by or against her in the same manner as if she was unmarried; and so a married woman may sue and be sued without the husband being joined in the action." Many women living in Iowa often quote these laws with pride, showing the liberality of their rulers as far as they go. But in new countries the number of women that inherit property is very small compared to the number that work all their days to help pay for their humble homes. It is in the right to these joint earnings where the wife is most cruelly defrauded, because the mother of a large family, who washes, irons, cooks, bakes, patches and darns, takes care of the children, labors from early dawn to midnight in her own home, is not supposed to earn anything, hence owns nothing, and all the labors of a long life, the results of her thrift and economy, belong absolutely to the husband, so that when he dies they call it liberality for the husband to make his partner an heir, and give her one-third of their joint earnings.
For this chapter we are indebted to Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, who moved into this State from New York in the spring of 1855 with her husband, who commenced the practice of law in Council Bluffs, where they have resided ever since. Mrs. Bloomer had been the editor for several years of a weekly paper called the Lily, which advocated both temperance and woman's rights, and for the six years of its publication was of inestimable value alike to both reforms. She was one of the earliest champions of the woman's rights movement, and as writer, editor and lecturer, did much to forward the cause in its infancy.[1]
The first agitation of the question of woman suffrage in Iowa was in the summer of 1854, when Frances Dana Gage of Ohio gave a series of lectures in the southeastern section of the State on temperance and woman's rights. Letters written to Lily at the time show that large audiences congregated to see and hear a woman publicly proclaiming the wrongs of her sex, and demanding equal rights before the law. During the year 1855 the writer gave several lectures at Council Bluffs, and in January,
- ↑ In 1849 her husband was, appointed post-master, she became his deputy, was duly sworn in, and during the administration of Taylor and Fillmore served in that capacity. When she assumed her duties the improvement in the appearance and conduct of the office was generally acknowledged. A neat little room adjoining became a kind of ladies' exchange where those coming from different parts of the town could meet to talk over the contents of the last Lily and the progress of the woman suffrage movement in general. Those who enjoyed the brief interregnum of a woman in the post-office, can readily testify to the loss to the ladies of the village and the void felt by all when Mrs. Bloomer and the Lily left for the West and men again reigned supreme. Mr. and Mrs. Bloomer removed to Mt. Vernon, Ohio, in 1853, and the publication of the Lily was continued; she was also the associate editor of the Western Home Visitor. Mrs. Bloomer lectured in the principal cities of Ohio and throughout the north-west, and was one of a committee of five appointed to memorialize the legislature of Ohio for a prohibitory law, and assisted in the formation of several lodges of Good Templars.
