Lockwood-0070_5

oy
we

470°

have been given to the women of the church,
__ And what a wonderful and blessed work it
has been! It has converted and united
churches, ramified with its organizations all
ovel the Jand, and pushed more talented
wortien to the front than all other organiza-
_ tions in the land combined. Hitherto the
church had been conservative, but the women
learned the sesame, aud not only sre churches
of every denomination granted to them, but
they are invited and urged to fill these
churches, and to-day their grand moral and
educational reform with the churches behind
them, is accomplishiag incalculable good.

But they have done more than this. As
an auxilliary to their work for the prolii-
bition of the liquor traffic ;—as a lever to con-
tro! legislation, they are almost in one Solid
phalanx demanding that badge of Amer-
ican citizenship—sée dallot. As they are
pow two hundred thousand strong, the out-
come may be foreshadowed. Women had
occupied the pulpit before, and the efforts of
Phebe A. Hannaford, Mary A. Livermore,
Olympia Brown Willis, and the sainted
Lucretia Mott, will not soon be forgotten, or
undervalued. They hewed the way - braved
the storm of censure that the innovation
called forth, but the WoC. T. U. came in
and possessed the land. '

But years before this, Hliz#beth Cady Stan-
ton and her coadjutors, who had also been
engaged in the anti-slavery reform, feeling
the burden of the law pressing heavily on
them, demanded the ballot for themselves
and their sisters. Never before or since has
any crusade in which women have been en
gaged, not even the fanious Trish Women’s
Parliament in 1609, received such a storm of
ridicule from pulpit and press as did) Unis.
The caricatures and head lines of the news:
paper press, the cautions from the pulpit to

’ 3 < a 6 * aoe i

‘

al .

WE PRESENT PHASE OF THE WOMAN QUESTION,

parishioners not to be led away by this
heresy, the delicate tarned-p noses of fine

beaux, lest their chances of matrimony
should be spoiled, were all terrorizing to the
brave women who bad dared to stand and
speak for the right. A large majority of
those who early espoused the cause beat a
hasty retreat from the field. But the specter

‘would not down. Some ofthe women brave

the tempest and died at their posts. Some
still survive, and have added thousands of
converts to the idea of woman's equality
before the law.

A few years hence the world will wonder
why women have not always voted, why
they have not always possessed property
rights, why they were so long held as sul,
jects and inferiors, instead of partaers and
equals. There is no reason in nature. There
should be none in law.

Now all along the line women are orgas-
zing for temperance work, for religions
work, for political work, for press work, fer
literary work | organizing in trades unions
in labor reforms, in building associations
Never before has there been such an exter:
sive and comprehensive demand for oolleye
courses by women as now. Never in history
has there been such a general quickening in
the woman mind, and the conception of such:
comprehensive and extensive reforms as at
this time, 7

Now Ido not expect to see the milleniic.
in a few years to come, but 1 do expect t
see oa freer and inore exalted womanhon!
and T know that there will come with it.
purer and a nobler manhood Texpect to see
the idle women working, and the laboriny
women resting and studving a little.



apt
ad stg ei

‘Jadies and leaders of the fon, the frowns of ° ere
husbands, the disclaimers of any sympathy
with the movement by young girls to their