Woman's ambition was not confined at this period to literature and the learned professions; she found herself capable of practical work on a large scale in the department of agriculture. The Philadelphia Press has the following:
The beautiful farm of Abel C. Thomas, at Tacony, near Philadelphia, is remarkable chiefly because it is managed by a woman, Mrs. Louise H. Thomas. Her husband, the intimate friend of Horace Greeley, and well known as an author and theologian, in time past, has long been too feeble to take any part in managing the property. That duty has devolved upon Mrs. Thomas. The house, two hundred yards from the Pennsylvania railroad, is hidden from view by the trees which surround it. The grounds are tastefully laid out, and the lawn mowed with a regularity that indicates constant feminine attention. The plot is 20 acres in extent. Six acres comprise the orchard and garden. In addition to apple, apricot, pear, peach, plum and cherry, there are specimens of all kinds of trees, from pine to poplar.
A Press reporter recently walked over the premises, and Mrs. Thomas explained her manner of doing business. "I look after everything about the farm; take my little sample bags of wheat to the mills, and sell the crop by it; and twice I got ten cents more a bushel than any of my neighbors. But the things I take most interest in are my cows, chickens and bees. My cattle are from Jersey island, and pure Alderney. They are very gentle and good milkers. From four of them I get about 800 pounds of butter a year. The price of this butter varies from 50 cents to $1.00 per pound. There's my dog. When it's milking time, the hired man says to the dog, 'Shep, go after the cows,' and away he goes, and in a little while the herd come tinkling up. Why send a man to do a boy's work, or a boy to do that which a shepherd dog can do just as well? The cows understand him, and readily come when they are sent after. Well, so much for the milk department. Now, as to the garden; I don't sell much from that. Still, if the vegetables were not grown, they would have to be bought, and I take all that into consideration in closing accounts. And that's one thing most farmers don't do; they don't put on the cash side of the ledger the cost of their living, for which they have been to no expense. Now, as to the bees. The first cost is about the only expense attached to these little workers. I have twenty-five colonies, and can, and do handle them with as much safety as if they were so much dry wheat. I sell about $100 worth of honey yearly, and consume half as much at home. The bees are not troublesome when you know how to handle them, but they require to be delicately handled at swarming time.
"Now, as to chickens. My stock consists exclusively of the light Brahma breed. They come early, grow fast, sell readily, are tender, and have no disposition to forage; they are not all the time wandering round and flying over the garden fence, and scratching up flower and vegetable seeds. In fact, if you'll notice, there is a docility about my live-stock that is very attractive. The cows and chickens only need articulation to carry on conversation. You didn't see the hatching department of my chicken-house? I modeled the building after one used by a Madame de Linas, a French lady living near Paris, and am much pleased with it. I sometimes raise 1,000 chickens a season. I sell them at prices all the way up from $1 to $3 apiece. You must remember that they are full-blooded, and I always have my stock replenished. I keep the best and sell for the highest prices. They are generally sold to private families, who wish to get the stock, and I always sell them alive. They are not much trouble to raise, provided you know how, and have the accommodations for doing it. I feed them corn, milk, meal and water, and pay particular attention to their being properly housed. The eggs of this breed are very rich, and I charge one dollar and a half for a setting—that is, thirteen eggs.
"I have some three or four acres of wheat growing and it is heading out finely. Oh!" said Mrs. Thomas, becoming more enthusiastic, as she reviewed the incomes from the cereals, cows, and chickens, "I am making money, and money is a standard of success, although there is to me a greater pleasure than the mere financial part of the business, which comes from the passion I have for the life. I wish, indeed, that young ladies would turn their attention to this matter. To me, it seems to open to them an avenue for acquiring a competency in an independent way; and to one who would pursue it earnestly, I know of no avocation scarcely worth being classed with it."
"And you are not lonesome out here?"
"Oh! no. I never was lonesome an hour in my life—don't have time; I have a great deal of work to do, and am always ready to do it. Indeed, the only people I pity are those who do not work, or find no interest in it. No, no; I have plenty of visitors, and last week Jennie June, Lucretia Mott, and Anna Dickinson paid me a visit and were very much pleased while here. I have two grown-up boys, one in New York and the other in California; and have reared thirteen children besides my own family—colored, French, Italian, and I know not what nationalities."
Mrs. Thomas, who is certainly a remarkable woman, is a thoroughly educated one; has traveled extensively both in Europe and this country. Herself and husband have been intimate acquaintances of many eminent men, among whom were President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton. The activity displayed in managing the estate indicates the possession of marked executive ability, and the exercise she thus receives has doubtless had its share in keeping her young, well-preserved, and good-natured.
