Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/616

Rh early day no woman's voice had yet been heard from the platform pleading the rights or wrongs of her sex, so Mrs. Bloomer employed her pen to say the thoughts she could not utter. She wrote for the press over various signatures, her contributions appearing in the Water Bucket, Temperance Star, Free Soil Union and other papers. On the first of January, 1849, a few months after the inauguration of the first Women's Rights Convention, she began the publication of the Lily, a folio sheet devoted to temperance and the interests of women. That journal was a novelty in the newspaper world, being the first enterprise of the kind ever owned, edited and controlled by a woman and published in the interests of woman. It was received with marked favor by the press and continued a successful career of six years in Mrs. Bloomer's hands. In the third year of the publication of her journal Mrs. Bloomer's attention was called to the neat, convenient and comfortable, if not esthetic costume afterwards called by her name. The press handed the matter about and commented more or less on this new departure to fashion's sway until the whole country was excited over it, and Mrs. Bloomer was overwhelmed with letters of inquiry. Many women adopted the style for a time, yet under the rod of tyrant fashion and the ridicule of the press they soon laid it aside. Mrs. Bloomer herself finally abandoned it after wearing it six or eight years, but the grotesque caricature remained forever attached to her name.

In 1852 Mrs. Bloomer made her debut on the platform as a lecturer, and in the winter of that year, in company with Susan B. Anthony, she visited and lectured in all the principal cities and towns of her native state, from New York to Buffalo. At the outset her subject was temperance, but temperance strongly spiced with the wrongs and rights of women. In 1849 Mr. Bloomer was appointed post-master of Seneca Falls, and on receipt of the office he at once appointed Mrs. Bloomer his deputy. Upholding her theory of woman's brain equality with man's she soon made herself thoroughly acquainted with the details of the office, and discharged such duties throughout the four years of the Taylor and Fillmore administration. In the winter of 1853 she was chairman of the committee appointed to go before the legislature of New York with petitions for a prohibitory liquor law, and she continued her work throughout the state, lecturing on both temperance and woman's rights and attending to the duties of her house and office until the winter of 1853-1854, when she moved to Mt. Vernon, Ohio. Here she continued the publication of the Lily and was also associate editor of the Western Home Visitor a large literary weekly paper published in that place. In the columns of The Visitor, as in all her writings, some phase of the woman question was always made her subject. At the same time that she was carrying on her literary work she visited and lectured in all the principal towns and cities of the North and West, going often where no lecturer on women's enfranchisement had preceded her. In January, 1854, she was one of the committee to memorialize the legislature of Ohio on a prohibitory liquor law. The rules were suspended and the committee received with mock respect and favor, but the same evening the legislature almost in a body attended a lecture given by her on women's right of suffrage. In the spring of 1855 Mr. and Mrs. Bloomer removed to Council Bluffs, Iowa, making it their permanent home. Mrs. Bloomer intended henceforth