WHAT THE WOMEN HAVE

Otago Witness, Issue 1419, 1 February 1879, Page 33

WHAT THE WOMEN HAVE

GAINED.

Lucy Stone's report smntr.inft up the chants tliafc Uavo. takun pbee in wouwn'a poiiitiou ja tjii! last 23 yc^ic, js? a. mo^

significant document. Within her recollection women were only thought competent to teach little children in the summer, at a dollar a week, and "board around. " Now a woman is Superintendent of the Boston schools, at a salary of $4000. Every year the Legislatures of the different States add something to the civil rights of women, In four States of the Union they vote on t>chool questions, and in England they have voted ou municipal matters since 1869. Twentyfive years ago not a female voice waa ever bearJ in public speech-making except in the Quaker Church. Now women are preachers and lawyers, and earn as much money on the lecture platform ac men do. Nearly all occupations a woman can engage iv are open to her freely. This is very cheering to those women who have watched the gradual emancipation of their own sex with an intensity of interest no man can understand. In the new order of things women are surely, if slowly, growing broader in their intelligence, more generous ia their sympathies, jusier in tfieir judgment. They are becoming every year more independent and better able to take care of themselves, so that now no father who has brought his girls up properly need have his death bed haunted with torturing doubts as to what will become of his daughters after he is gone. Liberal minds are beginning to understand that when arbitrary constraints are removed, woman will find her level herself, and drop into her own place, without being either booted or pushed. It dawns upon thoso who aim to bo jastin their conclusions, that if woman is inferior to man, that is only an additional reason why she should be given free opportunity to make the best she can of herself, whativer that maybe. She has already proved that she can teach, doctor, lecture, write, and trade, if not as well a3 man, at least moderately well, so that ehe can earn her own living, and thus relieve some good man of the burden thereof. It is respectfully submitted, too, that she has done this without losing an iota of what constituted a true aud tender wifehoocl and motherhood. The most ignorant, thereforo the most tolerant, old fogy canuot deny that women are now as good wive 3 and mothers as they were twenty years ago,