Woman Question and Sex in Politics," published at a later date in the Springfield Republican. "Warrington," in his letters to the same newspaper, from 1868 to 1876, never failed to present a good and favorable argument on some phase of the woman question. Caroline Healey Dall's lectures before 1860, and her book "The College, the Market and the Court," published in 1868, were seed-grain sown in the field of this reform. Samuel E. Sewall's able digest of the laws relating to the legal condition of married women, and William I. Bowditch's admirable pamphlets,[1]have done incalculable service.
Of women in the civil service, there are: 58 clerks, 266 employés and 387 officials—total, 411. This includes postmasters and clerks in bureaus. In 1880, General F. A. Walker, superintendent of the census, instructed the supervisors of the several districts to appoint women as enumerators when practicable. They were accordingly so appointed in many parts of the United States. Carroll D. Wright, supervisor of the district of Massachusetts was in favor of General Walker's instructions, and out of the 903 enumerators appointed by him, thirty were women. This was an exceedingly large proportion compared with the number appointed in States where supervisors were not in favor of women enumerators.
Thanks to the efforts of Caroline Healey Dall, the American Social Science Association, formed in 1865, put women on its board of officers, as did the Boston Social Science Association, organized the same year. These were the first large organizations in the country to admit women on an absolute equality with men. The result of this action vindicated at once and forever woman's fitness to occupy positions of honor in associations that man had hitherto claimed for himself alone. This has encouraged women to express themselves in the presence of the wisest men, and enabled them to present to the public the woman side of some great questions. Women are officers as well as members of many societies originally established exclusively for men. A national society for political education, formed in 1880, of which women are members, has at least one woman on its board of officers. What would have been thought thirty years ago, if women had studied finance, banks and banking, money, currency, sociology and political science?
- ↑ "Taxation of Women in Massachusetts"; "Woman Suffrage a Right, not a Privilege," and "The Forgotten Woman in Massachusetts."
