USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 7
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And I think most women would bear me out in the opinion, that the power to acquire and to properly care for money would rather sweeten the path of matri- mony than lessen its advantages.
Anything that is so powerful in the human make-up as the love of possession, the desire to feel "This is mine," and is so inherent in our very nature, we do wrong to cast aside and give no legitimate field of action. Our daughters are crippled and dwarfed, and are not the grand and well-rounded women they might become.
Then this extreme dependence we impose upon them causes them to look upon marriage as the only loop-hole of escape from an irksome bondage, and they come to seek marriage as a means to this end. There is something terribly degrading in this attitude in which many of our well-to-do young women of today are placed. In a sneering way it is said, "They are in the market."
How much nobler and finer is the attitude of a woman who prepares herself for some useful profession or calling, and finds enough of interest in the busy activities of life to engross her best energies, to expand her powers, and to make her what God intended her to be-a ministering, self-helpful woman. Then when love speaks, and the love of her own heart answers, is she the less prepared for a happy marriage? I think not.
Many of us have known the genteel lady of poverty and have seen her willing to beg or borrow without the slightest idea of return, rather than do the useful things of life.
A bright friend has suggested that when the stress of need and trouble has come the battle of life is half won; when one's own opinions, which act as suckers upon the roots of strength and energy, are cut down, an open field is left free and clear.
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But can you not see, my friends, that when you allow in yourself, or cultivate in your daughter, the idea that useful labor is degrading, you are preparing for a moral descent in the day of adversity that may include a darker region than the one of unpaid debts.
In this brief essay the effects upon the women themselves who cherish these opinions, and are bound by these customs, have been treated. But they have a wider bearing. They reach out into all grades of life and touch every social center in the land. The discredit that is fastened upon labor for remuneration, if performed by the well-to-do women of our land, extends to the classes of people engaged in such labor, and distinctly builds rather than pulls down the barrier which exists between labor and capital, the rich and the poor. And I believe the difficulties of the labor question can never be solved until this barrier has been melted away by acquaintance, knowl- edge and sympathy. Anything that builds this barrier, that fortifies these walls of separation, is injurious and hurtful. But those philanthropies founded upon the principle that he is my neighbor who most needs me, and which ignore the prevailing artificial conditions and distinctions, are bringing forward the day of "the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World."
Personal contact, and the love and influence that flows from one to another in the social body, is the only agency that really wins, the only key that opens hearts.
Of late philanthropic institutions have sprung up, founded on this principle, viz., that of constant and free intercourse of the favored and cultured with the more humble and less fortunate.
Hull House, in this city, is a notable and successful example. It is a house planted by two women in the midst of a foreign population, mostly self-supporting, but comparatively destitute of a social life that brings joy and hope. These women in wise and winning ways have reached out socially, and have won their way into the hearts and confidence of the people by proving themselves real friends. No supe- riority has been assumed, but a footing of social equality has been their aim to estab- lish. From the needs of these people, which were many, there has sprung a system of most diverse educational facilities too numerous to mention.
Now if it is good for " homes" to be founded in less favored neighborhoods to carry social life into them, how much more may be accomplished when the natural homes that cover our land extend a helping hand to the needy and less favored?
Now it is quite common for our social life to rest on a commercial basis, receiving so much for so much, and using it as a means for selfish promotion; and interminable calling lists and crowded reception halls are some of the consequences. Wearisome these self-imposed burdens are, and often we feel that we cannot bear them any longer. How much better it would be to bestow ourselves and our hospi- tality on those who need us and whom we can really benefit, and not look for a material reward, but take it in the inward satisfaction such a life would bring. As Browning says: " Give earth yourself, go up for gain above."
THE PROGRESS OF FIFTY YEARS.
By MRS. LUCY STONE.
The commencement of the last fifty years is about the beginning of that great change and improvement in the condition of women which exceeds all the gains of hundreds of years before.
