“The soul is unthought of in this reproduction, which merely takes place to satisfy the animal in man. The desire, the inclinations of the mother, are not considered. To cater to the passions of man, to be the mother of undesired children is her natural sphere in life. She must thank God that she has been selected thus to be the instrument to perpetuate the race. Home, sweet home, has been sung until it echoes and re-echoes throughout the land, but to millions of women it has been simply a prison, a hellish prison.
“The church, ‘the man of God,’ its instrument, stands upon one side. On the other side stands the state. In case the church is not strong enough to control woman, the state holds up to her aching eyes the terrors of the ‘law of the land.’
“Oh, the path of woman is a straight and narrow one! Woe unto her if she dares to depart therefrom. And yet you wonder how it is that criminals throng the land; that there are so many that will not respect the rights of others. Did anyone ever respect any rights of the mother that bore them? Why; she had no rights! Then how could any one respect them? Bound by man-made law and church superstition from her infancy her fate is linked fast with that of the working class. She and they must alike be kept in subjection.
“O, workingmen, O ye toilers, ye producers! O womankind! mothers of coming generations, awake, arise, and hand in hand, break the bonds that enthrall you, that enslave you, body and soul. Refuse to longer be any man’s slave. Assert your rights. Clamor for your freedom, and rest not until you have obtained it.
“It is impossible that in squalor and filth, purity should be gestated. Assert your freedom, O women! Demand it, clamor for it, fight for it! Never for one moment cease to struggle for it. Be united in your efforts, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, and the day is sure to come when victory shall be yours.”
“I am afraid,” the speaker went on,—“I am afraid I have been telling you more of the evils that need reform than of the methods of securing that reform; and, while I am radical in the extreme, yet I condemn not one single method or idea that may help to bring about one single reform, be it ever so small. ‘Rome was not built in a day,’ and the world will not be reformed in a day, or a week, or a month, or a year. But as the days and weeks and months and years speed by, each reform will furnish its aid in bringing about the much desired result. Everyone who is working for reform, or in other words, working for humanity’s best welfare, no matter in what line it may be, is doing his or her share of the work, and will doubtless receive the full credit that is due them. Only this I would add, while everyone is riding his or her own hobby, I would look beneath this mass of corruption and unearth the underlying cause. To lay the ax to the root is what must be done in order to fell the giant, and to be able to do this we want freedom, freedom, freedom! No more laws to bind our thoughts and shackle our hands. We want to be free, to let the hearts within our bosoms beat as they will; free to follow the dictates of our normal desires; free to extricate ourselves from the old and customary when we recognize it as evil; free to let our souls soar into the regions above the clouds; free to enter the upper chambers of the mind; free to tear down the structure of rottenness that enables the few to drain the life blood of the millions and to coin it into shining gold wherewith to perpetuate their power. Free to use our own inheritance, the grand gifts of nature.
“O thou glorious, O thou great, grand, redeeming ‘Liberty’! Thou shalt yet wave over this beautiful world the banner of holy brotherly love! Thou shalt yet secure to us this much needed freedom. Thou shalt yet see its fruits in the coming generation of a new-born people,—when poverty, hunger and misery will be unknown! When crime will be a forgotten word; when the rule of the church, like that of the state, will be a thing no longer remembered; when prisons will be swept from the face of the earth; when justice, glory-crowned, at the right shall stand; when charity no longer has a place, since her vocation shall be ended; when the awaiting of unborn humanity will be regarded the coming of a joyous event, and when disease shall have succumbed to the master hand of science, death no longer a dreaded monster, but a friend that comes only as a result of nature, to claim those that have lived their glorious life to the end, and who fain would resign that hold upon it in exchange for the peaceful rest that follows the well-performed labor of the day.
“O, friends and comrades! to hasten that day I ask you to join the band that but yesterday was small indeed, but which today has swelled to such size as to alarm those that would place their feet upon your necks, and which will continue to swell more rapidly day by day until the down-trodden will arise as one man to demand their natural birth right.”
With glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes the speaker took her seat amid deafening applause.