so well the conflicting emotions which torment the minds of the opponents of the woman suffrage movement, that I venture to quote them:
"Good sooth," quoth the old Don, "tell ye me so?
I muse whither at length these Girls will go.
It half revives my chil, frost-bitten blood
To see a woman once do aught that's good.
And, chode by Chaucer's Boots and Homer's Furrs,
Let men look to't least Women wear the Spurrs."
In 1818, Hannah Mather Crocker, grand-daughter of Cotton Mather, published a book, called "Observations on the Rights of Women." In speaking of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mrs. Crocker says, that while that celebrated woman had a very independent mind, and her "Rights of Woman" is replete with fine sentiments, yet, she continues, patronizingly, "we do not coincide with her respecting the total independence of the sex." Mrs. Crocker evidently wanted her sex to be not too independent, but just independent enough.[1]
In 1841, when Lydia Maria Child edited the Anti-Slavery Standard, Margaret Fuller the Dial, and Harriot F. Curtis and Harriet Farley the Lowell Offering, there were perhaps in New England no other well-known women journalists or editors. Cornelia Walter of the Evening Transcript was the first woman journalist in Boston. To-day, women are editors and publishers of newspapers all over the United States; and the woman's column is a part of many leading newspapers. Sallie Joy White was the first regular reporter in Boston. She began on the Boston Post, a Democratic newspaper, in 1870. Her first work was to report the proceedings of a woman suffrage meeting. She is now on the staff of the Boston Daily Advertiser. Lilian Whiting is on the staff of the Traveller, and most of the other Boston newspapers have women among their editors and reporters. Some of the best magazine writing of the time is done by women; one needs but to look over the table of contents of the leading periodicals to see how large a proportion of the articles is written by them.
- ↑ This little book is worthy of mention, from the fact that it is probably the first publication of its kind in Massachusetts, if not in America. The whole title of the book is, "Observations on the Rights of Women, with their appropriate duties agreeable to Scripture, reason and common sense." Mrs. Crocker, in her introduction, says: "The wise author of Nature has endowed the female mind with equal powers and faculties, and given them the same right of judging and acting for themselves as he gave the male sex." She further argues that, "According to Scripture, woman was the first to transgress and thus forfeited her original right of equality, and for a time was under the yoke of bondage, till the birth of our blessed Savior, when she was restored to her equality with man." This is a very fine beginning, and would seem to savor strongly of the modern woman's rights doctrine; but, unfortunately, the author, with charming inconsistency, goes on to say,—"We shall strictly adhere to the principle of the impropriety of females ever trespassing on masculine grounds, as it is morally incorrect, and physically impossible."
