The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume I Part 33

Though the ballot is the open sesame to equal rights, there is a fundamental law which can not be violated with impunity between woman and man, any more than between man and man; a law stated a hundred years ago by Alexander Hamilton: "Give to a man a right over my subsistence, and he has power over my whole moral being."

Woman's subsistence is in the hands of man, and most arbitrarily and unjustly does he exercise his consequent power, making two moral codes: one for himself, with largest lat.i.tude--swearing, chewing, smoking, drinking, gambling, libertinism, all winked at--cash and brains giving him a free pa.s.s everywhere; another quite unlike this for woman--she must be immaculate. One hair's breadth deviation, even the touch of the hem of the garment of an _accused_ sister, dooms her to the world's scorn. Man demands that his wife shall be above suspicion. Woman must accept her husband as he is, for she is powerless so long as she eats the bread of dependence. Were man today dependent upon woman for his subsistence, I have no doubt he would very soon find himself compelled to square his life to an entirely new code, not a whit less severe than that to which he now holds her. In moral rect.i.tude, we would not have woman less but man more.

It is to put an end to such heresies as the following, from the Rochester Democrat, that all women should most earnestly labor.

That paper begs us not to forget, "that what may be pardonable in a man, speaking of evils generally, may and perhaps ought to be unpardonable in one of the presumably better s.e.x; because there can not and must not be perfect equality between men and women when the disposition to do wrong is under discussion. Women are permitted to be as much better than men as they choose; but there ought to be no law, on or oft the statute books, recognizing their social and political right to be worse or even as bad as men; and it is shameful that intelligent women should claim such a right, or even dare to mention it at all." No human being or cla.s.s of human beings would venture to talk thus to equals. It is only because women are dependent on men that such cowardly impudence can be dished out to them day after day by puny legislators and editors, themselves often reeking in social corruption which should banish them forever from the presence of womanhood. Yours for an even-handed scale in morals as well as politics, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

[Footnote 57: The committee reported January 30, 1871, John A. Bingham, of Ohio, chairman. The minority report, signed by Benjamin F. Butler, of Ma.s.sachusetts, and William Loughridge, of Iowa, is perhaps the strongest and most exhaustive argument ever written on woman's right to vote under the Const.i.tution. It is given in full in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 464.]

CHAPTER XXIII.

FIRST TRIP TO THE PACIFIC COAST.

1871.

At the close of the New York convention Miss Anthony, Rev. Olympia Brown and Josephine S. Griffing went with Mrs. Hooker to Hartford for a short visit, which it may be imagined was one protracted "business session." Then Miss Anthony hastened to her own home to prepare for a long journey, as she and Mrs. Stanton had decided to make a lecture tour through California. She left Rochester the last day of May, and met Mrs. Stanton in Chicago where a reception was given them by the suffrage club, in its elegant new headquarters. They spoke in a number of cities en route and attended numerous handsome receptions held in their honor. At Denver they were entertained by Governor and Mrs.

McCook. Their audiences were large and enthusiastic, the press respectful and often cordial and appreciative.[58] At Laramie City they were accompanied to the station by a hundred women whom Mrs. Stanton addressed from the platform. A letter written by Miss Anthony during the journey contains these beautiful paragraphs:

We have a drawing-room all to ourselves, and here we are just as cozy and happy as lovers. We look at the prairie schooners slowly moving along with ox-teams, or notice the one lone cabin-light on the endless plains, and Mrs. Stanton will say: "In all that there is real bliss, if only the two are perfect equals, two loving people, neither a.s.suming to control the other." Yes, after all, life is about one and the same thing, whether in the prairie schooner and sod cabin, or the Fifth Avenue palace. Love for and faith in each other alone can make either a heaven, and without these any home is a h.e.l.l. It is not the outside things which make life, but the inner, the spirit of love which casteth out all devils and bringeth in all angels.

Ever since 4 o'clock this morning we have been moving over the soil that is really the land of the free and the home of the brave--Wyoming, the Territory in which women are the recognized political equals of men. Women here can say: "What a magnificent country is ours, where every cla.s.s and caste, color and s.e.x, may find equal freedom, and every woman sit under her own vine and fig tree." What a blessed attainment at last; and that it should be here among these everlasting mountains, midway between the Atlantic and Pacific, seems significant of the true growth of the individual--the center pure, the heart-beats free and equal.

