Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era: A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progressBoyd, James P. (James Penny)
History
Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era: A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress
Boyd, James P. (James Penny)
Inventions; Progress
The constantly broadening sphere of woman’s usefulness is in a large
measure due to the organized forms of intellectual activity among women
known as clubs. Half a century ago club-life for women was unknown.
Their social sympathies were limited to the political party that
claimed the franchise of their male relatives, or the church at whose
shrine the women worshiped. But so rapid has been woman’s development
in this direction that to-day women’s clubs form a chain from ocean to
ocean, binding them as one great whole. The effect upon the members is
magical; nature is enlarged; charity broadened; capacity for judgment
increased; and hitherto unsuspected faculties are called into life and
power.
The first organized demand by women for political recognition in the
United States was made in 1848, at what was known as the Seneca Falls
Convention. Ridiculed, persecuted, kicked like a football from one
generation to another, this brave demand for political recognition was
destined to become an agency that would work a peaceful revolution.
That the movement is progressing, and will eventually succeed, is
evinced by the record of half a century. In that time school suffrage
has been granted in twenty-three States and Territories, partial
suffrage for public improvements in three States, municipal suffrage
in one, and in four States full political equality. Wyoming was the
first State to accord citizenship to her women, and she bears testimony
to its efficacy in the progress, honor, and sobriety of her people.
In 1893, the Wyoming state legislature passed resolutions highly
commendatory of woman suffrage and its results, and among other things
said, “We point with pride to the fact that after nearly twenty-five
years of woman suffrage, not one county in Wyoming has a poor-house,
that our jails are almost empty, and crime, except that by strangers in
the State, is almost unknown.”
From the banks of the far-off Volga come the good tidings that even
Russia is preparing to take a great step in advance by granting to
women many legal and political privileges now enjoyed only by men.
England granted municipal suffrage to women a quarter of a century
ago, and has more recently granted partial parliamentary suffrage.
And to the influence of English law, more particularly the Married
Women’s Act, is largely due the betterment of the legal status of
women throughout the world. In England we find women prominent in art,
literature, politics, the school and the church. While in this country
the middle classes have heretofore carried on the suffrage agitation,
in England it finds active workers among the peerage.
Woman in politics meets with the opposition of job politicians, but
she realizes that every step of her progress, from the unveiling of
her face to a seat in the legislature of a State, has been taken in
the face of fierce opposition and in violation of conventionalities
and customs. Undismayed she advances for the ultimate betterment of
humanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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