Board of Education and of the State Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity.[1] These great changes in legislation for the women of Massachusetts are the result of their own labors. By conventions and documents they have informed the people and enlightened public sentiment. By continued agitation the question has been kept prominently before their representatives in the legislature. And, though so much has been gained, they are still hard at work, nor will they rest until, woman's equality with man before the law is firmly established.
Among the most important acts passed recently is one of 1879, by which a married woman is the owner of her own clothing to the value of $2,000, although the act granting this calls such apparel the "gifts of her husband," not recognizing the fact that most married women earn or help to earn their own clothes. A law was passed, in 1881, to "mitigate the evils of divorce." Two important acts were passed by the legislature of 1882, one allowing women to become practising attorneys, and the other providing, that in case of the death of a married woman intestate and leaving children, one-half only of her personal estate shall go to her husband, instead of the whole, as in previous years. In 1883, a wife was given the right of burial in any lot or tomb belonging to her husband. In 1884, the only measures were a bill providing for the appointment of women on the board of State lunatic hospitals, and another providing for the appointment of women assistant physicians in the same hospitals, and an act giving women the power to dispose of their separate estates by will or deed. In 1885, very little was done to improve the legal status of women.
When any vote on the Suffrage bill is taken, it is enough to make the women who sit in the gallery weep to hear the "O's" and the "Mc's," almost to a man, thunder forth the emphatic "No!"; and to think that these men (some of whom a few years ago were walking over their native bogs, with hardly the right to live and breathe) should vote away so thoughtlessly the rights of the women of the country in which they have found a shelter and a home. When they came to this country, poor,
- ↑ The little actual gain in votes since 1874, in favor of municipal or general suffrage for women, might cause the careless observer to draw the inference that no great progress had been made in legislative sentiment during all these years. In 1870 the vote in the House of Representatives on the General Woman Suffrage Bill was 133 to 68. In 1885 the bill giving municipal suffrage was defeated in the House by a vote of 130 to 61. But this is not a true index of the progress of public opinion.
