"WOMAN'S RIGHTS" ARE UNFASHIONABLE.
In most of the states women have no legal claim to their own children. In several of them the father may, in his will, commit the little ones to the care of strangers, and the mother can only weep and moan.
In many of the states the wife has no right to the property which her father gave her, or to that which she has earned with her own hands.
In not one of the states can a woman express her opinion or wish at the ballot box. Her person, her property, her claim to her children, —everything she holds most dear in this life, is controlled by the ballot box. The most ignorant foreigners are invited to it; our mothers and wives are forbidden.
Women and girls receive, for the same work, only half the compensation of men and boys.
The "woman's rights" movement seeks the mitigation, and final removal, of these outrageous wrongs.
My dear girls, think for yourselves this time. Don't simper and giggle when the fools sneer at "woman's rights." They don't know what they are talking about.
A few days ago I heard a sort of jackanapes ridiculing "woman's rights," and several very sweet girls were listening to his coarse scurrilities; and, must I say it, smiling their approval.
Wearing an unfashionable dress is not half so bad; going into the street with the bonnet of two years ago, even, will not unsex you like a smiling indifference to these desperate struggles of your sisters. To avoid starvation on one hand, and crime on the other, they plead with the world for justice.
In this city of Boston there are twenty thousand women starving on needle-work, and five thousand who live, or die, by crime. A few brave ones, driven to the wall, hope, by calling attention to their helplessness, to obtain sympathy and justice. This is essentially the "woman's rights" movement. Suppose you don't like the mode in which they agitate. When you hear criticisms, or ridicule, if you haven't the heart to say a word in defence, at least you can keep silence.
I wish I dared to tell you how we men almost despise you, sometimes, for this abandonment of each other.