Four years in advance of the last fifty, in 1833, Oberlin College, in Ohio, was founded. Its charter declared its grand object, "To give the most useful education at the least expense of health, time, and money, and to extend the benefits of such education to both sexes and to all classes; and the elevation of the female character by bringing within the reach of the misjudged and neglected sex all the instruct- ive privileges which have hitherto unreasonably dis- tinguished the leading sex from theirs." These were the words of Father Shippen, which, if not heard in form, were heard in fact as widely as the world. The opening of Oberlin to women marked an epoch. In all outward circumstances this beginning was like the coming of the Babe of Bethlehem-in utter poverty. Its first hall was of rough slabs with the bark on still. Other departments corresponded. But a new Messiah had come.
MRS. LUCY STONE.
Get but a truth once uttered, and 'tis like A star new born that drops into its place; And which, once circling in its placid round, Not all the tumult of the carth can shake.
Henceforth the leaves of the tree of knowledge were for women, and for the heal- ing of the nations. About this time Mary Lyon began a movement to establish Mt. Holyoke Seminary. Amherst College was near by. Its students were educated to be missionaries. They must have educated wives. It was tacitly understood and openly asserted that Mt. Holyoke Seminary was to meet this demand. But, whatever the reason, the idea was born that women could and should be educated. It lifted a mountain load from woman. It shattered the idea, everywhere pervasive as the atmosphere, that women were incapable of education, and would be less womanly, less desirable in every way, if they had it. However much it may have been resented, women accepted the idea of their intellectual inequality. I asked my brother: " Can girls learn Greek?"
The anti-slavery cause had come to break stronger fetters than those that held the slave. The idea of equal rights was in the air. The wail of the slave, his clanking
Mrs. Lucy Stone was a native of Massachusetts. and Hannah Matthews Stone.
She was born August 13, 1818. Her parents were Francis Stone She was educated in the public schools at Monson and Wilbraham Academies, and Mt. Holyoke Seminary and Oberlin College, and has traveled over most of the United States and Canada. She married Henry B. Blackwell in 1855, but she did not change her name, finding that no law required her to do so. Mrs. Stone was a well- known Woman Suffragist. Her principal literary works are editorials in the "Woman's Journal," extending over twenty-two years. In religious faith she was a Hicksite Quaker or liberal Unitarian. She died October 18, 1893. Her life was a busy and useful one. She lived to see the Columbian Exposition with all its glorious opportunities, and to use them for the good of the cause most dear to her. Mrs. Stone's closing days and hours were blessed and crowned with comfort and tran- quillity, that always rewards a self-sacrificing, noble, Christian life. Almost her last articulate words were: "Make the world better."
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fetters, his utter need, appealed to everybody. Women heard. Angelina and Sarah Grimki and Abby Kelly went out to speak for the slaves. Such a thing had never been heard of. An earthquake shock could hardly have startled the community more. Some of the abolitionists forgot the slave in their efforts to silence the women. The Anti- Slavery Society rent itself in twain over the subject. The Church was moved to its very foundation in opposition. The Association of Congregational Churches issued a "Pastoral Letter" against the public speaking of women. The press, many-tongued, surpassed itself in reproaches upon these women who had so far departed from their sphere as to speak in public. But, with anointed lips and a consecration which put even life itself at stake, these peerless women pursued the even tenor of their way, saying to their opponents only: "Woe is me if I preach not this gospel of freedom for the slave." Over all came the melody of Whittier's:
"When woman's heart is breaking Shall woman's voice be hushed?"
I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned. Abby Kelly once entered a church only to find herself the subject of the sermon, which was preached from the text: " This Jezebel is come among us also." They jeered at her as she went along the street. They threw stones at her. They pelted her with bad eggs as she stood on the platform. Some of the advocates of the very cause for which she endured all this were ready to drive her from the field. Mr. Gar- rison and Wendell Phillips stood by her. But so great was the opposition that one faction of the abolitionists left and formed a new organization, after a vain effort to put Abby Kelly off from the committee to which she had been nominated.
