The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 43

Olympia Brown was the first woman settled as pastor in the State.

Her parish was at Weymouth Landing. In 1864 she pet.i.tioned the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature "that marriages performed by a woman should be made legal." The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom the matter was referred, reported that no legislation was necessary, as marriages solemnized by women were already legal.[150] Thus the legislature of the State established the precedent, that "he" meant "she" under the law, in one instance at least. Phebe Hanaford, Mary H. Graves and Lorenza Haynes were the first Ma.s.sachusetts women to be ordained preachers of the gospel. Rev. Lorenza Haynes has been chaplain of the Maine House of Representatives.

The three best-known women sculptors in this country were born and bred in Ma.s.sachusetts. They are Harriet Hosmer, Margaret Foley and Anne Whitney. Harriet Hosmer was the first to free herself from the traditions of her s.e.x and follow her profession as a sculptor. When she desired to fit herself for her vocation there was no art school east of the Mississippi river where she could study anatomy, or find suitable models. Margaret Foley, who, amid the hum of the machinery of the Lowell cotton mills, first conceived the idea of chiseling her thought on the surface of a "smooth-lipped sh.e.l.l,"

was obliged to go to Rome in order to get the necessary instruction in cameo-cutting. There her genius developed so much that she began to model in clay, and soon became a successful sculptor in marble.

Lucy Larcom, in her "Idyl of Work," says of Miss Foley:

"That broad-browed delicate girl will carve at Rome Faces in marble, cla.s.sic as her own."

One of her finest creations is "The Fountain," first exhibited in Horticultural Hall at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876. A free art-school was opened to women in Boston in 1867, and Anne Whitney was not obliged to go to Rome for instruction in the appliances of her art. Harriet Hosmer and Margaret Foley have both made statues which adorn the public buildings and parks of their native country; and Anne Whitney's statues of Samuel Adams and Harriet Martineau are the crowning works of her genius.

No great work has yet been done by Ma.s.sachusetts women in oil painting; but in water colors, and in decorative art, many have excelled, first prizes in superiority of design having been taken by them over their masculine compet.i.tors. Lizzie B. Humphrey, Jessie Curtis, Sarah W. Whitman and Fidelia Bridges, take high rank as artists. Helen M. Knowlton, a pupil of William M. Hunt, is a skillful artist in charcoal and has produced some fine pictures.

Women form a large proportion of the students in the school of design recently opened in Boston. A great deal of the ornamental painting now so fas.h.i.+onable on cards and all fancy articles is done by the deft fingers of women. The census of 1880 reports 268 artists and 1,270 musicians and teachers of music.

Of woman as actress and public singer, it is unnecessary to speak, since she has the right of way in both these professions. Here, fortunately, the supply does not exceed the demand; consequently she has her full share of rights, and what is better, equitable pay for her labor. In 1880 there were 111 actresses. Charlotte Cushman, Clara Louise Kellogg and Annie Louise Cary were born in Ma.s.sachusetts.

The drama speaks too feebly on the right side of the woman question. No successful modern dramatist has made this "humour" of the times the subject of his play. An effort was made in 1879, by the executive committee of the New England a.s.sociation, to secure a woman suffrage play: but it was not successful, and there is yet to be written a counteractive to that popular burlesque, "The Spirit of '76." It is to be regretted that the stage still continues to ridicule the woman's rights movement and its leaders; for, as Hamlet says:

"The play's the thing, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

In 1650, when Anne Bradstreet lived and wrote her verses, a woman author was almost unknown in English literature. This lady was the wife of the governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, and because of her literary tendencies was looked upon by the people of her time as a marvel of womankind. Her contemporaries called her the "tenth muse lately sprung up in America," and one of them, Rev. Nathaniel Ward, was inspired to write an address to her, in which he declares his wonder at her success as a poet, and playfully foretells the consequences if women are permitted to intrude farther into the domain of man. The closing lines express so well the conflicting emotions which torment the minds of the opponents of the woman suffrage movement, that I venture to quote them:

"Good sooth," quoth the old Don, "tell ye me so?

