How I should rejoice to see a large Lowell mill wholly owned and managed by women! What is to make it possible?—only, that the unoccupied women of wealth and rank, at this moment in the Commonwealth, should combine to build or buy such a mill. Suppose it well managed, representing ultimately a million of dollars: do you believe it would long remain without political power? Just as the testy trade of Upsal demanded the franchise for its eighty-one women, so would the Lowell mill.
Every year, these ten years, our sturdy friend Dr. Hunt has sent up her protest to the city assessors. She has not quite had the heart, as I wish some woman had, to let them sell her household goods over her head, for non-payment of taxes; but the City Government sits as serene and patient under her inflictions as if she had never spoken. Her protests probably go back to the pulp of the paper-mill; and, but for the newspaper, we should never know that they were written. But five thousand female property-holders, calling their own caucus, and storming the City Hall with well-concerted words, would compel any government to listen; would compel committees to sit, and departments to act. Let it be your first duty, then, to add to the number of intelligent female workers.
Last summer, I heard one of our friends say, that the reason that men did not wish women to enter medical societies, and receive medical diplomas, was, that they were unwilling to be detected in their own double-dealing and malpractice. I should not be willing to indorse a statement so broadly made. Mean men may justify it: but the men I have known, the men who have been at once my inspiration and my strength,—these men were not mean; yet among them even the bravest doubted, at first, as to the expediency of our discussion.
These men have felt a tender reverence for moral purity in woman. They have seen laborers of the lower class fall as if smitten by a pestilence. They had not faith to save the world at such a cost. From the malpractice and guilty dread of mean men, then; from the sensitive horror of the noblest, let us learn, at least, that the duty woman owes the State is a moral duty. A full understanding of this will give her courage to press her claims. It is the power of conscience and love which she is to bring to bear on the ballot-box, and which is to mould, with her aid, questions and interests hitherto untouched by any higher impulse than the love of gain.
I cannot leave this statement of human rights, without claiming for woman one right of which men very commonly deprive her; in behalf of which society makes no clamor, and about which the most radical reformers say very little. I mean woman's right to find man in his proper place, as counsellor and friend.
As father, to find him interested, equally with his wife, in the spiritual custody and training of his daughters; giving thus some portion of each day to imbuing young womanly souls with manly strength.
As brother, to find in him wise respect for womanhood, and helpful free communion.
As husband, to find him, unless there is manifest interposition of Providence, always at the head of his family, always the support and counsellor of his wife, as she in turn is to be his; making his love her shelter, his strength her dependence, his experience her guide, his manliness the complement of her womanliness.
As a son, to find him always anxious and ready to minister, provident to think, patient to bear, and willing to act; never shirking, from idleness, the duty which an active mother does not shrink from bending, perhaps breaking, beneath.