Susan Brownell Anthony was born at Adams, Massachusetts, February 15,
1820. Her father, a Quaker, was a cotton manufacturer and gave her a
liberal education. When she was seventeen years old her father failed
in business and she had to support herself by school teaching, which
profession she followed for thirteen years. Aroused at the injustice
of the inequality of wages paid to women teachers, she made a public
speech on the subject at the New York Teachers’ Association, which
attracted wide attention. She continued to work in the teachers’
association for equal recognition continuously and enthusiastically.
In 1849 she began to speak for the temperance cause, but soon became
convinced that women had no power to change the condition of things
without being able to vote at the polls, and from that time on she
identified herself with the suffrage movement. She has written a great
many tracts and was at one time the editor of a weekly paper called
the Revolution. Her work, The History of Woman’s Suffrage, which she
prepared in conjunction with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn
Gage, attracted wide attention.