AN ASSISTANT EDITOR.
On taking up her residence in Mount Vernon, Mrs. Bloomer became assistant editor of the Western Home Visitor, of which her husband was editor and one of the proprietors. This was a weekly family paper, having a large circulation and printed in folio form on a large sheet. It was devoted to educational progress and all reformatory questions designed to advance the interests of the community in which it circulated. It advocated temperance and sound morality, and its columns were filled weekly with matter appropriate to be read in the family circle. Its columns contained no advertisements, and it depended for its support solely on its patrons’ yearly subscriptions. We give below Mrs. Bloomer’s salutatory, and also her first additional article on assuming her position as assistant editor:
“Salutatory. Following the custom set to me by my husband, I make my editorial bow to the readers of the Visitor. I suppose it is not necessary for me to enter into any detailed account of myself, as the papers have already done that for me. Neither do I suppose it necessary to make any statements in regard to my sentiments and principles, as they are already generally well known to the public. What I have been in the past, I expect to be in the future,—an uncompromising opponent of wrong and oppression in every form, and a sustainer of the right and the true, with whatever subject it may be connected. I have no promises to make, preferring to stand uncommitted and at liberty to write as the spirit moves me, or as the circumstances of the case may require. Having a separate organ of my own independent of any other paper or person through which I can speak forth my sentiments on the great reform questions of the day, freely and independently, I probably shall not introduce into the columns of the Visitor anything particularly obnoxious on those subjects; yet I may frequently come in contact with old prejudices and bigoted notions, for it is impossible for the free progressive spirit of the present day to be bound by the opinion and prejudices of a former age. I trust, however, that my readers will bear with me and listen to me even though they do not approve, and if I say anything very bad, attribute it to my womanly folly or ignorance. And, as it is but right that I should bear whatever censure my doings may deserve, I shall write over my own initials in all matters of any moment. With this much for an introduction I extend to you, readers of the Visitor one and all, a cordial greeting, and wish you not only a ‘Happy New-Year’ but that it may prove happy and prosperous to you to its close.”
“Woman’s Right to Employment. To woman equally with man has been given the right to labor, the right to employment for both mind and body; and such employment is as necessary to her health and happiness, to her mental and physical development, as to his. All women need employment, active, useful employment; and if they do not have it, they sink down into a state of listlessness and insipidity and become enfeebled in health and prematurely old simply because denied this great want of their nature. Nothing has tended more to the physical and moral degradation of the race than the erroneous and silly idea that woman is too weak, too delicate a creature to have imposed upon her the more active duties of life,—that it is not respectable or praiseworthy for her to earn a support or competence for herself.
“We see no reason why it should be considered disreputable for a woman to be usefully employed, while it is so highly respectable for her brother; why it is so much more commendable for her to be a drone, dependent on the labors of others, than for her to make for herself a name and fortune by her own energy and enterprise. A great wrong is committed by parents toward their daughters in this respect. While their sons as they come to manhood are given some kind of occupation that will afford not only healthy exercise of the body and mind but also the means of an honorable independence, the daughters are kept at home in inactivity and indolence, with no higher object in life than to dress, dance, read novels, gossip, flirt and ‘set their caps’ for husbands. How well the majority of them are fitted to be the companions and mothers of men, every day’s history will tell.
“Certainly, our girls would be far better and happier than now if they were educated and encouraged to occupy their hands and minds in some useful business occupation; and parents do a great injustice to their daughters when they doom them to a life of idleness or, what is worse, to a life of frivolity and fashionable dissipation.
“It was said by a distinguished clergyman of one who had passed away from earth, ‘She ate, she drank, she slept, she dressed, she danced and she died.’ Such may be truly said to be the history of many women of the present day. They eat, they drink, they sleep, they dress, they dance and at last die, without having accomplished the great purposes of their creation. Can woman be content with this aimless, frivolous life? Is she satisfied to lead a mere butterfly existence, to stifle and crush all aspirations for a nobler destiny, to dwarf the intellect, deform the body, sacrifice the health and desecrate all the faculties which the Almighty Father has given her and which He requires her to put to good use and give an account thereof to Him? While all other created things both animal and vegetable perform their allotted parts in the universe of being, shall woman, a being created in God’s own image, endowed with reason and intellect, capable of the highest attainments and destined to an immortal existence, alone be an idler, a drone, and pervert the noble faculties of her being from the great purposes for which they were given?
“It will not always be thus; the public mind is undergoing a rapid change in its opinion of woman and is beginning to regard her sphere, rights and duties in altogether a different light from that in which she has been viewed in past ages. Woman herself is doing much to rend asunder the dark veil of error and prejudice which has so long blinded the world in regard to her true position; and we feel assured that, when a more thorough education is given to her and she is recognized as an intelligent being capable of self-government, and in all rights, responsibilities and duties man’s equal, we shall have a generation of women who will blush over the ignorance and folly of the present day.
“A. B.”
And for six months thereafter, the Visitor contained nearly every week one or more articles from her pen. Some were on temperance, some on woman’s “fads” and foibles of that day. She aimed to sustain every good word and deed and to rebuke vice in all its forms.
Of course she did not escape criticism in prosecuting her work. Especially, people at that early day would not listen quietly to her severe analysis of the laws bearing upon the legal rights of women. They sometimes denied her positions, and at other times doubted the wisdom of the changes which she advocated. Between her and the editor of another paper published in the city, quite an extended controversy arose which ran through several numbers of their respective papers, Mrs. Bloomer sustained her side of the debate with numerous quotations from legal writers, and she had the satisfaction of seeing her position substantially admitted by her opponents.
PROSPERITY OF THE LILY.
But Mrs. Bloomer’s attention and time were given chiefly to the Lily, the publication of which in her new home was commenced on the first of January. Printed in new type on a steam press, it presented a very neat and handsome appearance. The people of the state were greatly pleased with its removal to their limits and new subscriptions came in with surprising rapidity; its semi-monthly issue soon reached over six thousand copies. Mrs. Bloomer was greatly encouraged by these signs of approval and renewed her exertions and labors to make the Lily in all respects acceptable to its many friends. She wrote from one to three pages each week of original matter for its pages, and was aided at the same time by numerous correspondents. She continued to write continuously in advocacy of temperance, making that the leading object of her work, but she also wrote for woman’s advancement in all the fields of honest endeavor. She asked for her plenty of work and good pay; she insisted that to her should be opened every educational institution; and she demanded for her also the right of suffrage as her inalienable right. Some extracts from her editorials will follow.