Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/700

670 2d. The family Bible, family pictures, school-books, and books not exceeding in value fifty dollars.

[Mrs. Hallock here interjected, husbands had better give their wives cheap books].

3d. Ten sheep and their fleeces, and the yarn and cloth manufactured from the same; one cow, two swine, and the pork of such swine. [Laughter],

4th. All necessary wearing apparel, beds, bedsteads, and bedding; the clothing of the widow and her ornaments proper to her station (as to ornaments, tastes differ as to those proper to her station), one table, six chairs (suppose there were seven or ten children, what then? queried Mrs. Hallock [Laughter],) six knives and forks, six tea-cups and saucers, one sugar-dish, one milk-pot, one tea-pot, and six spoons. "So great a favorite is the female sex of the laws of England and America," says Blackstone.

Mrs. protested against one tea-pot; the law didn't mention tea-pot at all. [Great laughter].

Mrs. : Oh, yes! but not a coffee-pot. [Renewed laughter].

Mrs. : In Ohio they give twelve spoons. [Convulsive laughter].

Mrs. : We'll get up a delegation to Ohio, then.

Mrs. : I would say that I will give up all these things if the State will only give us in return one of our children. [Applause and laughter].

Mrs. : Isn't it a pity that our laws—are they ours?

Mrs. : No.

Mrs. Well, then, your laws. It is a pity that those statutes should not be revised so as to give a widow a carpet and other smaller articles of luxury. [Great laughter].

And such was the boasted "protection" secured to the wives and mothers by the laws of the most civilized nations on the globe, and such the law-makers in whose hands woman's interests were supposed to be secure, when we began our battle for equality. Class laws, class legislation, legalized robbery from the unborn child, down to the commonest necessaries of life, has been the "protection" woman has complained of from fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Those just awaking to an interest in this reform, see but the smoke of the former battles; they can not appreciate all the tyranny from which this agitation has freed them. Step by step, custom by custom, law by law, a partial victory has been wrested, and a public opinion slowly created that promises other victories in the near future.

Those who have not been through the conflict will never realize how dark the prospect was in starting. Denied education, and a place in the world of work, denied the rights of property, whether of her own earnings, or her inheritance, with the press and the pulpit,