At Salt Lake City they were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. W.S. G.o.dbe, and were presented to their audience by Mayor Wells, who afterward took them to call on his five wives. The second evening they were introduced by Bishop Orson Pratt. From here Miss Anthony writes to The Revolution:

If I were a believer in special providences, I should say that our being in Salt Lake City at the dedication of the New Liberal Inst.i.tute was one. On Sunday morning, July 2, this beautiful hall of the Liberal party--Apostate party, the Saints call it--was well filled. The services consisted of invocations, hymns and brief addresses. Messrs. G.o.dbe, Harrison, Lyman and Lawrence seem to be the advance-guard--the high priests of the new order--and as they sang their songs of freedom, poured out their rejoicings over their emanc.i.p.ation from the Theocracy of Brigham, and told of the beat.i.tudes of soul-to-soul communion with the All-Father, my heart was steeped in deepest sympathy with the women around me and, rising at an opportune pause, I asked if a woman and a stranger might be permitted to say a word. At once the entire circle of men on the platform arose and beckoned me forward; and, with a Quaker inspiration not to be repeated, much less put on paper, I asked those men, bubbling over with the divine spirit of freedom for themselves, if they had thought whether the women of their households were today rejoicing in like manner? I can not tell what I said--only this I know, that young and beautiful, old and wrinkled women alike wept, and men said, "I wanted to get out of doors where I could shout."

The transition of this people into the new life is complicated--is heartrending. Remember that when these men began their rebellion against Brigham, it was simply a protest against his tyranny--his exorbitant t.i.thing system--a mere refusal to render tribute unto him; not at all a disavowal of the Morman religion or of polygamy.

But as bond after bond has burst, this last, strongest and tightest one of plurality of wives is beginning to snap asunder. To ill.u.s.trate: One man, a n.o.ble, loving, beautiful spirit--nothing of the tyrant, nothing of the sensualist--with four lovely wives, three of whom I have seen, and in the homes of two of whom I have broken bread, with thirteen loved and loving children--wakes up to the new idea. Four women's hearts breaking, three sets of children who must leave their father that the one-wife system may be realized! I can a.s.sure you my heart aches for the man, the women and the children, and cries, "G.o.d help them, one and all."

Where the man is a brutal tyrant, the problem is comparatively easy. What we have tried to do is to show them that the principle of the subjection of woman to man is the point of attack; and that woman's work in monogamy and polygamy is one and the same--that of planting her feet on the ground of self-support. The saddest feature here is that there really is nothing by which these women can earn an independent livelihood for themselves and their children, no manufacturing establishments, no free schools to teach. Women here, as everywhere, must be able to live honestly and honorably without the aid of men, before it can be possible to save the ma.s.ses of them from entering into polygamy or prost.i.tution, legal or illegal. Whichever way I turn, whatever phase of social life presents itself, the same conclusion comes: "Independent bread alone can redeem woman from her curse of subjection to man."

I attended the Liberals' Fourth of July celebration. Their beautiful hall was packed; their souls were on fire with their new freedom. Never since the first reading of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, were its great truths responded to with such real and deep feeling as on this occasion. I did not intrude myself on them again--but my soul, too, was on fire for freedom for my s.e.x, as was that of every wife and daughter in that a.s.sembly. But these men have yet to learn to loose the bonds of power over the women by their side, precisely as have the men in the States and the world over.

Here is missionary work--not for any "thus saith the Lord" canting priests or echoing priestesses by divine right, but for great, G.o.dlike, humanitarian men and women, who "feel for those in bonds as bound with them." No Phariseeism, no shudders of Puritanic horror, no standing afar off; but a simple, loving, fraternal clasp of hands with these struggling women, and an earnest work with them--not to ameliorate but to abolish the whole system of woman's subjection to man in both polygamy and monogamy.

In a letter home she says:

Our afternoon meeting of women alone was a sad spectacle. There was scarcely a sunny, joyous countenance in the whole 300, but a vast number of deep-lined, careworn, long-suffering faces--more so, even, than those of our own pioneer farmers' and settlers' wives, as I have many times looked into them. Their life of dependence on men is even more dreadful than that of monogamy, for here it is two, six, a dozen women and their great broods of children each and all dependent on the one man. Think of fifteen, twenty, thirty pairs of shoes at one strike, or as many hats and dresses!...