When the Rev. Knox Little visited this country in 1880, thinking the women of America specially needed his ministrations, he preached a sermon that called out the general ridicule of our literary women. In the Sunday Republic of December 12, Anne E. M'Dowell said:
The reverend gentlemen of St. Clement's Church, of this city, with their frequent English visiting clergymen, are not only trying their best to carry Christianity back into the dark ages, by reinvesting it with all old-time traditions and mummeries, but they are striving anew to forge chains for the minds, consciences, and bodies of women whom the spirit of Christian progress has, in a measure, made free in this country. The sermon of the Rev. Knox Little, rector of St. Alban's Church, Manchester, England, recently delivered at St. Clement's in this city, and reported in the daily Times, is just such an one as might be looked for from the class of thinkers whom he on that occasion represented. These ritualistic brethren are bitterly opposed to divorce, and hold the belief that so many Britons adhere to on their native soil, viz., that "woman is an inferior animal, created only for man's use and pleasure, and designed by Providence to be in absolute submission to her lord and master." The feeling engendered by this belief breeds contempt for and indifference to the nobler aspirations of women amongst men of the higher ranks, while it crops out in tyranny in the middle, and brutality in the lower classes of society. Even the gentry and nobility of Great Britain are not all exempt from brutal manifestations of power toward their wives. We once sheltered in our own house for weeks the wife of an English Earl who had been forced to leave her home and family through the brutality of her high-born husband—brutality from which the law could not or would not protect her. She died at our house, and when she was robed for her last rest much care had to be taken to arrange the dress and hair so that the scars of wounds inflicted on the throat, neck and cheek by her cruel husband might not be too apparent.
The reports of English police courts are full of disclosures of ill-treatment of women by their husbands, and year by year our own courts are more densely thronged by women asking safety from the brutality of men who at the altar have vowed to "love, honor and protect" them. In nearly all these cases, the men who are brought into our courts on the charge of maltreating women are of foreign birth who have been born and brought up under the spiritual guidance of such clergymen as the Rev. Knox-Little, who tell them, as he told the audience of women to whom he preached in this city: "To her husband a wife owes the duty of unqualified obedience. There is no crime that a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving him or applying for that monstrous thing, a divorce. It is her duty to submit herself to him always, and no crime he can commit justifies her lack of obedience. If he is a bad or wicked man she may gently remonstrate with him, but disobey him, never." Again, addressing his audience at St. Clement's, he says: "You may marry a bad man, but what of that? You had no right to marry a bad man. If you knew it, you deserved it. If you did not know it, you must endure it all the same. You can pray for him, and perhaps he will reform; but leave him—never. Never think of that accursed thing—divorce. Divorce breaks up families—families build up the church. The Christian woman lives to build up the church." This is the sort of sermonizing, reïterated from year to year, that makes brutes of Englishmen, of all classes, and sinks the average English woman to the condition of a child-bearing slave, valuable, mostly, for the number of children she brings her husband. She is permitted to hold no opinion unaccepted by her master, denied all reason and forced to frequent churches where she is forbidden the exercise of her common-sense, and where she is told: "Men are logical; women lack this quality, but have an intricacy of thought. There are those who think that women can be taught logic; this is a mistake. They can never, by any process of education, arrive at the same mental status as that enjoyed by man; but they have a quickness of apprehension—what is usually called leaping at conclusions—that is astonishing."
Divorce is a question over which woman now disputes man's absolute control. His canon and civil laws alike have made marriage for her a condition of slavery, from which she is now seeking emancipation; and just in proportion as women become independent and self-supporting, they will sunder the ties that bind them in degrading relations.
In September, 1880, Governor Hoyt was petitioned to appoint a woman as member of the State Board of Commissioners of Public Charities. The special business of this commission is to examine into the condition of all charitable, reformatory and correctional institutions within the State, to have a general oversight of the methods of instruction, the well-being and comfort of the inmates, with a supervision of all those in authority in such institutions. Dr. Susan Smith of West Philadelphia, from the year of the cruel imprisonment of the unfortunate Hester Vaughan, regularly for twelve years poured petitions into both houses of the legislature, numerously signed by prominent philanthropists, setting forth the necessity of women as inspectors in the female wards of the jails of the State, and backing them by an array of appalling facts, and yet the legislature, from year to year, turned a deaf ear to her appeals. Happily for the unfortunate wards of the State, the law passed in 1881.
State Hospital for the Insane, Norristown, Pa., Sept. 28, 1885.
My Dear Miss Anthony: I have referred your letter to my old friend, Dr. Hiram Corson, of Plymouth, Pa., who can, if he will, give a much better history of the movement in this State, than any one else, being one of the pioneers. I hope that you will hear from him. If, however, he returns your letter to me, I will give you the few facts that I know. I should be glad to have you visit our hospital and see our work.
Alice Bennett.
Very respectfully yours,
Plymouth Meeting, Pa., Oct. 2, 1885.
