Volume III Part 66 (1/2)

Pierce--The Citizens' Suffrage a.s.sociation, 333 Walnut Street, Edward M. Davis, President--Pet.i.tions to the Legislature--Const.i.tutional Convention, 1873--Bishop Simpson, Mary Grew, Sarah C. Hallowell, Matilda Hindman, Mrs. Stanton, Address the Convention--Messrs. Broomall and Campbell Debate With the Opposition--Amendment Making Women Eligible to School Offices--Two Women Elected to Philadelphia School Board, 1874--The Wages of Married Women Protected--J. Edgar Thomson's Will--Literary Women as Editors--The Rev. Knox Little--Anne E.

McDowell--Women as Physicians in Insane Asylums--The Fourteenth Amendment Resolution, 1881--Ex-Governor Hoyt's Lecture on Wyoming.

In the demand for the right of suffrage, women are constantly asked by the opposition if they cannot trust their own fathers, husbands and brothers to legislate for them. The answer to this question may be found in an able digest of the old common laws and the Revised Statutes of Pennsylvania,[255] prepared by Carrie S. Burnham[256]

of Pennsylvania. A careful perusal of this paper will show the relative position of man and woman to be that of sovereign and subject.

To get at the real sentiments of a people in regard to the true status of woman we must read the canon and civil laws that form the basic principles of their religion and government. We must not trust to the feelings and actions of the best men towards the individual women whom they may chance to love and respect. The chivalry and courtesy that the few command through their beauty, wealth and position, are one thing; but justice, equality, liberty for the mult.i.tude, are quite another. And when the few, through misfortune, are made to feel the iron teeth of the law, they regret that they had not used their power to secure permanent protection under just laws, rather than to have trusted the transient favors of individuals to s.h.i.+eld them in life's emergencies.

The law securing to married women the right to property,[257]

inherited by will or bequest, pa.s.sed the legislature of Pennsylvania, and was approved by the governor April 11, 1848, just five days after a similar law had been pa.s.sed in New York. Judge Bovier was the mover for the Pennsylvania Married Women's Property Law. His feelings had been so often outraged with the misery caused by men marrying women for their property, that he was bound the law should be repealed. He prevailed on several young Quakers who had rich sisters, to run for the legislature. They were elected and did their duty. Judge Bovier was a descendent of the Waldenses, a society of French Quakers who fled to the mountains from persecution. Their descendants are still living in France.[258]

The disabilities and degradation that women suffer to-day grow out of the spirit of laws that date from a time when women were viewed in the light of beasts of burden. Scarce a century has pa.s.sed since women were sold in this country with cattle. In the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ for January 7, 1768, is the following advertis.e.m.e.nt:

TO BE SEEN.--At the Crooked Billet, near the Court-house, Philadelphia (Price Three Pence), A Two Year Old Hogg, 12 Hands high, and in length 16 Feet; thought to be the largest of its Kind ever seen in America.

In the same paper of the following week occurs this yet more extraordinary announcement:

TO BE SOLD.--A Healthy Young Dutch Woman, fit for town or country business; about 18 years old; can spin well; she speaks good English, and has about five years to serve. Inquire at James Der Kinderen's, Strawberry alley.

In one century of growth a woman's sewing machine was better protected than the woman herself under the old common law:

AN ACT _to exempt Sewing Machines belonging to Seamstresses in this Commonwealth from levy and sale on execution or distress for rent_:

SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania in general a.s.sembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That hereafter all sewing machines belonging to seamstresses in this commonwealth shall be exempt from levy and sale on execution or distress for rent, in addition to any article or money now exempt by law. Approved, April 17, 1869.

While the following order reflects the spirit of the seventeenth century, the comments show the dawning of the right idea, and are worthy the time in which the great State of Pennsylvania could boast such women as Lucretia Mott, Anna E. d.i.c.kinson, Jane G.

Swisshelm and Sarah J. Hale:

A WOMAN ORDER IN PITTSBURGH.--The mayor of Pittsburgh has ordered the arrest of every woman found on the streets alone after 9 o'clock in the evening; the consequence of which has been that some respectable ladies have recently seen the inside of the lock-up.--_Exchange, June, 1869._

Now let the mothers, wives and daughters of Pittsburgh obtain the pa.s.sage, by the city council, of an ordinance causing the arrest of every _man_ found in the streets after 9 o'clock in the evening, and the law will then be equal in its operation. This legislating upon the behavior of one s.e.x by the other exclusively, is one-sided and despotic. Give both s.e.xes a chance at reforming each other.

