(From a speech delivered at the Suffrage Convention held at Syracuse, N. Y. September 8, 1852. Quoted from “Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony.”[2])
The claims we make at these conventions are self-evident truths. The second resolution affirms the right of human beings to their persons and earnings. Is that not self evident? Yet the common law, which regulates the relations of husband and wife, and is modified only in a few instances, gives the “custody” of the wife’s person to the husband, so that he has a right to her, even against herself. It gives him her earnings, no matter with what weariness they have been acquired, or how greatly she may need them for herself or her children. It gives him a right to her personal property, which he may will entirely away from her, also the use of her real estate, and in some of the states married women, insane persons and idiots are ranked together as not fit to make a will, so that she is left with only one right, which she enjoys in common with the pauper, the right of maintenance. Indeed, when she has taken the sacred marriage vows, her legal existence ceases. And what is our position politically? The foreigner, the negro, the drunkard, all are entrusted with the ballot, all are placed by men higher than their own mothers, wives, sisters and daughters!
The woman, who, seeing this, dares not maintain her rights is the one to hang her head and blush. We ask only for justice and equal rights—the right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law: these are “the Gibraltar of our Cause.”
[2] The Bowen Merrill Co.
A Great Life
By Ida Husted Harper
(Biographer of Susan B. Anthony. From Introduction to the “Life and Works of Susan B. Anthony.”)
Those who follow the story of this life will confirm the assertion that every girl who enjoys a college education; every woman who has the chance of earning an honest living in whatever sphere she chooses; every wife who is protected by law in the possession of her person and property; every mother who is blessed with the custody and control of her own children—owes these sacred privileges to Susan B. Anthony beyond all others.
Suffrage a Means to an End
By Ella S. Stewart