I muse whither at length these Girls will go.

It half revives my chil, frost-bitten blood To see a woman once do aught that's good.

And, chode by Chaucer's Boots and Homer's Furrs, Let men look to't least Women wear the Spurrs."

In 1818, Hannah Mather Crocker, grand-daughter of Cotton Mather, published a book, called "Observations on the Rights of Women." In speaking of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mrs. Crocker says, that while that celebrated woman had a very independent mind, and her "Rights of Woman" is replete with fine sentiments, yet, she continues, patronizingly, "we do not coincide with her respecting the total independence of the s.e.x." Mrs. Crocker evidently wanted her s.e.x to be not too independent, but just independent enough.[151]

In 1841, when Lydia Maria Child edited the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, Margaret Fuller the _Dial_, and Harriot F. Curtis and Harriet Farley the _Lowell Offering_, there were perhaps in New England no other well-known women journalists or editors. Cornelia Walter of the _Evening Transcript_ was the first woman journalist in Boston.

To-day, women are editors and publishers of newspapers all over the United States; and the woman's column is a part of many leading newspapers. Sallie Joy White was the first regular reporter in Boston. She began on the _Boston Post_, a Democratic newspaper, in 1870. Her first work was to report the proceedings of a woman suffrage meeting. She is now on the staff of the _Boston Daily Advertiser_. Lilian Whiting is on the staff of the _Traveller_, and most of the other Boston newspapers have women among their editors and reporters. Some of the best magazine writing of the time is done by women; one needs but to look over the table of contents of the leading periodicals to see how large a proportion of the articles is written by them. Really, the s.e.x seems to have taken possession of what Carlyle called the "fourth estate"--the literary profession, and they journey into unexplored regions of thought to give the omniverous modern reader something new to feed upon. The census of 1880 reports 445 women as authors and literary persons.

The newspaper itself, that great engine "whose amba.s.sadors are in every quarter of the globe, whose couriers upon every road," has slowly swung round, and is at last headed in the right direction.

Reporters for the daily press in Ma.s.sachusetts no longer write in a spirit of flippancy or contempt, and there is not an editor in the State of any account who would permit a member of his staff to report a woman's meeting in any other spirit than that of courtesy.

Teachers occupying high positions and presidents of colleges have given p.r.o.nounced opinions in favor of the reform. Said President Hopkins of Williams College, in 1875:

I would at this point correct my teaching in "The Law of Love,"

to the effect that _home_ is peculiarly the sphere of woman, and civil government that of man. I now regard the home as the joint sphere of man _and_ woman, and the sphere of civil government more of an open question between the two.

The New England Women's Club, parent[152] of the modern clubs and a.s.sociations for the advancement of women, has been one of the factors in the woman's rights movement. Its members have, in their work and in their lives, ill.u.s.trated the doctrine of woman's equality with man. It was formed in February, 1868.[153]

There has never been, from time immemorial, much difference of opinion concerning woman's right to do a good share in the _drudgery_ of the world. But in the remunerative employments, before 1850, she was but spa.r.s.ely represented. In 1840, when Harriet Martineau visited this country, she found to her surprise that there were only seven vocations, outside home, into which the women of the United States had entered. These were "teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, weaving, type-setting, and folding and st.i.tching in book-bindery." In contrast, it is only necessary to mention that in Ma.s.sachusetts alone, woman's ingenuity is now employed in nearly 300 different branches of industry. It cannot be added that for doing the same kind and amount of work women are paid men's wages. The census does not include the services of the mother and daughter among the _paid_ vocations, though, as is well known, in many instances they do all the housework of the family.

They get no wages, and therefore do not appear among the "useful cla.s.ses." They are not earners, but savers of money. A money-_saver_ is not a recognized factor, either in political economy or in the State census. The mother, daughter or wife is put down in its pages as "keeping house." If they were paid for their services they would be called "housekeepers," and would have their place among the paid employments.

