FIGHTING HER WAY.
Referring to a strike in a Philadelphia printing office because two women had been employed as typesetters, Mrs. Bloomer wrote:
“Thus we see that woman has to fight her way as it were at every step. Her right to employment is denied, no matter how great her wants, unless she find it in the limited sphere prescribed to our sex by custom and prejudice. Yet we rejoice that there are men who are sufficiently liberal to open to her, here and there, a wider field for her industry, and who will see justice done her even though themselves are for a time inconvenienced thereby. Let not women be discouraged by such hostile manifestations on the part of men, but rather let them press forward until they break down every barrier which is raised to obstruct their advancement; and if they are but true to themselves, they will come off victorious and thenceforth find their way to every lucrative employment clear before them.”
ON THE LECTURE PLATFORM.
During Mrs. Bloomer’s year of residence in Ohio, she received a great many invitations to deliver her lectures. Some of these she accepted. The first one was at Zanesville; and, although she stated in giving a report of it that she had been told she would meet with only a cold reception, yet she declared she had never found warmer friends or was treated with greater respect than at that place. “My lecture was listened to by a very large and attentive audience; indeed, all who came were not able to get within the doors. Judging from the expressions after the meeting, people were well satisfied with the lecture on woman’s rights. I was earnestly requested to lecture again in the evening; but as I had made an appointment in Columbus to-night, I was under the necessity of declining.” And substantially the same report might have been made as to all lectures delivered in different parts of the state. But she did not confine her work on the platform to Ohio only. During the summer she visited Indiana, also, and was listened to by large meetings held in Richmond and other towns.
Of some of her experiences in her lecture tours, Mrs. Bloomer gave the following report:
“At M. I lectured by Invitation before a young men’s literary society. No price was fixed upon in advance, and I expected but little; but having been told that no lecturer, unless it was Horace Mann who preceded me, had drawn so large a house and put so much money in the treasury, when they asked me how much they should pay me I said, ‘You say I have done as well for you, and even better than did Horace Mann, pay me what you paid him and it will be right.’ I think they were a little surprised that a woman should ask as much as a man; but seeing the justice of my demand, they paid it without a word. At that day lecturers were more poorly paid than since, and for a woman to have the same pay for the same work as a man was no doubt a new idea to them. At Z. a gentleman invited me and made all other arrangements. On my arrival there he called on me and said that some society, thinking that money would be made by my lecture, were talking of seeing me on my arrival and arranging with me for a certain sum and they would take the balance. He advised me to have nothing to do with them if they should propose it, as I could just as well have the whole. Men were so accustomed to getting the services of women for little or nothing, that they seemed jealous when one got anything like the money that would cheerfully be paid to men for the same service.”
AT THE OHIO STATE CONVENTION.
Mrs. Bloomer attended the meeting of the Ohio Woman’s State-Temperance Society, held at Columbus early in January, and took an active part in its proceedings. She was elected its corresponding secretary, and was a member of the committee which proceeded to the State Capitol and presented a petition to each branch of the legislature then in session asking for the enactment of stringent prohibitory laws. Not being entirely satisfied with the regular report of the committee on resolutions, she offered a series on her own responsibility. These declared in substance, that the redemption of our race from the manifold evils of intemperance is of greater importance than the triumph of any political party; that the question must go to the ballot-box for final settlement; that, as men regard women as weak and dependent beings, women ask protection at their hands; and that it should be their duty to make themselves acquainted with woman’s sentiments on this great question, and honestly carry them out. In support of the resolutions, she said she considered many of the temperance men really responsible for the protracted rum interest. They were so wedded to party that they heeded not their duty to the welfare and morals of society. In spite of all that had been done, the cause lingers and the rumsellers and manufacturers triumph. The temperance men are to blame for not acting consistently or independently for the cause. They will not act together as for a paramount interest; they do not strike the nail on the head. It is useless to dally thus from year to year and not strike a blow to tell upon the evil and the curse. The resolutions, after discussion, were unanimously adopted.