Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/361

Rh ence. Some progress has been made in reforming the law in this State, but it has been done, as I have already said, by patch-work and shreds, sometimes ill-considered, and often so incongruous as to provoke vexatious litigation and defy the wisdom of the courts, The property relations of husband and wife do not to-day rest on any just or harmonious system. Not only has the husband absolute disposal of all his own property freed from all dower rights, but he is practically the owner during coverture of all his wife’s estate not specially limited to her separate use; and after her death has, in every case, a life use in all her personal, and in most cases in all her real property, by a title which the wife, no matter what may have been his ill-deserts, is powerless to impair or defeat ; whereas, on the other hand, the wife has during the husband’s life no more power of her own right to sell, convey, or manage her own estate than if she were a lunatic or slave, and in case of his death has a life use in only one-third part of the real estate of which he dies possessed, and no indefeasible title whatever in any of his personal estate. As a consequence, a husband may strip his wife, by mere voluntary disposition to strangers, of all claim on his estate after his death, and thus add beggary to widowhood.

I am sure this cannot seem right to any fair-minded man. Neither is it strange that some of our countrywomen, stung by the injustice of the law towards their sex, should be demanding, as a mode of redress, a part in the making of the laws which govern them. I am confident there is manhood enough in our own sex to right this obvious wrong to which I have alluded.

I therefore recommend that the law on this subject be so recast that, in all marriages hereafter contracted, the wife shall hold her property and all her earnings for personal services not rendered to her husband or minor children, as a sole and separate estate, with absolute power of disposition in her own name, and that the surviving wife shall have, by law, the same measure of estate in the property of the deceased husband, as the surviving husband shall be allowed to have in the property of his deceased wife. This will reduce their property relations to a principle of equality, and, in my judgment, is demanded by the most obvious dictates of justice and equity. Those who are not satisfied with this can make a different law for themselves by ante-nuptial settlements.

I am not unmindful that the husband alone is liable in the first instance for the support of the family; but this is much more than neutralized by the fact that, in most cases, the wife’s whole life is spent in the toilsome and unpaid service of the household, and that the whole drift of- her estate, in consequence of her more unselfish and generous nature, is towards the husband's pockets, in spite of all the guards of the law and every consideration of prudence.

Calling attention to this stirring appeal, the Hartford Times, Democratic, used the following language :

Another notable feature of the message is its outspoken and manly call for a reformation in our laws concerning the property rights of married women. Here as in other points it is a model message. The governor's experience as a lawyer has brought him often face to face with this disgraceful one-sidedness of our laws on this subject, and in some terse sentences he shows up the injustice more effectively than has ever been done in any of the so-called women’s rights conventions.