Another step in progress was indicated by the a.s.sumption of some women to influence civil administration, not only for their own protection, but for that of their sires and sons:

An exchange says that women are becoming perfect nuisances, and to substantiate the a.s.sertion adds that 1,500 women in Chester county, Pennsylvania, have pet.i.tioned the court to grant no more liquor licenses.

Suppose wives should come reeling home, night after night, with curses on their lips, to destroy the food, the dishes, the furniture for which husbands toiled; to abuse trembling children, making the home, from year to year, a pandemonium on earth--would the good men properly be called ”nuisances,” who should rise up and say this must end; we must protect our firesides, our children, ourselves, society at large? To have women even suggest such beneficent laws for the men of their families is called ”a nuisance,” while the whole barbarous code for women was declared by Lord c.o.ke to be the ”perfection of reason.”

The prejudice against s.e.x has been as bitter and unreasonable as against color, and far more reprehensible, because in too many cases it has been a contest between the inferior, with law on his side, and the superior, with law and custom against her, as the following facts in the _Sunday Dispatch_, by Anne E. McDowell, fully show:

The decision of the Court of Common Pleas in the case of Mrs.

McMa.n.u.s, elected princ.i.p.al of the Mount Vernon Boys' Grammar School, is to the effect that, no rule being in existence prohibiting the exercise of the duties of such office by a woman, the resolution of the controllers against the exercise of the duties of that office by the lady was unjustifiable and illegal.

Since the decision was p.r.o.nounced the controllers have come up to the boundary of the principle held by the court, and a rule has been proposed that in future women shall be ineligible to be princ.i.p.als of boys' grammar schools--the case of Mrs. McMa.n.u.s being specially excepted. That lady, therefore, will be undisturbed. But she may be, like the celebrated ”Lady Freemason.” an exception to her s.e.x. The controllers have not favored the public with their reasons for opposition to the employment of females in the higher positions of teaching. Women are good enough for inferior service about a boys'

grammar-school, it seems, but they are not capable of superintending it. They may be, and are, teachers in all the cla.s.ses in such schools, even to the highest; but when the question arises whether a woman, perfectly competent, shall be superintendent of all the cla.s.ses--for a princ.i.p.al is little more--the controllers say _no_. If this action is influenced by a belief that women cannot control a school of boys, we hope that the experience in the case of Mrs. McMa.n.u.s will dispel the illusion, and the public can afford to await the result of the trial. But if it is caused by a regard to tradition or precedent, or because there never has yet been an instance of a woman being a princ.i.p.al of a boys' grammar-school before this case of Mrs.

McMa.n.u.s, we hope that the controllers will soon see the error of their course. The complaints from the sections are to the effect that it is very difficult to get a competent male teacher to remain princ.i.p.al of a boys' grammar-school for any length of time. The salary attached to that position is inadequate, according to the increased cost of living of the times. Gentlemen who are competent to act as princ.i.p.als of the public schools find that they can make more money by establis.h.i.+ng private schools; and hence they are uneasy and dissatisfied while in the public service. A woman able to take charge of a boys' grammar-school will be paid a more liberal salary (such is the injustice of our social system in relation to female labor) in that position than in any other connected with education that she can command, and she will therefore be likely to be better satisfied with the duties and to perform them more properly. That such advantage ought to be held out to ladies competent to be teachers of the highest grade, we firmly believe. The field of female avocations should be extended in every legitimate direction; and it seems to us, unless some reason can be given for the exception, which has not yet been presented in the case of Mrs. McMa.n.u.s, that the princ.i.p.als.h.i.+ps of the boys' grammar-schools ought to be accessible to ladies of the proper character and qualification, without the imputation that by reason of their s.e.x they must necessarily be unfitted for such duties.

In preparing themselves for the medical profession, for which the most conservative people now admit that women are peculiarly adapted, students have encountered years of opposition, ridicule and persecution. After a college for women was established in Philadelphia,[259] there was another long struggle before their right to attend the clinics in the hospitals was accorded. The faculty and students alike protested against the admission of women into mixed cla.s.ses; but as there was no provision to give them the clinics alone, a protest against mixed cla.s.ses was a protest against such advantages to women altogether. One would have supposed the men might have left the delicacy of the question to the decision of the women themselves. But in this struggle for education men have always been more concerned about the loss of modesty than the acquirement of knowledge and wisdom. From the opinions usually expressed by these self-const.i.tuted guardians of the feminine character, we might be led to infer that the virtues of women were not a part of the essential elements of their organization, but a sort of temporary scaffolding, erected by society to s.h.i.+eld a naturally weak structure that any wind could readily demolish.