Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/622

Rh can. Miss Anna Dickinson, having a lyceum engagement in Chicago, was present at one of the sessions, and had quite a spirited encounter with Robert Laird Collier. As she appeared on the platform at the close of some remarks by that gentleman, loud calls were made for her, when she came forward and spoke as follows:


 * It is impossible for me to continue in my seat after so kind and cordial a call from this house, and I thank you for the pleasant and friendly feeling you have shown, I have but a word to say. I had gone out of the room, not because of the discussion, but because it was too warm and the atmosphere so stifling, when I was recalled by hearing something to this effect: "That there had not been a single logical argument used on this platform in behalf of woman suffrage; that woman is abundantly represented by some man of her family; that when a woman lifts herself up in opposition against her husband, she lifts herself up, if I properly and rightly understood the declaration, against God; that the inspired assertion is that the husband is the head of the wife." Oh! but Mr. Collier forgot to say the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. In my observation, and it has not been a limited one, though I confess I am not an unprejudiced observer, I have never yet discovered a man who is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. Furthermore, he announces that these women, being represented by men, if they lift themselves up in opposition to their husbands, lose that womanly and feminine element which is so admirable and pure and beautiful, and nothing can preserve them from the contamination of politics, "Woman is to lift herself against God if she lifts herself against her husband, and woman is abundantly represented by this same husband, or by some man in her own family. There are a multitude of women who have no husbands [laughter]. There are a multitude of women who never will have any husbands [renewed laughter]. There are a great many women who have no men in their own households to represent them, either for their wrongs or their rights. Mr. Collier, I suppose, however, is talking about women who have husbands.

He says the woman loses her purity, her delicacy, her feminine attributes when she lifts her voice and sentiments against the man whose name she bears. We will say, then, look across these western prairies to Utah. If the women there dare to say to the congress of the United States, "Amend this constitution that we women of Utah can have one husband, and that the husband can take but one wife"; if these women demand decency in the marriage relation, demand justice for themselves, demand purity, they are lifting themselves against the laws of womanhood and the laws of God. Every woman represented by her husband is to lose her purity, her delicacy, her refinement, if she dares to lift her hand against him and his will. You have here, within the limits of your State of Illinois, 100,000 drunkards. Every woman who dares to lift her hand, cry out with her voice, "Give me the ballot that may offset the votes of these drunkards at the polls and save my children from starvation and myself from being put into the workhouse"—this woman is lifting herself against the laws of God and womanhood. That is not all! Last summer this question of prohibition was being tested in Massachusetts by votes. I went from town to town—my engagements taking me all over the State at that time—and said my say upon this question of woman suffrage. In whatever city or town I went, women, bowed down with grief, who desired to preserve their womanhood, their persons from blows and abuse, their sons from going to gambling hells and rum shops, their girls from being sent to houses of abomination, came to me and said: "Anna Dickinson, if you are a woman, speak and use your influence for our cause." Women who have drunken husbands, whether they lived in Beacon street or at the North End, whether they lived in luxury or poverty, said: "For the sake of womanhood, for the sake of motherhood, for the sake of all things good and true in the world, lift up our hands and voices, through yourself, to protest against these men whose names we bear." <Ah! that Mr, Collier could have seen these drunkards' wives, standing with tears streaming down their