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 charge of "free love" was vigorously repudiated by Miss Anthony
also, who closed the discussion by asserting: "This howl comes from the
men who know that when women get their rights they will be able to live
honestly and not be compelled to sell themselves for bread, either in
or out of marriage. There are very few women in the world who would
enter into this relationship with drunkards and libertines provided
they could get their subsistence in any other way. We can not be
frightened from our purpose, the public mind can not long be prejudiced
by this 'free love' cry of our enemies." Olive Logan poured oil upon
the troubled waters in a graceful speech, and the subject was dropped.
At each recurring anniversary the conviction had been growing that the
term "equal rights" was too comprehensive, permitting entirely too much
latitude as to speakers and subjects. Ever themselves having been
repressed and silenced, when at last women made a platform on which
they had a right to stand, they declared first of all for "free
speech." They would not refuse to any human being what so long had been
denied to them and, as a result, fanatics, visionaries and advocates of
all reforms flocked to this platform, delighted to find such audiences.
According to the tenets of the association, all speakers must have
equal rights on their platform and there was no escape. Sometimes it
was nothing more harmful than a man with a map to explain how the
national debt could be paid without money, or a woman with a system of
celestial kites by which she proposed to communicate with the other
world. Occasionally the advocates of various political theories would
secure possession, consuming the time and diverting attention from the
main issue. At the convention just closed, the hobby-riders were
present in greater force than ever before and it seemed imperative that
some means should be adopted to shut them out thereafter. It was
proposed to change the name to Woman Suffrage Association, which would
bar all discussion of a miscellaneous character. There was a strong
objection to this, however, because such action required three months'
notice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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