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
At another time she suggested that, as there were only a few hours left
for the business of the convention, they should not be frittered away
in trifling discussions, saying, "if she were a man she would be
ashamed to consume the time in telling how much she loved women and in
fulsome flattery of other men." She moved also that they set aside the
proposed discussion on "The Effects of High Intellectual Culture on the
Efficiency and Respectability of Manual Labor," and take up pressing
questions. When one man was indulging in a lot of the senseless twaddle
about his wife which many of them are fond of introducing in their
speeches, she called him to order saying that the kind of a wife he
had, had nothing to do with the subject. She introduced again the
resolution demanding equal pay for equal work without regard to sex. A
friend wrote of this occasion: "She arraigned those assembled teachers
for their misdemeanors as she would a class of schoolboys, in perfect
unconsciousness that she was doing anything unusual. We women never can
be sufficiently thankful to her for taking the hard blows and still
harder criticisms, while we reaped the benefits."
The press reports said: "Miss Anthony has gained in the estimation of
the teachers' convention, and is now listened to with great attention."
She gave her lecture on "Co-Education" to a crowded house of Lockport's
prominent citizens, introduced by President George L. Farnham, of
Syracuse, always her friend in those troublous days. By this time more
than a score of the eminent educators of the day had become her
steadfast friends, and they welcomed her to these conventions, aiding
her efforts in every possible manner. Rev. Samuel J. May, who had
delivered an address, upon his return home wrote: "You are a great
girl, and I wish there were thousands more in the world like you. Some
foolish old conventionalisms would be utterly routed, and the legal and
social disabilities of women would not long be what they are." Miss
Anthony herself, writing to Antoinette Blackwell, said: "I wish I had
time to tell you of my Lockport experience; it was rich. I never felt
so cool and self-possessed among the plannings and plottings of the few
old fogies, and they never appeared so frantic with rage. They
evidently felt that their reign of terror is about ended."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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