TEN YEARS:
AN APPENDIX.
"To go on working, I consider the only thing to do; and, when friends urge this after every fresh effort, their doing so in itself contains a kind of verdict."—Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
THERE are some items of interest, that have come under my observation, for the first time, during the last few years, which I have not found it possible to add to the preceding lectures without destroying their symmetry. I therefore offer them in an Appendix. They are not placed here because they are unimportant, but simply that the later progress of public opinion may be set forth by itself.
For the last five years, the women of the United States have held few public discussions. They have done wisely. Circumstances have proved their friend. Nothing ever had done, nothing ever will do again, so great a service to woman, in so short a time, as this dreadful war, out of which we are so slowly emerging. Respect for woman came only with the absolute need of her; and so many women of distinguished ability made themselves of service to the government, that we had no single woman to honor as England had honored Florence Nightingale. With us, her name was legion. But with the prospect of peace comes the old duty of agitation; and we find ourselves again summoned to our work, and again anxiously awaiting its results,—anxiously, for the public work of women is an object which still attracts the gaze of the curious; and the smallest indiscretion on the part of a single woman has a retrograde effect, which very few seem able to measure.
Our reform is unlike all others; for it must begin in the family, at the very heart of society. If it be not kindly, temperately, and thoughtfully conducted, men everywhere will be able to justify their remonstrances. Let us rather justify ourselves. My last report to any convention was made to those called in Boston in 1859 and 1860. Between that time and 1863, I printed five volumes, which are nothing but reports upon the various interests significant to our cause. During the last four years, I have watched the development of American industry in its relation to women, and have, through the newspapers, aroused public feeling in their behalf. My labor is naturally classed under the three heads of Education, Labor, and Law. A proper education must prepare woman for labor, skilled or manual: and the experience of a laborer should introduce her to citizenship; for it provides her with rights to protect, privileges to secure, and property to be taxed. If she be a laborer, she must have an interest in the laws which control labor.
In considering our position in these three respects, it is impossible to offer a digest of all that has occurred during the last six years. What I have to say will refer chiefly to the events of the last two.