Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/687

Rh portion of the time of the meeting to-day has been taken up by the speeches of men; therefore I do not intend that this man's speech shall be a very long one. I remember a certain sermon, of which it was said it had nothing good in it except its subject and its shortness. My speech is going to be like that sermon. But there is one great advantage which men enjoy in speaking on a Woman's Rights platform: they can not help doing good to the movement, no matter how they speak; for if a man speaks well, of course he helps it by his speech; and if he speaks ill on the subject, he still helps it, because there are women about him who won't speak ill, and the comparison is useful.

I wish to take up a point which, as a man, I am entitled to claim should have more prominence given it than has yet been the case; a point touched upon by me previously, in something I said yesterday, which some of you thought was not correct; and a point touched upon by Wendell Phillips this afternoon. 1 mean the claim of the Woman's Rights movement on woman; the wrong done by woman to that movement; and the injustice of the charge against man, that he especially resists it. And yet I can not fully accept the position taken by Rev. Mr. Johnson and Horace Greeley, that man's duty is only to stand aside and let woman take her rights. Not so. It is not so easy as that, let me tell you, gentlemen, to get rid of the responsibility of years of wrong. We men have been standing for years with our hands crushing down the shoulders of woman, so that she should not attain her true altitude; and it is not so easy, after we have cramped, dwarfed, and crippled her, to get rid of our responsibility by standing back at last, and saying, "There, we will let you go; stand up for yourself." If it is true, as these women say, that we have wronged them for centuries, we have got to do something more than mere negative duty. By as much as we have helped to wrong them, we have got to help to right them; by as much as we have discouraged them heretofore, we have got to encourage them hereafter; and that is why I wish to speak to women to-night of their duties, as these women have spoken to us of ours. I want to remind them that the time has come when men must appeal to them; for be assured that when women are ready to claim their rights, men will be ready to grant them.

There are three special obstacles, Mrs. President, to the willingness of woman to do her simple duty to the Woman's Rights movement. The first is the obstacle of folly — sheer, unadulterated folly — the folly in which women are trained, and in which we men help to train them, and for which we then denounce them. The reason why many women don't like the Woman's Rights movement, is because they have too little real thought in them to appreciate it at all. They have been brought up as fashionable society brings up woman on one side, or as mere household drudgery brings them up on the other in each case, without power to appreciate a great principle — without power tc appreciate a sublime purpose — without power to appreciate anything but a "good match," and the way to obtain it. On their entrance into life, their choice lies, for social position, for enjoyment, for occupation, for usefulness, in this narrow alternative — between a husband and nothing; and that, as Theodore Parker once said, is very often a choice between two nothings. These women may have literary culture and social polish; but, for want of an idea to light up their eyes and strengthen their souls, these things are only glitter and worthlessness.

A certain celebrated French woman in the last century (Mlle. de Launay), who