Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/998

Rh formers were of an economic and educational nature. It was felt that the time had come when weman must have wider and better paid fields of work, and when she must be more thoroughly educated in order to be able the easier to gain her livelihood. A paper, New Paths (Neue Bahnen), was established as the organ of the association. It still exists. The plan of holding annual conventions—much like those which have been in progress in America for so many years—in the chief cities of Germany was settled upon, and numerous meetings of this kind have already occurred. At these gatherings all questions pertaining to woman’s advancement are discussed, and auxiliary associations organized. The General Association of German Women has sent several petitions to the Reichstag, or imperial parliament, demanding various reforms and innovations. The principal members of the association are Louise Otto-Peters, the president and editor of the Neue Bahnen ; Henriette Goldschmidt, the most effective speaker of the group; and Mrs. Winter, the treasurer, all of whom live in Leipsic; Miss Menzzer of Dresden; Lina Morgenstern, the well-known Berlin philanthropist; and Marie Calm of Cassel, perhaps the most radical of the body, whose ideas on woman suffrage are much the same as those entertained in England and the United States. In fact, an American is frequently struck by the similarity between many of the features of the General Association of German Women, and the Woman’s Rights Association in the United States.

The Berlin movement, which resembles that of Leipsic in everything except that it is rather more conservative, owes its origin to that distinguished philanthropist, Dr. Adolf Lette. The Lette Verein, or Lette Society, so called in honor of its founder, was organized in December, 1865, but a few months after the establishment of the Leipsic association. The object of the society is, as has already been said, to improve the material condition of women, especially poor women, by giving them a better education, by teaching them manual employments, by helping to establish them in business—in a word, by affording them the means to support themselves. The Lette Society has become the nucleus of similar organizations scattered all over the German empire. Its organ, the German Woman's Advocate (Deutcher Frauenanwalt), is a well-conducted little monthly, edited by the secretary of the society, Jenny Hirsch. Anna Schepeler-Lette, daughter of the founder, has been for many