WOMAN’S TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.
We now copy again from Mrs. Bloomer’s writings:
“In the Spring of 1852 a few of the daughters [of Temperance] celebrated an open two-days temperance meeting at Rochester, N. Y. It was very largely attended, between four and five hundred women being present at the first session. The numbers increased, and at the later sessions the large hall, which would contain 1,800, was packed to the platform with eager, earnest temperance men and women. This meeting was not only not secret, it was not exclusive,—men forming a large part of it and doing their share of talking. It was at this meeting that I first let my voice be heard in public after much persuasion. Able men came to our aid—among them I remember the Rev. William H. Channing (the younger), an eloquent divine of those days; and the meeting was very enthusiastic, and was the beginning of much in the same direction that followed. This convention resulted in organizing a woman’s state Temperance Society, which became very effective and had much to do in breaking down the barriers and introducing women into temperance and other work. Some half-dozen women were employed by the society as agents on salaries of twenty-five dollars per month and their expenses. These lecturers traveled through the state, holding meetings, and securing membership to the society and signatures to the pledge, and petitions to the legislature. They were well received on all sides, partly because of the novelty of a woman speaking, and partly because the principle of total abstinence and Washingtonian temperance was stirring all hearts. Up to these times no woman had thought of speaking in public outside a Quaker meeting-house. To have attempted such a thing at an earlier day would have called down upon her much censure, and St. Paul would have been freely quoted to silence her. Now, however, women took matters Into their own hands and acted as their own impulses prompted and their consciences approved. And it was surprising how public sentiment changed and how the zeal of temperance men and women helped on the new movement of women.”
Mrs. Bloomer and Miss Anthony were secretaries of this convention, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton president; in the final organization Mrs. Stanton was made president, Mrs. Bloomer corresponding secretary, and Miss Anthony and Mary C. Vaughan recording secretaries.