus indicate to their neighbors and the public
the true relation in which they stand to each other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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