The right to education and to free speech having been gained for woman, in the long run every other good thing was sure to be obtained.
Half a century ago women were at an infinite disadvantage in regard to their occupations. The idea that their sphere was at home, and only at home, was like a band of steel on society. But the spinning-wheel and the loom, which had given employment to women, had been superseded by machinery, and something else had to take their places. The taking care of the house and children, and the family sewing, and teaching the little summer school at a dollar per week, could not supply the needs nor fill the aspirations of women. But every departure from these conceded things was met with the cry, "You want to get out of your sphere," or, "To take women out of their sphere;" and that was to fly in the face of Providence, to unsex yourself --- in short, to be monstrous women, women who, while they orated in public, wanted men to rock the cradle and wash the dishes. We pleaded that whatever was fit to be done at all might with propriety be done by anybody who did it well; that the tools belonged to those who could use them; that the possession of a power presup- posed a right to its use. This was urged from city to city, from state to state. Women were encouraged to try new occupations. We endeavored to create that wholesome discontent in women that would compel them to reach out after far better things. But every new step was a trial and a conflict. Men printers left when women took the type. They formed unions and pledged themselves not to work for men who employed women. But these tools belonged to women, and today a great army of women are printers unquestioned.
When Harriet Hosmer found within herself the artist soul, and sought by the study of anatomy to prepare herself for her work, she was repelled as out of her sphere, and indelicate, and not a medical college in all New England or in the Middle States would admit her. She persevered, aided by her father's wealth and influence. Dr. McDowell, the dean of the medical college in St. Louis, admitted her. The field of art is now open to women, but as late as the time when models for the statue of Charles Sumner were made, although that of Annie Whitney, in the judgment of the committee, took precedence of all the rest, they refused to award her the contract
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for the statue when they knew that the model was the work of a woman. But her beautiful Samuel Adams and Lief Ericsson, and the fine handiwork of other artists, are argument and proof that the field of art belongs to women.
When Mrs. Tyndall, of Philadelphia, assumed her husband's business after his death, importing chinaware, sending her ships to China, enlarging her warehouses and increasing her business, the fact was quoted as a wonder. When Mrs. Young, of Lowell, Mass., opened a shoe-store in Lowell, though she sold only shoes for women and children, people peercd curiously in to see how she looked. Today the whole field of trade is open to woman.
When Elizabeth Blackwell studied medicine and put up her sign in New York, she was regarded as fair game, and was called a " she doctor." The college that had admitted her closed its doors afterward against other women, and supposed they were shut out forever. But Dr. Blackwell was a woman of fine intellect, of great personal worth and a level head. How good it was that such a woman was the first doctor! She was well equipped by study at home and abroad, and prepared to con- tend with prejudice and every opposing thing. Dr. Zakrzewska was with her, and Dr. Emily Blackwell soon joined them. At a price the younger women doctors do not know, the way was opened for women physicians.
The first woman minister, Antoinette Brown, had to meet ridicule and oppo- sition that can hardly be conceived to-day. Now there are women ministers, cast and west, all over the country.
In Massachusetts, where properly qualified " persons" were allowed to practice law, the Supreme Court decided that a woman was not a " person," and a special act of the legislature had to be passed before Miss Lelia Robinson could be admitted to the bar. But today women are lawyers.
Fifty years ago the legal injustice imposed upon women was appalling. Wives, widows and mothers seemed to have been hunted out by the law on purpose to see in how many ways they could be wronged and made helpless. A wife by her marriage lost all right to any personal property she might have. The income of her land went to her husband, so that she was made absolutely penniless. If a woman carned a dol- lar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar. If a woman wrote a book the 'copy- right of the same belonged to her husband and not to her. The law counted out in many states how many cups and saucers, spoons and knives and chairs a widow might have when her husband dicd. I have seen many a widow who took the cups she had bought before she was married and bought them again after her husband died, so as to have them legally. The law gave no right to a married woman to any legal exist- ence at all. Her legal existence was suspended during marriage. She could neither sue nor be sucd. If she had a child born alive the law gave her husband the use of all her real estate as long as he should live, and called it by the pleasant name of "the estate by courtesy." When the husband died the law gave the widow the use of one- third of the real estate belonging to him, and it was called the "widow's encumbrance." While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the laws in regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it.