Among the many rights woman has appropriated to herself must be included the "patent right." The charge has often been made that women never invent anything, but statistics on the subject declare that in 1880 patents for their own inventions were issued to eighty-seven different women in the United States. A fair proportion of these were from Ma.s.sachusetts.

This progress in the various departments encountered great opposition from certain teachers and writers. Dr. Bushnell's "Reform Against Nature," Dr. Fulton's talk both in and out of the pulpit, served to show the weakness of that side of the question.

Frances Parkman, Dr. Holland, Dr. W. H. Hammond, Rev. Morgan Dix, and even some women have added their so-called arguments in the vain attempt to keep woman as they think "G.o.d made her."

Much the stronger writers and speakers have been found on the right side of this question. The names of leading speakers, such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker, have already been mentioned. Perhaps the most suggestive articles in favor of the reform were T. W. Higginson's "Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet," published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1859, and Samuel Bowles' "The Woman Question and s.e.x in Politics,"

published at a later date in the _Springfield Republican_.

"Warrington," in his letters to the same newspaper, from 1868 to 1876, never failed to present a good and favorable argument on some phase of the woman question. Caroline Healey Dall's lectures before 1860, and her book "The College, the Market and the Court,"

published in 1868, were seed-grain sown in the field of this reform. Samuel E. Sewall's able digest of the laws relating to the legal condition of married women, and William I. Bowditch's admirable pamphlets,[154] have done incalculable service.

Of women in the civil service, there are: 58 clerks, 266 employes and 387 officials--total, 411. This includes postmasters and clerks in bureaus. In 1880, General F. A. Walker, superintendent of the census, instructed the supervisors of the several districts to appoint women as enumerators when practicable. They were accordingly so appointed in many parts of the United States.

Carroll D. Wright, supervisor of the district of Ma.s.sachusetts was in favor of General Walker's instructions, and out of the 903 enumerators appointed by him, thirty were women. This was an exceedingly large proportion compared with the number appointed in States where supervisors were not in favor of women enumerators.

Thanks to the efforts of Caroline Healey Dall, the American Social Science a.s.sociation, formed in 1865, put women on its board of officers, as did the Boston Social Science a.s.sociation, organized the same year. These were the first large organizations in the country to admit women on an absolute equality with men. The result of this action vindicated at once and forever woman's fitness to occupy positions of honor in a.s.sociations that man had hitherto claimed for himself alone. This has encouraged women to express themselves in the presence of the wisest men, and enabled them to present to the public the woman side of some great questions. Women are officers as well as members of many societies originally established exclusively for men. A national society for political education, formed in 1880, of which women are members, has at least one woman on its board of officers. What would have been thought thirty years ago, if women had studied finance, banks and banking, money, currency, sociology and political science?

The Summer School of Philosophy at Concord was founded in 1879.[155] A majority of the students are women, as was not the case in the elder schools of philosophy, and they come from far and near to spend a few weeks of their summer vacation in the enjoyment of this halcyon season of rest. Day after day they sit patiently on the aesthetic benches of the Hillside chapel and bask in the calm light of mild philosophy. Its seed was sown forty years ago, in what was called the Transcendental movement in New England. The Concord school finds in Mr. Sanborn its executive spirit, without which it could no more have come into existence at this time than its first seed could have been planted forty years ago, without the conceptive thought of Mr. Emerson, Mr. Alcott and Margaret Fuller.

Boston University long ago offered the advantages of its law-school to women, but they do not much avail themselves of this privilege.

Lelia J. Robinson, in March, 1881, made her application for admission to the bar. In presenting her claim before the court, April 23, Mr. Charles R. Train admitted that it was a novel one; but in a very effective manner he went on to state the cogent reasons why a woman who had carefully prepared herself for the profession of the law should be permitted to practice in the courts. At the close, Chief-Justice Gray gave the opinion, informally, that the laws, as they now exist, preclude woman from being attorney-at-law; but he reserved the matter for the consideration of the full bench. The Supreme Judicial Court rendered an adverse decision. Pet.i.tions were then sent to the legislature of 1882, and that body pa.s.sed an act[156] declaring that, "The provisions of law relating to the qualification and admission to practice of attorneys-at-law shall apply to women."

