Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/13

Rh Frances Willard left our country better because she did not keep silence. She left womanhood stronger in faith and in efficiency. Whittier wrote,

Another means of advance given to woman by the nineteenth century was a growing recognition before the law. A hundred years ago woman had little legal status. Wives and daughters of the poor had no legal standing; mothers did not own their children nor the clothes they wore nor the money they inherited or earned. A married woman could not make a will. Lucretia Mott, of the Society of Friends, in 1848 pleaded for legal rights. The civil war with its devastation brought women face to face with their helplessness before the law. Sympathy and justice were aroused. Bills were devised and passed. Gradually fair and equitable dealing is evolving under the larger conditions of peace and progress. Slowly from precedent to precedent, law is broadening in its recognition of inalienable rights of men, women, and children. "Men's rights" is a term that is sacred. Battles have been fought to secure those rights, documents wrought out to define them, and democracy is ready to defend them. "Women's rights" will outgrow being a term of reproach. Whether suffrage shall become a possession and responsibility of woman or not, her rights shall become more and more understood and protected by the race. "Children's rights" engage the attention of philanthropy and the judiciary. The juvenile courts are more concerned with justice to childhood than with punishment of wrong. In deed and in truth "right" and "rights" for all alike are becoming more identical in the public mind and so law broadens in its definition and application.