Miss Susan B. Anthony: Esteemed Friend:—Dr. Alice Bennett has referred your letter with questions to me. Alice Bennett, M. D., Ph. D., is chief physician of the female department of the eastern hospital of Pennsylvania, for the insane. She is also member of the Montgomery County Medical Society, and member of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania. She is the only woman in the civilized world, of whom I have ever heard, who has entire charge of the female patients in an institution for the care and treatment of the insane. We have in the Harrisburg hospital, Dr. Jane Garver, as physician for the female insane, but she is subordinate to the male physician. She has a female physician to assist her. Dr. Bennett was appointed and took charge in July, 1880, with Dr. Anna Kingler as her assistant. Dr. Kingler resigned, and went to India as medical missionary; was succeeded by Dr. Rebecca S. Hunt, who, after more than a year's service, also resigned to go to India as medical missionary. Dr. Bennett has now two women physicians to assist her in the care of more than six hundred patients, nearly as many as, if not more than, are in the female departments of the Harrisburg, Danville, and Warren hospitals all combined.
Dr. Bennett's hospital is a model one. There is a total absence of physical restraint, as used formerly under male superintendents, and, I may say, as still used in other hospitals than that of Norristown. Her skill in providing amusement, instruction and employment of various kinds, for the comfort and restoration of her patients to sanity and physical health, I feel sure has never been equaled in any hospital for the treatment of insane women. It is exceedingly interesting to see the school which she has established, and in which a large number of the insane are daily instructed, amused and interested. It is well known, now, that when the mind of the insane can be drawn away from their delusions by employment, or whatever else may interest them and absorb their attention, they are on the road to health. The public are not yet fully awake to the great reform effected in having women physicians for the women insane. Insane women have been treated as though there were no diseases peculiar to the sex. Never, so far as I have been able to learn, have they been treated by the means used for the relief of women in their homes. An eminent surgeon of Philadelphia informed me a few days since, that thirty years ago he was an assistant to Dr. Kirkbride, and desired to treat a patient for uterine troubles, but was rebuked by Dr. K., and told never to attempt to use the appliances relied on in private practice. My informant added that he believed not a single insane woman had ever received special treatment for affections in any of the hospitals under the care of male physicians. While we realize that great advantages would have come to these poor unfortunates by proper treatment, we feel that no male physician having due regard for his own reputation, should attempt to treat an insane woman for uterine diseases by means used in private practice, or even in hospitals with sane women. And this shows the importance of women physicians for women insane. One of the most intellectual and prominent women of this State was, 30 years ago, on account of domestic application, an inmate of our then champion hospital for the insane, for several months, during all of which time her sufferings were, to use her own words, indescribable, and yet she was not once asked in relation to her physical condition. Let us turn aside from this, and glance at the last annual report of Dr. Alice Bennett. She reports 180 patients examined for uterine diseases; 125 were placed under treatment; 67 treated for a length of time; 60 benefited by treatment. While Dr. Bennett does not say that their insanity was caused by the uterine disease, or that they were cured by curing that affection, she observes that in some cases the relief of the mind kept pace with the progress of cure of the uterine affections. I have, perhaps, written more than was needed on this subject, but I am so anxious that we shall have women doctors in every hospital for the treatment of insane women, and know, too, what influence yourself and good Mrs. Stanton can exert by turning your attention to it, which I am sure you will as you become informed in relation to the facts, that I could not stop short of what I have said. I have prepared a full account of our struggles with the State Society during six years to obtain for women doctors their proper recognition by the profession, and also the obstacles and opposition we encountered in our attempt to procure the law empowering boards of trustees to appoint women to hospitals for the insane of their sex. It will give me pleasure to send them to you if they would be of any use to you.
Hiram Corson.
Respectfully,
As I am within a week of my 82d birthday, and am writing while my heart is beating one hundred and sixty times per minute, you must not criticise me too sharply.
H. C.
January 24, 1882, Miss Rachel Foster made all the arrangements for a national convention, to be held in St. George's Hall, Philadelphia.[272] She also inaugurated a course of lectures, of which she took the entire financial responsibility, in the popular hall of the Young Men's Christian Association. Ex-Governor Hoyt of Wyoming, in his lecture, gave the good results of thirteen years' experience of woman's voting in that Territory. Miss Foster employed a stenographer to report the address, had 20,000 copies printed, and circulated them in the Nebraska campaign during the following summer.
At its next session (1883) the legislature passed a resolution recommending congress to submit a sixteenth amendment, securing to women the right to vote:
Harrisburg, Pa., March 21, 1883.—In the House, Mr. Morrison of Alleghany offered a resolution urging congress to amend the national constitution so that the right of suffrage should not be denied to citizens of any State on account of sex. It was adopted by 78 ayes[273] to 76 noes, the result being greeted with both applause and hisses.