But when I look back into the States, what sorrow, what broken hearts are there because of husbands taking to themselves new friendships, just as really wives as are these, and the legal wife feeling even more wronged and neglected. I have not the least doubt but the suffering there equals that here--the difference is that here it is a religious duty for the man to commit the crime against the first wife, and for her to accept the new-comer into the family with a cheerful face; while there the wrong is done against law and public sentiment. But even the most devoted Mormon women say it takes a great deal of grace to accept the other wives, and be just as happy when the husband devotes himself to any of them as to herself, yet the faithful Saint attains to such angelic heights and finds her glory and the Lord's in so doing. The system of the subjection of woman here finds its limit, and she touches the lowest depths of her degradation.

The empire totters and Brigham feels the ground sliding from under his feet. These men will be very likely to try the "variety" plan of Stephen Pearl Andrews, but the women will hate that even worse than polygamy. One man came to me relating a new vision, direct from Christ himself, to that effect, and I said: "Away with your man-visions! Women propose to reject them all, and begin to dream dreams for themselves."

While at Salt Lake they received complimentary pa.s.ses to California and throughout that State, from Governor Leland Stanford, always a helpful friend to woman suffrage. They reached San Francisco July 9, and took rooms at the Grand Hotel, at that time the best in the city. Their coming had been heralded by the press and they experienced the royal California welcome, receiving flowers, fruit, calls and invitations in abundance. Mrs. Stanton made her first speech in Platt's Hall to an audience of 1,200; all seemed delighted and the papers were very complimentary. At that time the whole coast was much excited over the murder of A.P. Crittenden by Laura D. Fair, and the entire weight of opinion was against her. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, always ready to defend their s.e.x, determined to hear the story from her own lips, hoping for the sake of womanhood to learn some mitigating circ.u.mstances. The afternoon papers came out with an attack upon them for making this visit to the jail, and in the evening at Miss Anthony's first lecture there was an immense audience, including many friends of Crittenden, determined that there should be no justification of the woman who killed him.

Miss Anthony made a strong speech on "The Power of the Ballot," which was well received until she came to the peroration. Her purpose had been to prove false the theory that all women are supported and protected by men. She had demonstrated clearly the fact that in the life of nearly every woman there came a time when she must rely on herself alone. She a.s.serted that while she might grant, for the sake of the argument, that every man protected his own wife and daughter, his own mother and sister, the columns of the daily papers gave ample evidence that man did not protect woman as woman. She gave sundry facts to ill.u.s.trate this point, among them the experience of Sister Irene, who had established a foundling hospital in New York two years before, and at the close of the first year reported 1,300 little waifs laid in the basket at the door. These figures, she said, proved that there were at least 1,300 women in that city who had not been protected by men.

She continued impressively: "If all men had protected all women as they would have their own wives and daughters protected, you would have no Laura Fair in your jail tonight."

Then burst forth a tremendous hissing, seemingly from every part of the house! She had heard that sound in the old anti-slavery days and quietly stood until there came a lull, when she repeated the sentence.

Again came a storm of hisses, but this time they were mingled with cheers. Again she waited for a pause, and then made the same a.s.sertion for the third time. Her courage challenged the admiration of the audience, which broke out into a roar of applause, and she closed by saying: "I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand."

The next morning, however, she was denounced by the city papers as having vindicated the murder and justified the life which Mrs. Fair had led! Those who had not heard the lecture believed these reports, and other papers in the State took up the cry. Even the press of New York and other eastern cities joined in the chorus, but the latter was much more severe on Mrs. Stanton, who in newspaper interviews did not hesitate to declare her sympathy for Mrs. Fair; and yet for some reason, perhaps because Miss Anthony had dared refer boldly to crime in high places in San Francisco, the batteries there were turned wholly upon her. In her diary she says: "Never in all my hard experience have I been under such fire." So terrific was the onslaught that no one could come to her rescue with a public explanation or defense. Miss Anthony had cut San Francisco in a sore spot and it did not propose to give her another chance to use the scalpel. She attempted to speak in adjacent towns but her journal says: "The shadow of the newspapers hung over me." At length she resolved to cancel all her lecture engagements and wait quietly until the storm pa.s.sed over and the public mind grew calm. She writes in her diary, a week later: "Some friends called but the clouds over me are so heavy I could not greet them as I would have liked. I never before was so cut down." She tells the story to her sister Mary, who replies:

I am so sorry for you. It will spoil your pleasure, and then I think of that load of debt which you hoped to lighten, yet I should have felt ashamed of you if you had failed to say a word in behalf of that wretched woman. I am sick of one-sided justice; for the same crime, men glorified and women gibbeted. If your words for Mrs. Fair have made your trip a failure, so let it be--it is no disgrace to you. It is scandalous the way the papers talk of you, but stick to what you feel to be right and let the world wag.