The pet.i.tion of Lelia Josephine Robinson to the Supreme Court was as follows:

1. The best administration of justice may be most safely secured by allowing the representation of all cla.s.ses of the people in courts of justice.

2. To allow women to practice at the bar as attorneys is only to secure to the people the right to select their own counsel. It is to give the women of Ma.s.sachusetts the opportunity of consulting members of their own s.e.x for that advice and a.s.sistance which none but authorized attorneys and counsellors are legally qualified to give.

3. To exclude women from the bar would be to do an injustice to the community, in preventing free and wholesome compet.i.tion of existing talent, and to do still greater injustice to those women who are qualified for the profession, by shutting them out from an honorable and remunerative means of gaining a livelihood.

4. To exclude women from the bar because there are certain departments of the profession which are peculiarly ill-adapted to their s.e.x and nature, would be to a.s.sume arbitrarily that, with entire lack of judgment or discretion, modesty or policy, they would seek or accept such business; and to close to them those avenues of the profession for which they are generally admitted to be eminently well adapted, for such a reason, and upon such an a.s.sumption, would be so grossly unjust that no argument can be based on such an impossible contingency.

Your applicant, having faithfully and diligently pursued the study of law for three years, being a graduate of the Boston University Law School, and having complied with the other requirements of the statute and the rules of court upon the subject, respectfully prays that her pet.i.tion for examination, which was duly filed, may be favorably considered, and that it be included in the general notice to the Board of Examiners of Suffolk county. LELIA JOSEPHINE ROBINSON.

The opinion given by the Supreme Judicial Court, so far as it relates to the main point at issue, is as follows:

The question presented by this pet.i.tion and by the report on which it has been reserved for our determination, is whether, under the laws of the commonwealth, an unmarried woman is ent.i.tled to be examined for admission as an attorney and counsellor of this Court. This being the first application of the kind in Ma.s.sachusetts, the Court, desirous that it might be fully argued, informed the executive committee of the Bar a.s.sociation of the city of Boston of the application, and has received elaborate briefs from the pet.i.tioner in support of her pet.i.tion and from two gentlemen of the bar as _amici curiae_ in opposition thereto. The statute under which the application is made is as follows: "A citizen of this State, or an alien who has made the primary declaration of his intention to become a citizen of the United States, and who is an inhabitant of this State, at the age of twenty-one years and of good moral character, may, on the recommendation of an attorney, pet.i.tion the Supreme Judicial or Superior Court to be examined for admission as an attorney, whereupon the Court shall a.s.sign a time and place for the examination, and if satisfied with his acquirements and qualifications he shall be admitted." St. 1876, c. 107.

The word "citizen," when used in its most common and most comprehensive sense, doubtless includes women; but a woman is not, by virtue of her citizens.h.i.+p, vested by the Const.i.tution of the United States, or by the const.i.tution of the commonwealth, with any absolute right, independent of legislation, to take part in the government, either as voter or as an officer, or to be admitted to practice as an attorney. _Miuor vs. Happersett, 51 Wall. 162. Bradwell vs. Illinois, 16 Wall. 130._ The rule that "words importing the masculine gender maybe applied to females,"

like all other general rules of construction of statutes, must yield when such construction would be either "repugnant to the context of the same statute," or "inconsistent with the manifest intent of the legislature." Gen. Sts. c. 3, -- 7.

