Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/397

Rh I met some grand women at Bloomington, one who has been a successful merchant in the dry-goods business. She has not only supported her self and a family of children, but cleared $5,000 in five years. Another lady is a furniture dealer; when her husband died she went on with the business, and although he was so much embarrassed that every one advised her to close up and save what she could, she has paid all the debts, saved a handsome sum of money, and been every way more successful than her husband before her. A lady is the head of an establishment where music and pianos are sold. She carries on a large business, and has been very successful. All these women with their intuitions seem to be doing much better than many who can boast the gift of reason. I should not be surprised if, in the progress of events, men should come to think that woman's gift, after all, is the more desirable.

, March 7.


 * —A bright, crisp morning I found myself seated beside Mrs. Livermore in the train for Milwaukee, whither we were going to attend a convention. In these eventful times of woman suffrage, having been separated a few days, on meeting, our hearts were overflowing with good news for one another. While I told Mrs. L. all I had seen and heard at Bloomington, and the various conversations I had had with dissenting "white males" on the trains, she told me her plans in regard to her new paper, the Agitator. Having decided to call such a journal into being, what its name should be was the question. Accordingly a council was held of the wise men and willful women of Chicago over the baptismal font of the new comer. The men, still clinging to the pleasant illusions that everything emanating from woman should be mild, gentle, serene, suggested "The Lily," "The Rose Bud," "The New Era," "The Dawn of Day;" but Mrs. Livermore, always heroic and brave, now defiant and determined, having fully awakened to the power and dignity of the ballot, and stung to the very soul with the proposed amendment for "manhood suffrage," declared that none of those names, however touching and beautiful, expressed what she intended the paper should be—nothing more or less than the twin sister of The Revolution, whose mission is to turn everything inside out, upside down, wrong side before. With such intentions, she felt the Agitator was the only name that fully matched The Revolution. All the women present echoed her sentiments, eschewing the "rose bud" dispensation and declaring that they would rather get the word "male" out of the constitution than to have a complete set of diamonds—rather have a right to property, wages, and children, than the best seats in the cars, and the tid-bits at the table. Thus, with one simultaneous shout, the women proclaimed the Agitator. The men calmly and sorrowfully resigned all hope of influence in the matter, and, as they dispersed, it was evident they looked mournfully into the future. Good Prof. Haven said that the mere name of the Agitator gave him an ague chill, and what life would be to most men after this twin sister to The Revolution was under full headway, no one could predict. Filled with profound pity for our beloved countrymen in this their hour of humiliation, we arrived in Milwaukee, where a delegation of ladies and gentlemen awaited us, among whom were a nephew and niece of Rufus Peckham, of New York,