Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost AdvocatesJohnson, Helen Kendrick
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Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates
Johnson, Helen Kendrick
Women -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
The entrance of woman upon the legal profession raised constitutional
questions as to the enactment of law; and so here, as in the matter of the
school suffrage, we see how carefully republicanism guarded the post at
which must stand the sentinels of liberty. If it might involve law-
enforcement, woman could not practise law or vote on the school question;
but the Supreme Court of the United States decided that "the practising of
any profession violates no law of the Federal Constitution."
The study of law must prove of great benefit to woman, though here again
it has already been shown that it is possible that the greatest practical
advantage she will derive from entrance into this noble profession will be
from acquiring knowledge of her country's laws, and how to take care of
her own property. Widows and unmarried women have almost invariably placed
their moneyed interests in the hands of a man, when it would have been
better for all concerned that they should have spent some patient thought
on the details of their own affairs. The first woman who was admitted to
the bar in this State (New York) was a teacher in the Albany Normal
College, and she still remains there, and the women's classes for legal
study in New York City have been largely composed of those who had no
intention of claiming admittance to the bar. That women can and do enter
all these professions with credit to themselves, and that they thus
enhance the feeling of pride in their sex, which is a strong impulse with
women, is matter for profound congratulation, and is evidence that the
animus of the Suffrage movement is not that which stirs society.
CHAPTER VIII.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION.
The seventh count in the Suffrage indictment declared: "He has denied her
facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed
against her."
Among the resolutions passed in the first Suffrage convention was one
demanding: "Equal rights in the universities," and the first petition
presented by Suffrage advocates contained a clause asking that entrance to
men's colleges be obtained for women by legal enactment. We note that this
is far from being a demand for education for women equal to that given to
men in the universities. Men have founded colleges for women, men and
women have worked together in securing for woman every facility and
opportunity for education of the highest grade; but the "barrier of sex"
is not broken down in education. But few of the older colleges for men
admit women, and those few, so far as I have learned from conversation
with members of their faculties, speak of the arrangement as an
experiment, and give the need for economy, combined with a desire to
assist women, as a reason for making that experiment. Meantime the
knocking at men's literary portals by Suffrage advocates has gone on as
vigorously as if women could obtain education in no other way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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