Woman's work in America

by Unknown

These four events, occurring almost simultaneously, were the precursors of our present civilization. They kindled the souls of men into a flame which has burned steadily to this hour. The development of the present day dates from them, and the civilization begotten by them is endowed with earthly immortality. It abounds in the elements of perpetuity, which the earlier human growths by the Nile and Euphrates never possessed. Slavery has almost entirely disappeared from the world under its influence. Liberty has infected all races with its divine contagion, and has driven from the western hemisphere every crowned head. Laws and law-makers, trade and commerce, public and private life, church and state are examined by the highest ethical standards. And through the last three centuries, there has rung out a growing demand for human rights, and human opportunity, which has now culminated into a mighty and imperious demand that cannot be much longer denied. It is the people’s hour. In this trumpet call for right and justice are heard the multitudinous voices of women, who have caught the ear of the world, and to whose banner are daily flocking new recruits, and at last the woman’s hour has also come.

During the centuries that preceded the Christian era, and for centuries after, there were, here and there, in many countries, eminent women who came into possession of power and privilege; sometimes they were used wisely, and sometimes wickedly. But there were others, on whose histories women will always dwell with fresh delight, and refuse to believe the innuendos of contemporary writers concerning them. We read of Aspasia, the preceptress of Socrates, the wife of the great Pericles of Athens, and the friend of the Greek philosophers. Summoned for trial before the Greek Areopagus, she was charged with “walking the streets unveiled, sitting at table with men, disbelieving in the Greek gods, believing only in one sole Creator, and with entertaining original ideas concerning the motions of the sun and moon.” She was in advance of her time, and the age could not understand her.

We linger over the sad story of Hypatia, whose father, Theon the younger, was at the head of the Platonic school at Alexandria at the close of the fourth century. He was also the commentator on Ptolemy, and the editor of “Euclid,” adding here and there a demonstration of his own. All that he knew he imparted to his daughter, and Hypatia occupied a position unparalleled in ancient or modern times. Before she had reached her twenty-seventh year she had written a book on “The Astronomical Canon of Diophantes,” and another on “The Conics of Apollonius.” One of her enemies, the historian Socrates, tells us that when she succeeded her father in the Platonic school derived from Plotinus, and “expounded the precepts of philosophy,” studious persons from all parts of the country flocked to hear her, and that “she addressed both them and the magistrates with singular modesty.” But alas! she paid the penalty of her great superiority. And because she was suspected of having “an influence in public affairs,” and was deemed “worthy to sit in the councils of church and state,” she was brutally murdered by a savage mob, that regarded superiority in a woman as an arraignment of inferiority in men.

We are familiar with the story of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who reigned A.D. 267, of whom reluctant history tells us that she was a woman of great courage, high spirit, remarkable beauty, and purity of moral character. Her literary acquirements were unusual, and she spoke Latin, Greek, and the Oriental languages with fluency; while in the administration of her government she combined prudence, justice, and liberality, so that nearly the whole of the eastern provinces submitted to her sway.

It is a matter of history that 320 B.C., Martia, Queen of London, first formulated the principles of the English common law in her judgments and enactments. Her “Martian Statutes” outlived the Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse invasions. Holinshed, who is regarded as good authority, says that Alfred the Great, after twelve hundred years, revived her Briton laws, and enforced them among Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Two centuries later, they were again re-enacted under Edward the Confessor, and a century after they were again re-enacted by Stephen. The earliest laws of Great Britain, therefore, the substance of which has been in force twenty-two hundred years, were made by a woman.

Tacitus says of the Britons that sex was ignored in their government. Cæsar says that women had voice in their councils, and power in their courts, and often commanded in war. Plutarch says that women, among the Britons, took part in deciding on war and peace, as members of the councils, and that differences with their allies were decided by the women.

Until the time of the Reformation, Catholicism was the state religion of Britain, and nunneries were established and regulated by law. The Superiors were elected by the nuns and represented their constituents in the Wita, or legislative council; and in this way the right of women to representation in governments was recognized. The Domesday Book, compiled under William the Conqueror, in 1070, enumerated the inhabitants of each village who were entitled by existing Saxon law to vote for local officers, and included many women. Women were chosen members of many Saxon local assemblies by their own sex, and shared authority as members.

It has never been questioned that women have the right to vote in secular corporations where they are stockholders. It has been taken as settled that women have a right to vote in the enactment of corporation statutes, in deciding who shall be intrusted with the powers conferred on the corporation by law, and in electing persons to administer those powers. Women have always shared control of the immense Bank of England, with its enormous power over the currency and fortunes of the world. In still more important corporations this has been the case. “Women were at liberty to take part as stockholders with full powers to vote on all questions in the ‘Virginia Company,’ which peopled Virginia, and in the company which populated part of New England, and for a time governed it. The same was true of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which for centuries ruled half North America. It was also true of the East India Company, which for about the same time ruled absolutely one of the greatest empires of earth.”

When the barons wrested Magna Charta from King John, one of the rights for which they contended, and forced him to grant, was the right of women to a vote in the House of Lords. He was compelled to summon to that House all earls, barons, and others who held lands directly from the king, and he summoned to the very first Parliament the countesses of Pembroke and Essex. In the reign of Edward I., ten ladies were summoned as entitled to seats. There is conclusive evidence that during the first three reigns of the existence of Magna Charta, women had a right to a voice in the English government, and exercised it.

John Stuart Mill declares that “the list of women who have been eminent rulers of mankind swells to a great length, when to queens and empresses there are added women regents, and women viceroys of provinces.” “It is a curious consideration,” he continues, “that the only things which the existing laws exclude women from doing, are the things which they have proved they are able to do. There is no law to prevent a woman from having written all the plays of Shakspere, or composed all the operas of Mozart.” But it is almost everywhere declared that women are not fit for power and cannot be made so, and that they cannot take any part in civil government. The laws have been cunningly framed to prevent their taking the first step in this direction, and a public sentiment has been created as the bulwark of the law. “And yet,” says Mill, “it is not inference, but fact, that a woman can be a Queen Elizabeth, a Deborah, a Joan of Arc,”—an Isabella, a Maria Theresa, a Catherine of Russia, a Margaret of Austria.