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
1st. Let no woman remain in the relation of wife with a confirmed
drunkard. Let no drunkard be the father of her children.... Let us
petition our State government so to modify the laws affecting
marriage and the custody of children, that the drunkard shall have
no claims on wife or child.
2d. Inasmuch as charity begins at home, let us withdraw our mite
from all associations for sending the Gospel to the heathen across
the ocean, for the education of young men for the ministry, for the
building up of a theological aristocracy and gorgeous temples to
the unknown God, and devote ourselves to the poor and suffering
around us. Let us feed and clothe the hungry and naked, gather
children into schools and provide reading-rooms and decent homes
for young men and women thrown alone upon the world. Good schools
and homes, where the young could ever be surrounded by an
atmosphere of purity and virtue, would do much more to prevent
immorality and crime in our cities than all the churches in the
land could ever possibly do toward the regeneration of the
multitude sunk in poverty, ignorance and vice.
The effect of such declarations on the conservatism of half a century
ago hardly can be pictured. At this time the principal outlet for
women's activities was through foreign missionary work, and even in
this they were allowed no official responsibility. None of the many
charitable organizations which are now almost wholly in the hands of
women were in existence. In scarcely one State was drunkenness
recognized as cause for divorce, and yet when Mrs. Stanton made these
demands, the women throughout the country joined with the men in
denouncing them. Only a few of the broader and more progressive, who
were ahead of their age, sustained her. Among these were Miss Anthony,
Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Frances D. Gage and
Martha C. Wright.
After six enthusiastic sessions and the forming of a strong
organization, the convention adjourned. Thus the first Woman's State
Temperance Society ever formed was due almost entirely to Susan B.
Anthony, because of her courage in demanding independent action and her
successful efforts in calling the convention which inaugurated it. The
executive committee met in May and appointed her State agent, "with
full power and authority to organize auxiliary societies, collect
moneys, issue certificates of membership and do all things which she
may judge necessary and expedient to promote the purposes for which our
society has been organized."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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