oney of their own and no right to any interest outside
their homes, unless their husbands consented.

Discouraged, she wrote in her diary, "As I passed from town to town I
was made to feel the great evil of woman's entire dependency upon man
for the necessary means to aid on any and every reform movement.
Though I had long admitted the wrong, I never until this time so fully
took in the grand idea of pecuniary and personal independence. It
matters not how overflowing with benevolence toward suffering humanity
may be the heart of woman, it avails nothing so long as she possesses
not the power to act in accordance with these promptings. Woman must
have a purse of her own, and how can this be, so long as the _Wife_ is
denied the right to her individual and joint earnings. Reflections
like these, caused me to see and really feel that there was no true
freedom for Woman without the possession of all her property rights,
and that these rights could be obtained through legislation only, and
so, the sooner the demand was made of the Legislature, the sooner
would we be likely to obtain them."[42]

FOOTNOTES:

[33] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 65.

[34] _The Lily_, May, 1852.

[35] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn
Gage, _History of Woman Suffrage_ (New York, 1881), I, p. 489.

[36] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 77.

[37] _Ibid._, p. 78.

[38] _Ibid._, p. 90.

[39] Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, Eds., _Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary, and Reminiscences_
(New York, 1922), II, p. 52.

[40] Aug., 1853, Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 98-99; _History of Woman
Suffrage_, I, pp. 513-515.

[41] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress.

[42] Ms., Diary, 1853.

A PURSE OF HER OWN

The next important step in winning further property rights for women,
it seemed to Susan, was to hold a woman's rights convention in the
conservative capital city of Albany. This was definitely a challenge
and she at once turned to Elizabeth Stanton for counsel. Somehow she
must persuade Mrs. Stanton to find time in spite of her many household
cares to prepare a speech for the convention and for presentation to
the legislature. As eager as Susan to free women from unjust property
laws, Mrs. Stanton asked only that Susan get a good lawyer, and one
sympathetic to the cause, to look up New York State's very worst laws
affecting women.[43] She could think and philosophize while sh