which has been found to be capable of over twenty different transpositions. The collectors and registrars in some towns and cities took advantage of this obscurity of expression, and interpreted the law according to their individual opinion on the woman suffrage question. In places where these officials were in sympathy, a broad construction was put upon the provisions of the law, the poll-tax payers were allowed to vote upon the payment of one dollar (under the divided tax law of 1879), and the women voters generally were given all necessary information, and treated courteously both by the assessors and registrars and at the polls. In places where leading officials were opposed to women's voting, the case was far different. Without regarding the clause in the law which said that a woman may vote upon paying either State or county poll-tax, such officials have threatened the women with arrest when they refused to pay both. In some towns they have been treated with great indignity, as if they were doing an unlawful act. In one town the women were actually required to pay a poll-tax the second year, in spite of the clause in the law that a female citizen who has paid a State or county tax within two years shall have the right to vote. The town assessor, whose duty it was to inform the women on this point of the law when asked concerning the matter, willfully withheld the desired information, saying he "did not know," though he afterwards said that he did know, but intended to let the women "find out for themselves." This assessor forgot that the women, as legal voters, had a right to ask for this information, and that by virtue of his official position he was legally obliged to answer. In another town two ladies who were property tax-payers were made to pay the two dollars poll-tax, and the record of this still stands on the town books. Some ladies were frightened and paid the tax under protest; others ran the risk. Here is a letter addressed to a lady 83 years of age:
Malden, Dec. 2, 1879.
Harriet Hanson: There is a balance of ninety cents due on your poll-tax of 1879, duly assessed upon you. Payment of the same is hereby demanded, and if not paid within fourteen days from this date, with twenty cents for the summons, the collector is required to proceed forthwith to collect the same in manner provided by law.
Theodore N. Fogue, Collector.
Mrs. Hanson paid no attention to the summons, and that was the end of it.
In 1881, under the amended act the poll-tax was reduced to fifty cents, and the property tax-paying women (who are not required to pay a poll-tax) are no longer obliged to make a return of property exempt from taxation, as was required under the original statute. Though some of the disabilities were removed, yet the privileges are no greater; and it is for members of school-committees and for nothing else, that the women of this State can vote. This is hardly worthy to be called "school suffrage"! It is to be regretted that a better test than that of school-committee suffrage, could not have been given to the women of the State, so that the issue of what under the circumstances cannot be called a fair trial of their desire to vote, might be more nearly what the friends of reform had desired.
The first petition to the Massachusetts legislature, asking that women might be allowed to serve on school-boards was presented in 1866 by Samuel E. Sewall of Boston. The same petition was again presented in 1867. About this time Ashfield and Monroe, two of the smallest towns in the State, elected women as members of the school committee. Worcester and Lynn soon followed the good example, and in 1874, Boston, for the first time, chose six women to serve in this capacity.[138] There had hitherto been no open objection to this innovation, but the school committee of Boston not liking the idea of women co-workers, declared them ineligible to hold such office. Miss Peabody applied to the Supreme Court for its opinion upon the matter, but the judges refused to answer, and dismissed the petition on the ground that the school committee itself had power to decide the question of the qualifications of members of the board. The subject was brought before the legislature of the same year, and that body, almost unanimously, passed "An Act to Declare Women Eligible to Serve as Members of School Committees." Thus the women members were reïnstated.[139]
This refusal on the part of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to answer a question relating to woman's rights under the law, was received with a knowing smile by those who remembered the three adverse decisions relating to women which had been given by that august body. The first of these was on the case of Sarah E. Wall of Worcester. The second was concerning a clause in the will of Francis Jackson of Boston, who left $5,000 and other property to the woman's rights cause. Its third adverse decision was given in 1871. In that year, Julia Ward Howe and Mary E. Stevens were appointed by Governor Claflin as justices of the peace. Some member of the governor's council having doubted whether women could legally hold the office, the opinion of the Supreme Court was asked and it decided substantially that because women were women, or because women were not men, they could not be justices of the peace; and the appointment was not confirmed.
Changes in the common law began in 1845 with reference to the wife's right to hold her own property. In 1846 she could legally sign a receipt for money earned or deposited by herself.[140] Before 1855 a woman could not hold her own property, either earned or acquired by inheritance. If unmarried, she was obliged to place it in the hands of a trustee, to whose will she was subject. If she contemplated marriage, and desired to call her property her own, she was forced by law to make a contract with her intended husband, by which she gave up all title or claim to it. A woman, either married or unmarried, could hold no office of trust or power. She was not a person. She was not recognized as a citizen. She was not a factor in the human family. She was not a unit; but a zero, a nothing, in the sum of civilization.
To-day, a married woman can hold her own property, if it is held or bought in her own name, and can make a will disposing of it. A man is no longer the sole heir of his wife's property. A married woman can make contracts, enter into co-partnerships, carry on business, invest her own earnings for her own use and behoof,—and she is also responsible for her own debts. She can be executor, administrator, guardian or trustee. She can testify in the courts for or against her husband. She can release, transfer, or convey, any interest she may have in real estate, subject only to the life interest which the husband may have at her death. Thirty years ago, when the woman's rights movement began, the status of a married woman was little better than that of a domestic servant. By the English common law, her husband was her lord and master. He had the sole custody of her person, and of her minor children. He could "punish her with a stick no bigger than his thumb," and she could not complain against him.[141] But the real "thumb" story seems to have originated with a certain Judge Buller of England, who lived about one hundred years ago. In his ruling on one of those cases of wife-beating, now so common in our police courts, he said that a man had a right to punish his wife, "with a stick no bigger than his thumb." That was his opinion. Shortly after this some ladies sent the judge a letter in which they prayed him to give the size of his thumb! We are not told whether he complied with their request.]
The common law of this State held man and wife to be one person, but that person was the husband. He could by will deprive her of every part of his property, and also of what had been her own before marriage. He was the owner of all her real estate and of her earnings. The wife could make no contract and no will, nor, without her husband's consent, dispose of the legal interest of her real estate. He had the income of her real estate till she died, and if they ever had a living child his ownership of the real estate continued to his death. He could forbid her to buy a loaf of bread or a pound of sugar, or contract for a load of wood to keep the family warm. She did not own a rag of her own clothing. She had no personal rights, and could hardly call her soul her own.
Her husband could steal her children, rob her of her clothing, and her earnings, neglect to support the family; and she had no legal redress. If a wife earned money by her labor, the husband could claim the pay as his share of the proceeds. There is a clause sometimes found in old wills, to the effect that if a widow marry again, she shall forfeit all right to her husband's property. The most conservative judge in the commonwealth would now rule that a widow cannot be kept from her fair share of the property, by any such unjust restriction. In a husband's eyes of a hundred and fifty years ago, a woman's mission was accomplished after she had been his wife and borne his children. What more could be desired of her, he argued, but a corner somewhere in which, respectably dressed as his relict, she could sit down and mourn for him, for the rest of her life.[142]