Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/594

Rh of study at Oberlin, began to agitate the question of woman's rights, and it was under her direction that a convention was called in March, 1850. Lucy Stone was not at all like Mrs. Stanton in character, except they were both radicals, but Lucy Stone exercised more influence among progressive women of New England than any woman of her time. Their memory is still greatly cherished. These two women, together with Miss Anthony, were the real leaders of the women suffragists, and this trinity is the one which married women should remember, since through them they procured their property rights. To these women should the 6,000,000 working women turn with thankful hearts, since they were the first to demand equal pay for equal work.

Susan B. Anthony was the best known of the three; in fact, she was the figure of her century. Born of well-to-do parents, well educated, capable, loving and charitable to a fault, optimistic and generous, self-effacing, of undoubted will, she saw only a sex in a position in which it could not develop itself, and she fought for its freedom. No one woman had as many friends as she had, because no one woman had ever loved so many people as she had. She was not an orator in its common sense, and yet probably she, in her lifetime, addressed more people than any other American woman. She was at ease with the lowest and the highest, and worked for fifty years without salary, that the women of the United States might have a weapon to fight their own battle. She was the greatest woman of them all.

Delegates to the World's Abolition Convention in 1840: