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NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1890.
171

as logic, treated of Our-Unconscious Allies, among whom she included clergymen who oppose equal suffrage, the women remonstrants with their weak documents, the colleges which try to keep out girls, and the many cases of outrage and wrong committed by "our motherless Government." The Rev. Olympia Brown replied to the question, Where is the Mistake? With great power and earnestness she pointed out the mistakes made by our Government during the century of its existence and demanded the correction of the greatest one of all—the exclusion of women.

The address of Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace (Ind.), A Whole Humanity, aroused the universal sympathy and appreciation of the audience, permeated as it was with the spirit of love, charity and justice:

.... The animus of this movement for woman's freedom has been mistaken in the idea that it meant competition between women and men; to my thought it simply means co-operation in the work of the world. The man is to bring the physical forces, and he has done that work magnificently. I never go over this continent and see what men have done, that I do not feel like bowing my head in reverence to their wisdom, their strength, their power, and I think the nearest thing we see to divinity is the incarnation of the God-head in a grand good man.

But there are other forces which must be brought into subjection to humanity before we reach the highest development, and those are the moral and spiritual forces. That is woman's share largely, not that I exempt man, but pre-eminently woman is the teacher of the race; in virtue of her motherhood she is the character builder; she forms the soul life; she rears the generations. It is not part of woman's work to contend with man for supremacy over the material forces. It was never told to woman that she should earn her bread by the sweat of her brow. That was man's curse. He was to earn his bread and woman's too, if he faithfully performed his duty, and we are not "dependents" even if he does that. I never allow a man to say in my presence that he "supports" his wife, and I want every woman to take the same position. I would correct any man and tell him he was mistaken in his phraseology if he should say anything of that kind. You have something different to do, my sisters. You shall hate evil, was said to woman, and evil shall hate you. There shall go forth from you an influence which shall ultimately exterminate evil. .... The men of this nation would never have made the success they have in the material world, if some stronger force had limited them on all sides.

I said a moment ago that I do not like the idea of dependence of women on men, or the dependence of men on women. I do not like