Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/806

770 The read a letter just received from Mr. Tilton:

, May 11, 1870.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, President of the American Woman Suffrage Association: Honored Sir: I am commissioned by the unanimous voice of the Union Woman Suffrage Society, now assembled in Apollo Hall, to present to yourself, and through you to the Association over which you are presiding in Steinway Hall, our friendly salutations, our hearty good will, and our sincere wishes for mutual co-operation in the cause of woman's enfranchisement.

Fraternally yours,.

President of the Union Woman Suffrage Society.

At his own desire the President was unanimously requested to make reply on the behalf of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Mr. Beecher remarked, "If there are two general associations for the same purpose, it is because we mean, in this great work, to do twice as much labor as one society could possibly do."

Rev. said: Every favored movement of civilization has been simply a recognition of the rights and privileges that inhere in humanity. Take for instance the idea of the divine right of kings—which has been so thoroughly scouted by our republicanism. The abandonment of that idea upon the part of our fathers was a great stride in the path of civilization. And at this time in almost all parts of the world something is being done toward giving the masses a clearer idea of those rights which inhere in them.

In our own country, the object of the woman suffrage reformers is, not to overturn anything already established that is good and pure and noble, but to extend to women those rights which inhere in them as human beings. It is not claimed for women that they shall have any advantage over men, but simply that they shall have the right to labor and receive their earnings. That they shall have such facilities of education as men enjoy. Give woman equal opportunities. Her sphere is, undoubtedly, to engage in such labor, to get such culture, and do such good work as she finds ready to her hands, and to help on in the cause of humanity. The ballot is the key that opens to woman all the avenues of labor and of culture. If all the avenues of education and labor were open to women, we should find them growing up with higher and nobler ambition than the girls of to-day. The laws at present in force are detrimental to the interests of women not only in regard to property, but to marriage itself. Some provision is necessary by which women themselves can bring their efforts to bear upon these laws, and the ballot is the only effective measure for the purpose.

Mrs. said: My dear friends—Sometimes, when I begin to speak at conventions for the advocacy of woman suffrage, I feel self-dismayed in thinking that I ought to educate my audience all over from beginning to end. But this would require so much time that no one convention would ever get through with it; so I content myself with saying, as simply and as strongly as I can, what happens to be in my mind. That particular thought which is now uppermost is the great pleasure of our meeting to-day. We come together here, trusting to see in your kind faces the reflection of our great hope; and to find in your ears the echo of that great promise which some of us expected to hear a long while ago, and which all of us now see growing and strengthening until its harmony seems to us to fill the world.