Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/341

Rh Harriet Martineau visited this country, she found to her surprise that there were only seven vocations, outside home, into which the women of the United States had entered. These were "teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, weaving, type-setting, and folding and stitching in book-bindery." In contrast, it is only necessary to mention that in Massachusetts alone, woman's ingenuity is now employed in nearly 300 different branches of industry. It cannot be added that for doing the same kind and amount of work women are paid men's wages. The census does not include the services of the mother and daughter among the paid vocations, though, as is well known, in many instances they do all the housework of the family. They get no wages, and therefore do not appear among the "useful classes." They are not earners, but savers of money. A money-saver is not a recognized factor, either in political economy or in the State census. The mother, daughter or wife is put down in its pages as "keeping house." If they were paid for their services they would be called "housekeepers," and would have their place among the paid employments.

Among the many rights woman has appropriated to herself must be included the "patent right." The charge has often been made that women never invent anything, but statistics on the subject declare that in 1880 patents for their own inventions were issued to eighty-seven different women in the United States. A fair proportion of these were from Massachusetts.

This progress in the various departments encountered great opposition from certain teachers and writers. Dr. Bushnell's "Reform Against Nature," Dr. Fulton's-talk both in and out of the pulpit, served to show the weakness of that side of the question. Frances Parkman, Dr. Holland, Dr. W. H. Hammond, Rev. Morgan Dix, and even some women have added their so called arguments in the vain attempt to keep woman as they think "God made her."

Much the stronger writers and speakers have been found on the right side of this question. The names of leading speakers, such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker, have already been mentioned. Perhaps the most suggestive articles in favor of the reform were T. W. Higginson's "Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet," published in the Atlantic Monthly of February, 1859, and Samuel Bowles' "The