ON THE LECTURE PLATFORM.
During Mrs. Bloomer’s year of residence in Ohio, she received a great many invitations to deliver her lectures. Some of these she accepted. The first one was at Zanesville; and, although she stated in giving a report of it that she had been told she would meet with only a cold reception, yet she declared she had never found warmer friends or was treated with greater respect than at that place. “My lecture was listened to by a very large and attentive audience; indeed, all who came were not able to get within the doors. Judging from the expressions after the meeting, people were well satisfied with the lecture on woman’s rights. I was earnestly requested to lecture again in the evening; but as I had made an appointment in Columbus to-night, I was under the necessity of declining.” And substantially the same report might have been made as to all lectures delivered in different parts of the state. But she did not confine her work on the platform to Ohio only. During the summer she visited Indiana, also, and was listened to by large meetings held in Richmond and other towns.
Of some of her experiences in her lecture tours, Mrs. Bloomer gave the following report:
“At M. I lectured by Invitation before a young men’s literary society. No price was fixed upon in advance, and I expected but little; but having been told that no lecturer, unless it was Horace Mann who preceded me, had drawn so large a house and put so much money in the treasury, when they asked me how much they should pay me I said, ‘You say I have done as well for you, and even better than did Horace Mann, pay me what you paid him and it will be right.’ I think they were a little surprised that a woman should ask as much as a man; but seeing the justice of my demand, they paid it without a word. At that day lecturers were more poorly paid than since, and for a woman to have the same pay for the same work as a man was no doubt a new idea to them. At Z. a gentleman invited me and made all other arrangements. On my arrival there he called on me and said that some society, thinking that money would be made by my lecture, were talking of seeing me on my arrival and arranging with me for a certain sum and they would take the balance. He advised me to have nothing to do with them if they should propose it, as I could just as well have the whole. Men were so accustomed to getting the services of women for little or nothing, that they seemed jealous when one got anything like the money that would cheerfully be paid to men for the same service.”