A gaunt, tall, spectacled creature, gender feminine, number singular,
person first, case always possessive, that's the standard bearer; a
broomstick from the top of which floats a petticoat, that's the
standard. Under that standard march in the U.S. at least 20,000,000
feminines, and--horrible to relate--gal children are on the increase.
Certainly the devil must have invented petticoats. After EVE had
finished up that little apple job, she went into the petticoat business,
and--hence all our tears. Instantly petticoat government became a
possibility. Then, as her daughters became wiser, they invented the
weeping business, the swooning business, and the curtain lecture
business; they went for our pocket-books and they got them, and
petticoat government became a probability. Not satisfied with the
pocket-books, they are now going for the business by means of which we
fill the books, and oh, what a hankering they have for public pap! They
stick to the curtain lecture business, but now they do it before the
curtain. Alas, petticoat government is now a certainty!
It's all very well for you to talk about the grandeur of the governments
of BOADICEA, and ELIZABETH and CATHERINE, but I don't believe that BOA,
or LIZZY, or KATE would have been very nice as a companion, if she and
you were sitting before the fire, and she wanted stamps and was going
for them as a matter of business. Besides, there was only one of them at
a time, and they didn't trouble common people much, but in this
enlightened nineteenth century I have seen a poor, miserable, six foot
dry-goods clerk turned out of a retail store by a strapping little
female, who couldn't jump a counter worth shucks. I have seen him in his
misery industriously study "What I Know About Farming," squat on a farm
in the West, and bring himself, his wife, and four miserable offshoots
to the alms-house by endeavoring to apply the rules set down in "What I
Know About Farming" to 160 acres of land. I have seen the poor,
half-paid type-setters strike for their altars, their sires, and more
wages, and I have seen a troop of petticoats, with gal children inside
them, trot into the type-setter's place, so that the miserable
compositors were compelled to return and starve on four or five dollars
a day. That's petticoat government with a vengeance. Putting your nose
to the grindstone isn't nice at any time, but it's awful when the gal
children turn.
But that is only the beginning. They have struck for bigger things. In
the expressive language of the immortal JOHNNY MILTON, they are going
for the whole hog. They want to vote; some of them have been caught
repeating already; they want to sit on juries, and they want to go to
Congress. Heaven forbid that any of them should ever reach the House of
Representatives! Imagine the size of the _Congressional Globe_ if we
should send women there! Why, there would be as great a dearth of paper
in Washington as there is now in Paris. They want to shave you, dress
you, doctor you into your coffins, preach a funeral discourse over your
remains, and then take your will into the Surrogate's Court and fight
over the little property they have left you.
They say all this means that they are our equals, and intend to show it.
Listen. In a town some hundreds of miles distant there is a law firm
whose sign reads thus:
MRS. SMITH _and husband_.
Shades of our forefathers! Ghost of BLUEBEARD! Spirit of HENRY VIII! can
this thing be? Imagine old LABAN'S daughter starting in business, and
hanging out a sign something like this:
+-------------------------------------------+
| |
| MRS. JACOB _and husband, |
| Having large orders from the West_, |
| SOLICIT CUSTOM. |
| N.B.--Gentlemen attended to by Mr. JACOB. |
| _The Original Mrs_. JACOB. |
| |
+-------------------------------------------+
Don't you suppose that JACOB, if he had found that sign over his
doorstep, would have raised a row, and if he had been overcome, don't
you suppose he would have wondered what he served those seven years for?
Oh, young man, sitting by the side of that dainty damsel, looking so
spoonily into her deep blue eyes, playing so daintily with her golden
curls, sucking honey so frequently from her ruby lips, beware! _beware!_
BEWARE! Remember, when she wants stamps, you can't put her off as your
pa did your ma. You can't say, "Business is awful dull," because she'll
do the business, and make you her book-keeper or porter or something of
that sort
Petticoat government is all very well for those who like it. Some men go
through life playing a sort of insane tag, in which, first their
mothers' petticoats, and then their wives', are hunk, and they never
leave hunk. As for me, give me trouser government, or give me a first
class funeral procession with me for the corpse.
Brethren, listen! Give me your ears! (the big ones first.) This thing
must be stopped _now_. Let us form an association for the suppression of
women, or a society for the prevention of cruelty to men. There is but
one way to cure this thing. Far out on the Western prairies dwells the
only sensible man on this continent. In the city ruled by him a man may
come home as tired as gin can make him, and his wife opens not her
mouth; he may jump over as many counters as he pleases, and none of his
wives will desire to go and do likewise. There she is the weaker vessel,
and it takes so many of her to equal one man, that she is kept in a
proper state of subjection. That's the secret; marry her a good deal.
The old maids are the ones who start the rows. Let them all be married
to some one man of a peaceable, loving, quiet disposition--say WENDELL
PHILLIPS. Let the President, if necessary, issue his proclamation making
the United States one vast Utah, and let us all be Young.