How, then, is woman's influence as a citizen in a republican land to be exercised, if she be excluded from positive legislation? I answer, by the moral effect of her personal influence in the formation of mind and character; by her work as the great educator in the home and in society. If hers be not a moral and spiritual influence, it is none at all for good. And of all the powers for good in a republic, this is the strongest, most beneficent, did woman rightly comprehend the issue.
The purity, safety, and perpetuity of a free government rest, ultimately, not so much on forms of law, on precedents, on the ascendency of this or that party or administration, but on the intelligence, morality, and devotion to freedom of the people. What should woman care to legislate, when she may wield such an engine of power as education puts into her hands; when she may mould the minds and inspire the souls of those who are to be the future legislators; when she may, even now, put forth a direct and immediate influence upon those who are the legislators of the present time? For her influence on society is twofold, direct and reflex, present and prospective; it is the most powerful known, the most subtile and secret and determining, viz., personal influence.
To this end, therefore, that she may influence in the right direction, women need to inform themselves, to acquire a knowledge of the principles on which our system rests, and to become thoroughly imbued with their spirit. This will necessitate an acquaintance with the nature and details of our political creed, of which our women, especially, are lamentably ignorant. How many out of every hundred, do you suppose, have even read the Constitution, for instance? You may say that the majority of men have never studied it either, even of the voters. I admit the fact. There is a terrible lack of information among even men on public subjects. But I think this: if women were to educate themselves and their children, all whom they influence, indeed, to make these subjects a matter of personal interest, instead of regarding them as foreign matters, well enough for lawyers and politicians, perhaps, to understand, or for those who expect to fill office, but of no manner of importance to a person in strictly private life, this ignorance would come to an end. This shifting of personal responsibility by the great majority is the bane of our system. The truth is, no one, in a republican government, can lead an absolutely private career. As one who exercises the elective franchise, or one who influences the same, be it man or woman, there is no dodging the responsibility of citizenship. A better State of information on public affairs, also, will induce a correct conception of a certain class of ideas which, more than any others, perhaps, tend to strengthen, deepen, broaden, solidify the mental powers—ideas of absolute law and justice. As I have before said, the female mind is deficient in this particular.
To understand their government and institutions, then, is the first step in the attainment of the standard demanded of American women; or, in other words, an increase of political knowledge—a more thorough political education.
Another step is, the enlargement and strengthening of their patriotism. The former step, too, will conduce to this, and be its natural consequence. I do not mean alone that loose and vagrant sentiment which commonly passes for patriotism, which is aroused at some particular occasion and slumbers the rest of the time; which is spasmodic, temporary, impulsive, and devoid of principle; but that love of country founded on knowledge and conviction; a living faith of the heart based upon duty and principle; and which is, therefore, all-pervading, abiding, intelligent, governing thought and action, and conforming the life to the inner spirit. That sort of patriotism that lives as well in peace time as in war time; that makes the heart throb as sympathetically in behalf of country every day in the year as on the Fourth of July; that leads us to conform our habits of life and thought to the spirit of our institution and policy; that makes us as jealous of the honor, the consistent greatness of our country when all men speak well of her, as when her foes are bent upon her destruction. This habit of mind is what I mean, rather than any transient emotion of heart; an enlightened and habitual spirit of patriotism.
I give American women all credit due them for the patriotic temper they have evinced since this war began. I say that never have women showed more loyalty and zeal for country than the women of the North. Let sanitary fairs and commissions, let soldiers' aid societies from one end of the land to the other, and in every nook and corner of it, let our hospitals everywhere attest this heartfelt love and devotion on the part of our women. It is a noble spectacle, and my heart thrills at the thought of it. We have many noble ones who will stand in history along with England's Florence Nightingale and the 'Mother of the Gracchi,' those eternally fair and tender women, fit for the love and worship of the race. The want is not in the feeling of patriotism, but in the habitual principle and duty of the same. Since the war began, the fire has not slackened. But how was it before the war, and how will it be after it?
To prove what I say, let me dwell a moment on two or three of the most prominent faults of our women, pronounced such by all the world. Of these, the most mischievous and glaring, the most ruinous in thousands of cases, is extravagance. Wastefulness is almost become a trait of our society. American women, especially, are profuse and lavish of money in dress, in equipage, in furniture, in houses, in entertainments, in every particular of life. Everywhere this foolish and wasteful use of money challenges the surprise and sarcasm of the observant foreign tourist through our country. Perhaps the largeness and immensity of our land, its resources and material, as well as the wonderful national advance we have already made, tends to cultivate in our people a feeling of profusion and a habit of extravagant display; but it is not in sympathy either with our creed or our profession.
Were the money thus heedlessly expended made for them by slaves whom they had from infancy been taught to regard as created solely to make money for them to use and enjoy, this extravagant waste of money, while none the less selfish and inexcusable, would appear to grow spontaneously out of the arbitrary rule of slavery; or, if it had descended to them by legal or ancestral inheritance, there might be some show of reason for using it carelessly, though very small sense in so doing. But in a land where labor is the universal law; where, if a man makes money, he must work and sweat for its possession; when fortunes do not arise by magic, but must be built up slowly, painfully, at the expense of the nerve and sinew, the brain and heart of the builders, and these builders, not slaves, but our fathers, husbands, brothers; when a close attention to money-making is rapidly becoming a national badge, and is in danger of eating out entirely what is of infinitely more value than wealth—a high national integrity and conscience—and of sinking the immaterial and intellectual in the material and sensual; in such circumstances as these, I say, and under such temptations and dangers, it is a sin, an unnatural crime, to squander what costs so dear.
Volumes might be written upon the frightful consequences of this extravagance in money matters, this living too fast and beyond their means, of which American women, especially, are guilty. Great financial crises, in which colossal schemes burst like bubbles, and vast estates are swallowed up like pebbles in the sea; commercial bankruptcies, in which honorable names are bandied on the lips of common rumor, and white reputations blackened by public suspicion; minds, that started in life with pure and honest principles, determined to win fortune by the straight path of rectitude, gradually growing distorted, gradually letting go of truth, honor, uprightness, and ending by enthroning gold in the place made vacant by the departed virtues; hearts, that were once responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven, good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager but fading eyes fixed earthward, dustward!
Oh, it is a fearful thought that woman's extravagant desires and demands may thus kill all that is best and highest in those who should be her nearest and dearest. Yet, if this wide-spread evil of wastefulness is to be checked, it must be begun in the home, and by its guardian, woman. There is a movement lately inaugurated, looking to retrenchment in the matter of unnecessary expenditure, which, if it is to be regarded other than as a temporary expedient, is worthy of the patriotic enthusiasm which called it forth. I allude to the dress-reform movement made by the loyal women of the great Northern cities. The spirit of this movement I could wish to see illustrated both during the continuance of and after the war. It is this economical habit of mind for the sake of patriotic principle, that I regard as a great step in the attainment of the desired standard for American women.