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
We count it no waste of time to go forth through our streets, thus
proclaiming our desire for the advancement of our great cause. You,
with us, no doubt, feel that Intemperance is the blighting mildew
of all our social connections; you would be most happy to speed on
the time when no Wife shall watch with trembling heart and tearful
eye the slow, but sure descent of her idolized Companion down to
the loathsome haunts of drunkenness; you would hasten the day when
no Mother shall have to mourn over a darling son as she sees him
launch his bark on the circling waves of the mighty whirlpool.
How is this great change to be wrought, who are to urge on this
vast work of reform? Shall it not be women, who are most aggrieved
by the foul destroyer's inroads? Most certainly. Then arises the
question, how are we to accomplish the end desired? I answer, not
by confining our influence to our own home circle, not by centering
all our benevolent feelings upon our own kindred, not by caring
naught for the culture of any minds, save those of our own
darlings. No, no; the gratification of the _selfish_ impulses
_alone_, can never produce a desirable change in the Moral aspect
of Society....
It is generally conceded that it is our sex that fashions the
Social and Moral State of Society. We do not presume that females
possess unbounded power in abolishing the evil customs of the day;
but we do believe that were they en masse to discountenance the use
of wine and brandy as beverages at both their public and private
parties, not one of the opposite Sex, who has any claim to the
title of gentleman, would so insult them as to come into their
presence after having quaffed of that foul destroyer of all true
delicacy and refinement.
I am not aware that we have any inebriate females among us, but
have we not those, who are fallen from _Virtue_, and who claim our
efforts for their reform, equally with the inebriate? And while we
feel it our duty to extend the hand of sympathy and love to those
who are wanderers from the path of Temperance, should we not also
be zealous in reclaiming those poor, deluded ones, who have been
robbed of their most precious Gem, Virtue, and whom we blush to
think belong to our Sex?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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