Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/724

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History of Woman Suffrage.

is done by these lobby loafers in our Legislature and in the halls of Congress, object to it. (Loud cheers). I will wait five years longer to have a right given to me legitimately, from a sense of justice, rather than buy it in an underhand way by lobbying. Whatever my sentiments may be, good, bad, or indifferent, I express them, and they are known. Nevertheless, if any desire it, let them do that work. But what has induced them, what has enabled them, to do that work? The Woman's Rights movement, although they are afraid or ashamed even of the name "woman's rights."

You have been told, and much more might be said on the subject, that already the Woman's Rights platform has upon it lawyers, ministers, and statesmen—men who are among the highest in the nation. I need not mention Wm. Lloyd Garrison, or Wendell Phillips; but there are others, those even who are afraid of the name of reformer, who have stood upon our platform. Brady! Who would ever have expected it? Chapin! Beecher! Think of it for a moment! A minister advocating the rights of woman, even her right at the ballot-box! What has done it? Our agitation has purified the atmosphere, and enabled them to see the injustice that is done to woman.

Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio, was the next speaker. She said: I wish to preface my remarks with this resolution:

Resolved, That woman's sphere can not be bounded. Its prescribed orbit is the largest place that in her highest development she can fill. The laws of mind are as immutable as are those of the planetary world, and the true woman most ever revolve around the great moral sun of light and truth.

As a general proposition, we say that capacity determines the true sphere of action, and indicates the kind of labor to be performed. I often hear women discussing this subject, much more in earnest than in jest, though they profess to be simply amusing themselves. One says: "If I were a man, I should be a mechanic"; another says: "I should be a merchant." One says: "I am sure I should be rich"; another, in the excess of her humor, thinks she should be distinguished. Why do women talk thus? Because one feels that she has mechanical genius; the power to construct, to perfect. Another understands the secrets of trade, and would like to incur the heavy responsibilities it involves. A third is conscious that she was born a financier; while a fourth has an intuitive perception of the elements of success.

Many women are beginning to judge for themselves the proper sphere of action, and are not only jesting about what they should do under other circumstances, but are already entering upon such paths as their taste and capacity indicate. Some will doubtless make mistakes, which experience will rectify, and others will perhaps persist in striving to do that which it will be very evident they have no ability to perform. This is the case with men who have had freedom in every sphere. Look at the American pulpit, for instance. Go through the country, and listen to those who claim to be the messengers of God, and if you do not say that many are destitute of capacity to fill the sphere they have chosen, we shall regard it as an act of obedience on your part to the command