The only statute making any provisions concerning attorneys, that mentions women, is the poor-debtor act, which, after enumerating among the cases in which an arrest of the person may be made on execution in an action of contract, that in which "the debtor is attorney-at-law," who has unreasonably neglected to pay to his client money collected, enacts, in the next section but one, "that no woman shall be arrested on any civil process except for tort." Gen. Sts. c. 124, ---- 5, 7. If these provisions do not imply that the legislature a.s.sumed that women should not be attorneys, they certainly have no tendency to show that it intended that they should. The word "citizen," in the statute under which this application is made, is but a repet.i.tion of the word originally adopted with a view of excluding aliens, before the statute of 1852, c. 154, allowed those aliens to be admitted to the bar who had made the preliminary declaration of intention to become citizens. Rev. Sts., c. 88, -- 19. Gen. Sts., c. 121, -- 28.

The reenactment of the act relating to the admission of attorneys in the same words without more so far as relates to the personal qualifications of the applicant, since other statutes have expressly modified the legal rights and capacity of women in other important respects, tends rather to refute than to advance the theory that the legislature intended that these words should comprehend women. No inference of an intention of the legislature to include women in the statutes concerning the admission of attorneys can be drawn from the mere omission of the word "male."

The only statute to which we have referred, in which that word is inserted, is the statute concerning the qualifications of voters in town affairs, which, following the language of the article of the const.i.tution that defines the qualifications of voters for governor, lieutenant-governor, senators and representatives, speaks of "every male citizen of twenty-one years of age," etc.

Gen. Sts. c. 18, -- 19. Const. Ma.s.s. Amendments, art. 3. Words which taken by themselves would be equally applicable to women and to men are constantly used in the const.i.tution and statutes, in speaking of offices which it could not be contended, in the present state of law, that women were capable of holding.

The Courts of the commonwealth have not a.s.sumed by their rules to admit to the bar any cla.s.s of persons not within the apparent intent of the legislature as manifested in the statutes. The word "persons," in the latest rule of Court upon the subject, was the word used in the rule of 1810 and in the statutes of 1785 and 1836, at times when no one contemplated the possibility of a woman's being admitted to practice as an attorney. 121 Ma.s.s. 600.

6. Ma.s.s. 382. St. 1785, c. 23. Rev. St. c. 18, 20. Gen. Sts. c.

121, -- 29. The United States Court of Claims, at December term, 1873, on full consideration, denied an application of a woman to be admitted to practice as an attorney upon the ground "that under the const.i.tution and laws of the United States a Court is without power to grant such an application, and that a woman is without legal capacity to take the office of an attorney."

_Lockwood's Case, 9 Ct. of Claims, 346, 356._ At October terms 1876 of the Supreme Court of the United States, the same pet.i.tioner applied to be admitted to practice as an attorney and counsellor of that Court, and her application was denied.

The decision has not been officially reported, but upon the record of the Court, of which we have an authentic copy, it is thus stated: "Upon the presentation of this application, the chief-justice said that notice of this application having been previously brought to his attention, he had been instructed by the Court to announce the following decision upon it: By the uniform practice of the Court from its organization to the present time, and by the fair construction of its rules, none but men are permitted to practice before it as attorneys and counsellors. This is in accordance with immemorial usages in England, and the law and the practice in all the States until within a recent period, and the Court does not feel called upon to make a change until such change is required by statute or a more extended practice in the highest Courts of the States." The subsequent act of congress of February 15, 1879, enables only those women to be admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States who have been for three years members of the bar of the highest Court of a State or territory, or of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.

The conclusion that women cannot be admitted to the bar under the existing statutes of the commonwealth is in accordance with judgments of the highest Courts of the States of Illinois and Wisconsin. _Bradwell's Case, 55 Ill., 525. Goodell's Case, 39 Wis., 232._ The suggestion in the brief of the pet.i.tioner that women have been admitted in other States can have no weight here, in the absence of all evidence that (except under clear affirmative words in a statute) they have ever been so admitted upon deliberate consideration of the question involved, or by a Court whose decisions are authoritative.

It is hardly necessary to add that our duty is limited to declaring the law as it is, and that whether any change in that law would be wise or expedient is a question for the legislative and not for the judicial department of the government.

Pet.i.tion dismissed. MARCUS MORTON, _Chief-Justice_,