Nothing is more fashionable than conservatism. Slavery--what a hot-
bed of sensualism! What a pandemonium of cruelty and crime!
All over the North the merchant, the politician, and the clergyman
pledged each other to silence. It was the fashion.
A few brave souls protested. Sneers and ridicule followed them. Ah,
can it be believed,--the blue-eyed daughters of New England joined
in the sneers. They drew aside their skirts as they passed the
champions of liberty and virtue. No other memory connected with the
antislavery revolution is so hard for me to bear. If only they,
hearing the cry of agony from their outraged sisters in the South,
had listened, sympathized, and, in their own gentle way, striven to
help the torn and bleeding ones, I could bear the memory of the
brutal indifference of men.
"WOMAN'S RIGHTS" ARE UNFASHIONABLE.
In most of the states women have no legal claim to their own
children. In several of them the father may, in his will, commit the
little ones to the care of strangers, and the mother can only weep
and moan.
In many of the states the wife has no right to the property which
her father gave her, or to that which she has earned with her own
hands.
In not one of the states can a woman express her opinion or wish at
the ballot box. Her person, her property, her claim to her children,
--everything she holds most dear in this life, is controlled by the
ballot box. The most ignorant foreigners are invited to it; our
mothers and wives are forbidden.
Women and girls receive, for the same work, only half the
compensation of men and boys.
The "woman's rights" movement seeks the mitigation, and final
removal, of these outrageous wrongs.
My dear girls, think for yourselves this time. Don't simper and
giggle when the fools sneer at "woman's rights." They don't know
what they are talking about.
A few days ago I heard a sort of jackanapes ridiculing "woman's
rights," and several very sweet girls were listening to his coarse
scurrilities; and, must I say it, smiling their approval.
Wearing an unfashionable dress is not half so bad; going into the
street with the bonnet of two years ago, even, will not unsex you
like a smiling indifference to these desperate struggles of your
sisters. To avoid starvation on one hand, and crime on the other,
they plead with the world for justice.
In this city of Boston there are twenty thousand women starving on
needle-work, and five thousand who live, or die, by crime. A few
brave ones, driven to the wall, hope, by calling attention to their
helplessness, to obtain sympathy and justice. This is essentially
the "woman's rights" movement. Suppose you don't like the mode in
which they agitate. When you hear criticisms, or ridicule, if you
haven't the heart to say a word in defence, at least you can keep
silence.
I wish I dared to tell you how we men almost despise you, sometimes,
for this abandonment of each other.