On July 22, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton started for the Yosemite Valley, a harder trip in those days even than now. It is best described in her own words:

Mrs. Stanton, writing to The Revolution, and S.B.A., scribbling home, are thirty miles out of the wonderful valley of the Yosemite.... We shall have compa.s.sed the Calaveras Big Trees and the Yosemite Valley in twelve days out from Stockton, where we expect to arrive August 2. Mrs. Stanton is to speak there Thursday night and I at San Jose, where I shall learn whether the press has forgiven me. We both lecture the rest of the week, and Sunday get into San Francisco, speak at different points the 7th and 8th, and on the 9th go to the Geysers and stay two nights; then out again and on with meetings almost every night till the end of the month.

We shall visit lakes Donner and Tahoe and some other points of interest as they come in our reach. Mr. Hutchings would not take a penny for our three days' sojourn in the valley, horses and all, so our trip is much less expensive than we had antic.i.p.ated.

With our private carriage we drove three miles nearer the top of the mountain than the stage pa.s.sengers go. Mrs. Stanton and I each had a pair of linen bloomers which we donned last Thursday morning at Crane's Flats, and we arrived at the brow of the mountain at 9 o'clock. Our horses were fitted out with men's saddles, and Mrs.

Stanton, perfectly confident that she would have no trouble, while I was all doubts as to my success, insisted that I should put my foot over the saddle first, which I did by a terrible effort. Then came her turn, but she was so fat and her pony so broad that her leg wouldn't go over into the stirrup nor around the horn of a sidesaddle, so after trying several different saddles she commenced the walk down hill with her guide leading her horse, and commanded me to ride on with the other. By this time the sun was pouring down and my horse was slowly fastening one foot after another in the rocks and earth and thus carefully easing me down the steeps, while my guide baited me on by saying, "You are doing nicely, that is the worst place on the trail," when the fact was it hardly began to match what was coming.

At half-past two we reached Hutchings', and a more used-up mortal than I could not well exist, save poor Mrs. Stanton, four hours behind in the broiling sun, fairly sliding down the mountain. I had Mr. Hutchings fit out my guide with lunch and tea, and send him right back to her. About six she arrived, pretty nearly jelly. We both had a hot bath and she went supperless to bed, but I took my rations. Presently John K. McLean and party, of Oakland, came in.

They had scaled Glacier Point that day and were about as tired and f.a.gged as we. The next day Mrs. Stanton kept her bed till nearly noon; but I was up and on my horse at eight and off with the McLean party for the Nevada and Vernal Falls....

Sat.u.r.day morning, with Stephen M. Cunningham for my guide, I went up the Mariposa trail seven miles to Artist's Point, and there under a big pine tree, on a rock jutting out over the valley, sat and gazed at the wondrous walls with their peaks and spires and domes. I could take in not only the whole circuit of the mountain tops but the valley enshrined below, with the beautiful Merced river meandering over its pebbly bed among the gra.s.s and shrubs and towering pines. We reached the hotel at 7 P.M.--tired--tired. Not a muscle, not one inch of flesh from my heels to my hands that was not sore and lame, but I took a good rub-off with the powerful camphor from the bottle mother so carefully filled for me, and went to bed with orders for my horse at 6 A.M.

Sunday morning's devotion for Minister McLean and the Rochester strong-minded was to ride two and a half miles to Mirror lake, and there wait and watch the coming of the sun over the rocky spires, reflected in the placid water. Such a glory mortal never beheld elsewhere. The lake was smooth as finest gla.s.s; the lofty granite peaks with their trees and shrubs were reflected more perfectly than costliest mirror ever sent back the face of most beautiful woman, and as the sun slowly emerged from behind a point of rock, the thinnest, flakiest white clouds approached or hung round it, and the reflection shaded them with the most delicate, yet most perfect and richest hues of the rainbow. And while we watched and worshipped we trembled lest some rude fish or bubble should break our mirror and forever shatter the picture seemingly wrought for our special eyes that Sunday morning. Then and there, in that holy hour, I thought of you, dear mother, in the body, and of dear father in the beyond, with eyes unsealed, and of Ann Eliza and Thomas King. I talked to John of them and wondered if they too sat not with us in that holy of holies not made with hands. O, how nothing seemed man-made temples, creeds and codes!