We have not only gained in the fact that the laws are modified. Women have acquired a certain amount of political power. We have now in twenty states school suffrage for women. Forty years ago there was but one. Kentucky allowed widows with children of school age to vote on school questions. We have also municipal suffrage for women in Kansas, and full suffrage in Wyoming, a state larger than all New England.
The last half century has gained for women the right to the highest education and entrance to all professions and occupations, or nearly all. As a result we have
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women's clubs, the Woman's Congress, women's educational and industrial unions, the moral education societies, the Woman's Relief Corps, police matrons, the Wom- an's Christian Temperance Union, colleges for women, and co-educational colleges and the Harvard Annex, medical schools and medical societies open to women, women's hospitals, women in the pulpit, women as a power in the press, authors, women artists, women's beneficent societies and Helping Hand societies, women school supervisors, and factory inspectors and prison inspectors, women on state boards of charity, the International Council of Women, the Woman's National Council, and last, but not least, the Board of Lady Managers. And not one of these things was allowed women fifty years ago, except the opening at Oberlin. By what toil and fatigue and patience and strife and the beautiful law of growth has all this been wrought? These things have not come of themselves. They could not have occurred except as the great movement for women has brought them out and about. They are part of the eternal order, and they have come to stay. Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things.
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WOMAN AS AN INVESTOR. By MRS. LOUISE A. STARKWEATHER.
I would hesitate to come before you with a paper upon the unsentimental, and to many, the uninteresting topic of finance, but for the fact that woman is such an import- ant factor in the financial world. Coming as I do from a field of strife, where ambition to attain sudden wealth often wrecks the present and embitters the future lives of men and women whose investments of money are at best attended with a certain degree of hazard, I feel a certain sense of duty to woman in calling her attention to three important branches of investments, which, as far as she is concerned, come in the following order: Insurance, banking and loan associations. There is not an incident in the history of war of cruelty or justice meted out in obedience of some law, as cruel, as cold-blooded, or as heartless as is shown in the history of finance of today. Truc, hundreds have been swept out of existence in a single hour on fields of battle; but the suffering was soon past, the life gone out was cheerfully given for a cause sacred to the giver and revered by those who mourned their dead. Death is far preferable, as there can be no anguish nor suffering as great as that en- dured by the happy, successful man who suddenly finds himself a beggar; a lifetime of work and savings MRS. LOUISE A. STARKWEATHER, swept before his helpless eyes and hands, leaving him to witness and share the hardships of those dependent upon him, and perchance his failure may not excite the sincere sympathy of those in whose behalf he risked his all. Censure is too often the rule. The world of finance knows no pity for the man who fails; it has smiles only for the successful man without much inquiry as to the modus operandi of his success. Now in this whirlpool of money getting, money losing and money keeping, what of woman?
Read the list of the millionaires of the world and do you not find women as well represented as men? Read the records of any banking institution and who do you find as the principal stock owners? Women! Look over thebooks of any and every suc- cessful Loan and Building Association and who has been the purchasers of stock and builders of homes by this method of Loan? Women! But she is there in name only, as a rule. For many long and weary years she has been clamoring for political rights and political honors, equal suffrage and men's clothing, the pantaloons in particular, if one is to draw a conclusion from the recent dress reform display held here in Chi- cago. It is claimed aloud by some men, and whispered by others, that she has been in possession of the article of apparel just mentioned for all time; be that as it may, my
Mrs. Louise A. Starkweather is a native of West Virginia. She was born March 26, 1858. Her parents were Thomas B. Hall and Saralı A. Hall, of English and Scotch descent. She was educated at Normal University, Normal, Ill. She spent four years as a teacher and six years as a principal of schools. She has traveled throughout the United States and part of Canada. She married Oakley B. Starkweather in Chicago, April 20, 1889. Her principal literary works are newspaper work over the signature, "Antique," for the papers of Alton, Ill., Bloomington, Ill., and Chicago. She has been superintendent of the Woman's Department of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, of New York, for several years, and has written some of the largest policies held by women in America. In religious faith she is an Episcopalian. Her postoffice address is 421 Olive Street, St. Louis, Mo.
