WOMEN DRUNKARDS.
“Pity the law couldn’t be brought to bear upon a few more respectable lady drunkards—and respectable gentlemen drunkards, too—and shut them in a dungeon till they could learn in what real respectability consists! The so-called ‘respectable ladies,’ the upper-ten drunkards, are in our view decidedly vulgar, and should be classed in public estimation with the drunken occupant of the shanty or the frequenter of the low drunkery. They are even worse than these, for their influence is much greater.”
PROGRESS.
“The signs of the times cheer on the honest true-hearted laborers in this cause to greater devotion in the work in which they are engaged. They point to a triumph in the future, to the coming of that brighter day when the mists of ignorance and barbarism that have so long rested upon the life and hopes of women will be dispelled, and when justice and right will bear sway. For be it remembered that these things point, as unerringly as does the needle to the pole, to the wider and fuller emancipation yet in store for our sex, to the acknowledgment of her civil as well as her social and legal rights. And that this end will be achieved we believe to be as certain as that time will continue to roll on in its course and humanity continue to struggle against selfishness, bigotry and wrong in whatever form they may present themselves.”
SEWING MACHINES.
The question having been asked Mrs. Bloomer, What will women do now sewing machines are coming into use? she replied as follows:
“It will be no strange thing to see, within a few years, women merchants, women bookkeepers, women shoemakers, women cabinetmakers, women jewelers, women booksellers, typesetters, editors, publishers, farmers, physicians, preachers, lawyers. Already there are some engaged in nearly or quite all these occupations and professions; and, as men crowd them out of their old places, the numbers will increase. It is well that it is so. Woman has long enough stitched her health and life away, and it is merciful to her that sewing machines have been invented to relieve her of her toilsome, ill-paid labor, and to send her forth into more active and more lucrative pursuits where both body and mind may have the exercise necessary to health and happiness. Men are aiding to forward the woman’s-rights movement by crowding women out of their old places. Women will be the gainers by the change, and we are glad to see them forced to do what their false education and false delicacy have prevented their doing in the past.”
GOVERNOR SEYMOUR’S VETO.
A Maine Law, having passed the New York legislature, was vetoed by the governor; on which Mrs. Bloomer commented as follows:
“The news of this treacherous act on the part of the governor was celebrated by the liquor party with firing of cannon, bonfires and illuminations, with shouts of rejoicing and drunken revelry. The devils in hell must have rejoiced, while the angels in heaven must have wept, over the scene. And how was it in the home of the drunkard? Ah, who can picture the agony and despair, the wailing and agonizing prayers that went forth from the hearts of the poor stricken women who saw all their hopes of deliverance thus dashed to the earth and themselves and famishing babes consigned to hopeless degradation and misery! While those who are called their protectors, and those who are heaping upon them every injury and killing them inch by inch, are enjoying their fiendish orgies, those poor sorrowing ones sit desolate and heart-broken in their dreary cellar and garret homes bowed with shame and anguish. Would that the man who has wrought all this sorrow and wretchedness could be made to behold the work!”