Declaring that the poverty and economic dependence of women as well as the passions of men were the causes of prostitution, she quoted more statistics which showed a great increase in the poverty of women. Work formerly done in the household, she explained, was being gradually taken over by factories, with the result that women in order to earn a living had been forced to follow it out of the home and were supporting themselves wholly or in part at a wage inadequate to meet their needs. No wonder many were tempted by food, clothes, and comfortable shelter into an immoral life.
Her solution was "to lift this vast army of poverty-stricken women who now crowd our cities, above the temptation, the necessity, to sell themselves in marriage or out, for bread and shelter." "Women," she told them, "must be educated out of their unthinking acceptance of financial dependence on man into mental and economic independence. Girls like boys must be educated to some lucrative employment. Women like men must have an equal chance to earn a living."[322]
"Whoever controls work and wages," she continued, "controls morals. Therefore we must have women employers, superintendents, committees, legislators; wherever girls go to seek the means of subsistence, there must be some woman. Nay, more; we must have women preachers, lawyers, doctors--that wherever women go to seek counsel--spiritual, legal, physical--there, too, they will be sure to find the best and noblest of their own sex to minister to them."
Then she added, "Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.... Marriage never will cease to be a wholly unequal partnership until the law recognizes the equal ownership in the joint earnings and possessions."
She asked for the vote so that women would have the power to help make the laws relating to marriage, divorce, adultery, breach of promise, rape, bigamy, infanticide, and so on. These laws, she reminded them, have not only been framed by men, but are administered by men. Judges, jurors, lawyers, all are men, and no woman's voice is heard in our courts except as accused or witness, and in many cases the married woman is denied the right to testify as to her guilt or innocence.
Never before had the audience heard the case for social purity presented in this way and they listened intently. When the applause was subsiding, Susan saw Parker Pillsbury and Bronson Alcott, fellow-lecturers on the Lyceum circuit, coming toward her, smiling approval. They were generous in their praise, Bronson Alcott declaring, "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner, truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."[323]
She repeated this lecture in St. Louis, in Wisconsin, and in Kansas, and while most city newspapers, acknowledging the need of facing the issues, praised her courage, small-town papers were frankly disturbed by a spinster's public discussion of the "social evil," one paper observing, "The best lecture a woman can give the community ... on the sad 'evil' ... is the sincerity of her profound ignorance on the subject."[324]
* * * * *
Having bravely done her bit for social purity, Susan with relief turned again to her favorite lecture, "Bread and the Ballot." Her message fell on fertile ground. These western men and women saw justice in her reasoning. Having broken with tradition by leaving the East for the frontier, they could more easily drop old ways for new. Western men also recognized the influence for good that women had brought to lonely bleak western towns--better homes, cleanliness, comfort, then schools, churches, law and order--and many of them were willing to give women the vote. All they needed was prodding to translate that willingness into law.
As she continued her lecturing, she kept her watchful eye on her family and the annual New York and Washington conventions, attending to many of the routine details herself. Finally, on May 1, 1876, she recorded in her diary, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have paid the last dollar of the _Revolution_ debt."[325]
Even the press took notice, the Chicago _Daily News_ commenting, "By working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could earn, she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors of that paper and others who really know her, hear the name of Susan B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence."[326]
FOOTNOTES:
[314] Ms., Diary, Nov. 4, 1874.
[315] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 457. Frances Willard took her stand for woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876.
[316] Ms., Diary, Sept., 1877.
[317] To James Redpath, Dec. 23, 1870, Alma Lutz Collection.
[318] New York _Graphic_, Sept. 12, 1874. Mrs. Hooker believed her half-brother guilty and repeatedly urged him to confess, assuring him she would join him in announcing "a new social freedom." Kenneth R. Andrews, Nook Farm (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 36-39. Rumors that Mrs. Hooker was insane were deliberately circulated.
[319] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 463.
[320] _Ibid._ Only a few entries relating to the Beecher-Tilton case remain in the Susan B. Anthony diaries, now in the Library of Congress, and the diary for 1875 is not there.
[321] _Ibid._, p. 462.
[322] _Ibid._, II, pp. 1007-1009.
[323] _Ibid._, I, p. 468.
[324] _Ibid._, p. 470. Miss Anthony interrupted her lecturing for nine weeks to nurse her brother Daniel after he had been shot by a rival editor in Leavenworth.
[325] _Ibid._, p. 472.
[326] _Ibid._, p. 473.
A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT
Like everyone else in the United States in 1876, Susan now turned her attention to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which was proclaiming to the world the progress this new country had made. Susan pointed out, however, that one hundred years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, women were still deprived of basic citizenship rights.
As an afterthought, a Woman's Pavilion had been erected on the exposition grounds and exhibited here she found only women's contribution to the arts but nothing which would in any way show the part women had played in building up the country or developing industry. She longed to explain so that all could hear how the skilled work of women had contributed to the prosperous textile and shoe industries, to the manufacture of cartridges and Waltham watches, and countless other products. Could she have had her way, she would have made the Woman's Pavilion an eloquent appeal for equal rights, but unable to do this, she established a center of rebellion for the National Woman Suffrage Association at 1431 Chestnut Street, in parlors on the first floor. Here she spent many happy hours directing the work, often sleeping on the sofa so that she could work late and save money for the cause.
Philadelphia had always been a friendly city because of Lucretia Mott. Now Lucretia came almost daily to the women's headquarters, bringing a comforting sense of support, approval, and friendship. When Mrs. Stanton, free at last from her lecture engagements, joined them in June, Susan's happiness was complete and she confided to her diary, "Glad enough to see her and feel her strength come in."[327]
Susan and Mrs. Stanton now sent the Republican and Democratic national conventions well-written memorials pointing out the appropriateness of enfranchising women in this centennial year. But no woman suffrage plank was adopted by either party. Susan put Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage to work on a Women's Declaration of 1876, and so "magnificent" a document did they produce that she not only had many copies printed for distribution but had one beautifully engrossed on parchment for presentation to President Grant at the Fourth of July celebration in Independence Square.
Unable to secure permission to present this declaration, she made plans of her own. For herself, she managed to get a press card as reporter for her brother's paper, the Leavenworth _Times_. Mrs. Stanton and Lucretia Mott refused to attend the celebration, so indignant were they over the snubs women had received from the Centennial Commission, and they held a women's meeting at the First Unitarian Church. When at the last minute four tickets were sent Susan by the Centennial Commission, she gave them to the most militant of her colleagues, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lillie Devereux Blake, Sarah Andrews Spencer, and Phoebe Couzins. With Susan in the lead, they pushed through the jostling crowd to Independence Square on that bright hot Fourth of July and were seated among the elect on the platform.
By this time they had learned that Thomas W. Ferry of Michigan, Acting Vice President, would substitute for President Grant at the ceremony. Because he was a good friend of woman suffrage, Phoebe Couzins made one more effort for orderly procedure, sending him a note asking for permission to present the Women's Declaration. This failed, and rather than take part in creating a disturbance, she withdrew, leaving her four friends on the platform.