At San Jose Miss Anthony was the guest of Rev. and Mrs. Charles G.

Ames. Her audience was small but appreciative, and the Mercury, edited by J.J. Owen, said: "After all the mean notices by certain of the daily papers in San Francisco, her hearers were astonished at the masterly character of her address. She held her audience delighted for an hour and forty minutes." From here she went to the Geysers, riding on the front seat with driver Foss, and she says in her diary: "On the way out he explained to me the philosophy of fast driving down the steep mountain sides; and on the way back he unfolded to me the sad story of his life."

Miss Anthony spoke at a number of small towns but it did not seem advisable for her to try again in San Francisco, so she devoted herself to contributing in every possible way to the success of Mrs. Stanton's lectures. On August 22 the latter completed her tour and left for the East, but Miss Anthony decided to accept the numerous calls to go up into Oregon and Washington Territory. She went to Oakland for a brief visit with Mrs. Randall, the Mary Perkins who used to teach in her childhood's home more than thirty years before, and her diary says: "They are glad to see me and we have enjoyed talking over old times.

They are wholly oblivious to our reform agitation and I am glad to get out of it for a while." But a few days later she called on the Curtis family, who were interested in reforms, and wrote: "I got back into my own world again and the springs of thought and conversation were quickly loosened. It is marvelous how far apart the two worlds are."

She started on the ship Idaho for Portland, August 25. The sea was very rough, they were seven days making the trip and, judging from the almost illegible entries in the diary, it was not a pleasant one:

1st day.--I feel forlorn enough thus left alone on the ocean but I am in for it and bound to go through.... Before 6 o'clock my time came and old ocean received my first contribution.

2d day.--Strong gale and rough sea. Tried to dress--no use--back to my berth and there I lay all day. Everybody groaning, babies crying, mothers scolding, the men making quite as much fuss as the women.

3d day.--Tried to get up but in vain. In the afternoon staggered up on deck--men stretched out on all sides looking as wretched as I felt--glad to get back to bed. Captain sent some frizzled ham and hard tack, with his compliments. Sea growing heavier all the time.

4th day.--Terribly rough all night. Could not sleep for the thought that every swell might end the ship's struggles. Felt much nearer to the dear ones who have crossed the great river than to those on this side. Out of sight of land all day and ship making only two and a half miles an hour.

5th day.--The same pitching down into the ocean's depths, the same unbounded waste of surging waters, but a slight lessening of the sea-sickness.

6th day.--Quite steady this morning. Went on deck and met several pleasant people. Took my spirit-lamp and treated the captain's table to some delicious tea.

7th day.--First word this morning, "bar in sight." The sh.o.r.es look beautiful. All faces are bright and cheery and many appear not seen before. I felt well enough to discuss the woman question with several of the pa.s.sengers. Arrived at Portland at 10 P.M., glad indeed to touch foot on land again.

In the first letter home she says:

Abigail Scott Duniway, editor of the New Northwest, was my first caller this morning. I like her appearance and she will be business manager of my lectures. The second caller was Mr. Murphy, city editor of the Herald, and the third Rev. T.L. Eliot, of the Unitarian church, son of Rev. William Eliot, of St. Louis. I am to take tea at his house next Monday. I am not to speak until Wednesday, and thus give myself time to get my head straightened and, I hope, my line of argument. Mrs. Duniway thinks I will find two months of profitable work in Oregon and Washington Territory, but I hardly believe it possible. If meetings pay so as to give me hope of adding to my $350 in the San Francis...o...b..nk (my share of the profits on Mrs. Stanton's and my lectures, which we divided evenly), making it reach $2,000 or even $1,000 by December first, I shall plod away.

I miss Mrs. Stanton, still I can not but enjoy the feeling that the people call on _me_, and the fact that I have an opportunity to sharpen my wits a little by answering questions and doing the chatting, instead of merely sitting a lay figure and listening to the brilliant scintillations as they emanate from her never-exhausted magazine. There is no alternative--whoever goes into a parlor or before an audience with that woman does it at the cost of a fearful overshadowing, a price which I have paid for the last ten years, and that cheerfully, because I felt that our cause was most profited by her being seen and heard, and my best work was making the way clear for her.