be _well done_.... No woman but
you can write from _my standpoint_ for all would base their strongest
_argument_ on the _un_likeness of the _sexes_....
"Those of you who have the _talent_ to do honor to poor, oh how poor
womanhood have all given yourselves over to _baby_-making and left
poor brainless _me_ to battle alone. It is a shame. Such a lady as _I
might_ be _spared_ to _rock cradles_, but it is a crime for _you_ and
_Lucy_ and _Nette_."[93]
On a separate page she outlined for Mrs. Stanton the points she wanted
to make. Her title was affirmative, "Why the Sexes Should be Educated
Together." "Because," she reasoned, "by such education they get true
ideas of each other.... Because the endowment of both public and
private funds is ever for those of the male sex, while all the
Seminaries and Boarding Schools for Females are left to
maintain themselves as best they may by means of their tuition
fees--consequently cannot afford a faculty of first-class
professors.... Not a school in the country gives to the girl equal
privileges with the boy.... No school _requires_ and but very few
allow the _girls_ to declaim and discuss side by side with the boys.
Thus they are robbed of half of education. The grand thing that is
needed is to give the sexes _like motives_ for acquirement. Very
rarely a person studies closely, without hope of making that knowledge
useful, as a means of support...."[94]
Mrs. Stanton wrote her at once, "Come here and I will do what I can to
help you with your address, if you will hold the baby and make the
puddings."[95] Gratefully Susan hurried to Seneca Falls and together
they "loaded her gun," not only for the teachers' convention but for
all the summer meetings.
Addressing the large teachers' meeting in Troy, Susan declared that
mental sex-differences did not exist. She called attention to the
ever-increasing variety of occupations which women were carrying on
with efficiency. There were women typesetters, editors, publishers,
authors, clerks, engravers, watchmakers, bookkeepers, sculptors,
painters, farmers, and machinists. Two hundred and fifty women were
serving as postmasters. Girls, she insisted, must be educated to earn
a living and more vocations must be opened to them as an incentive to
study. "A woman," she added, "needs no particular kind of education to
be a wife and mother anymore than a man does to be a husband and
father. A man cannot make a living out of these relations. He
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