susan b anthony's niece speaks of her gifts

Susan B. Anthony's niece speaks of her gifts.

"Because of Aunt Susan's love for women and perseverance in her cause, I have today the enjoyment of a great many more rights and privileges than my mother had twenty-five years ago. And seventy years ago-when Aunt Susan herself was young, there were no such things as woman's rights; all the rights were masculine. Woman was ruled by a government and a law in which she had no voice. If she felt herself wronged in any way she had no way of making the fact known before the law, or no way in which she might suggest a remedy for it. It was an unheard of thing for A woman to speak in public. None of the colleges or universities admitted women students. She was barred from nearly all profitable employments, and in those she was permitted to follow she received only one-fourth the man's remuneration for the same work; she could not become a doctor or lawyer, or, - except within the Society of Friends, - a minister. If she was married any wages she might earn were not hers, but must be handed by the employer to her husband, who was in every way her master, the law even giving him the power to chastise or punish her. The laws of divorce were so framed as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women, in every case the man always gaining the control of the children- even if he were the offender in the case. A father could apprentice his children without the leave of the mother, and at his death could appoint a guardian for them, thereby taking them from the mother's control. Man endeavored in every way possible to destroy woman's confidence in her powers, to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent, subservient life. It really seemed as if man had assumed the powers of the Lord himself in claiming it as his right to tell woman what she might or might not do, and what was or was not her place."


http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/sba/fourth.html