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only wish is that if the disguise of man's clothing would open woman's eyes to her own importance and responsibility in the financial world, I shall not object, but I doubt it. Strange as it may seem coming from a business woman as I am, I do most emphatically assert that woman is the most inconsistent of God's creation. There are women who by inheritance of stock in the great industries and banks of this age might wield a power far more telling, far more vital than anything politics could give, yet they never think of asserting the rights they already have. I shall not take your time in giving a recapitulation of history as to the wealth and power of our revered mater- nal ancestors. The pages of ancient and modern history teem with the facts and you may read if you will.
It is my purpose to talk of woman as I find her today, good, honest, earnest and inconsistent! First let us look at the matter of banks and bank stock. Did it ever occur to you that a very large portion of bank stock in the United States is owned by women? Did it ever occur to those women that they have a vote and voice in the direc- tion and management of a work far more important than the election of a Kansas Senator or a Ward politician? True, there are some women who are holding offices in banks. I met the vice-president of a Texas bank and in a conversation upon her duties learned that she always signed papers when brought to her even though she stopped her bread-making or any other household duties to do so; but as to any knowledge of the securities held, money, markets, etc, she had none further than that her money was in the bank's business and she was notified regularly of the dividends, and had money to use as she chose. But as to whether the dividends were larger or smaller than any preceding year she could not say. Some day that woman will be notified that her stock is not drawing any dividends, then maybe she will look after her interests and exercise her right to the ballot. Men are willing to grant woman all the rights she may have in the financial world, yet they look upon her as a legal prey if she per- sists in remaining ignorant in matters pertaining to her property and prosperity. No- where in the business world is woman more applauded than in this department of economics, and nowhere is she more swindled and wheedled out of her property than right here. As I before stated there is no sentiment in finance, but there is commendation to the successful, be that person man or woman. In Suffolk County, Va., two-thirds of the bank stock is owned by women, yet there is but one bank officer a woman, as far as can be learned, and many of these women do not know how to draw a check and can- not discover the difference between a dividend and an assessment and would be as pleased over a notice of one as the other until better informed. Who votes the shares of stock owned by women, do you ask? Some man who by proxy votes as best suits his purpose, and attends to her loans and interests as is most profitable to himself.
A rather amusing story is told of one of the wealthy women of St. Louis, whose husband, tired of attending to her dressmakers' and milliners' bills, decided to give her an account at a bank, so she might attend to these affairs herself. So he handed her a bank book with the account opened, and a good round sum at her credit, also a check book, and told her to pay her bills by checks; shortly after he was notified that his wife's account was overdrawn at the bank. He called her attention to the fact and was assured it could not be. She brought him the check book, saying: "See, there are several checks yet I have not used." Is it any wonder that money left in the hands of such a woman is soon mismanaged by some man who sees her ignor- ance. Woman suddenly finds herself in possession of money, by reason of death of her husband or father, and unless she is on the alert, it will soon be dissipated by bad management. Life insurance has made woman rich, and lawyers have profited by her ignorance in financial matters. The judge of the probate court in one of the counties of New York gives a most startling statement of his observation on the bench. It is this: Eighty per cent of the money left to widows and children in that county dur- ing his term of office was dissipated by mismanagement. Women left with money are looked upon as legitimate prey by a class of men who have over their office
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