some of the most noble and estimable, are never called to preside over households; while some of the called are impelled to decline the invitation. In point of fact, then, there is and always will be a large proportion of the gentler sex who are, at least temporarily, required to earn their own subsistence, and vindicate their own usefulness in some other capacity than that of the loved and honored wife and mother. The maiden or widow, blessed with opulence, ought to be insured against the worse calamities of a reverse of fortune, by the mastery of some handicraft or industrial avocation; she ought to lead a life of persistent and efficient industry, as the fulfillment of a universal duty; while her unportioned sister must do this or grovel in degrading idleness and dependence on a father's or brother's overtaxed energies, looking to marriage as her only chance of escape therefrom. For man's sake, no less than woman's, it is eminently desirable that that large portion of our women, who are not absorbed in domestic cares, should be attracted and stimulated to industry by a wider range of pursuits, and a consequent increase of recompense. I deem it at once unjust and like all injustice impolitic, that a brother and sister, hired by the same farmer, the one to aid him in his own round of labor, the other to assist his wife in hers, should be paid, the one twelve to twenty, the other but four to six dollars per month. The difference in their wages should be no greater than in their physical and mental ability. Still more glaring is this discrepancy, when the two are employed as teachers, and, though of equal efficiency, the one is paid five hundred dollars per annum, the other but two, or in that proportion, merely because the former is a man and the latter a woman. While such disparities exist, right here in this metropolis of American civilization and Christianity, it is in vain that Conservatism stops its ears and raises its eyebrows at the announcement of a Woman's Rights Convention.
3. Regarding marriage as the most important, most sacred, and tender of human relations, and deeming it irrevocable, save by death, it seems to me essential that woman should be proffered such a range of employments, with such adequate recompense, as to enable her at all times to support herself in honored and virtuous independence, so that marriage shall be accepted by her at the dictates of love, and not of hunger. Much might be urged on this point, but I choose simply to commend it to the consideration of others.
4. As to woman's voting or holding office, I defer implicitly to herself. If the women of this or any other country believe their rights would be better secured and their happiness promoted by the assumption on their part of the political franchises and responsibilities of men, I, a Republican in principle from conviction, shall certainly interpose no objection. I perceive what seem to be serious practical difficulties in the way of realizing such assumption; but these are difficulties, not for me, but for them. I deem it unjust that men should be so constantly and unqualifiedly impeached as denying rights to woman which the great majority of women seem quite as reluctant to claim as men are to concede. I apprehend that whenever women shall generally and earnestly desire an equality of political franchises with men, they will meet with little impediment from the latter.
