Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/19

 

It has been frequently said that the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, which bring the record to twenty years ago, represent the seed-sowing time of the movement. They do far more than this, for seeds sown in the early days which they describe would have fallen upon ground so stony that if they had sprung up they would soon have withered away. The pioneers in the work for the redemption of women found an unbroken field, not fallow from lying idle, but arid and barren, filled with the unyielding rocks of prejudice and choked with the thorns of conservatism. It required many years of labor as hard as that endured by the forefathers in wresting their lands from undisturbed nature, before the ground was even broken to receive the seed. Then followed the long period of persistent tilling and sowing which brought no reaping until the last quarter of the century, when the scanty harvest began to be gathered. The yield has seemed small indeed at the end of each twelvemonth and it is only when viewed in the aggregate that its size can be appreciated. The condition of woman to-day compared with that of last year seems unchanged, but contrasted with that of fifty years ago it presents as great a revolution as the world has ever witnessed in this length of time.

If the first organized demand for the rights of woman — made at the memorable convention of Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1848 — had omitted the one for the franchise, those who made it would have lived to see all granted. It asked for woman the right to have personal freedom, to acquire an education, to earn a living, to claim her wages, to own property, to make contracts, to bring suit, to testify in court, to obtain a divorce for just cause, to possess her children, to claim a fair share of the accumulations during marriage. An examination of Chap. XXIV and the following chapters in this volume will show that in many of the States