n, and attempts to leave his "bed and board," the
husband may use moderate coercion to bring her back. The little word
"moderate," you see, is the saving clause for the wife, and would
doubtless be overstepped should her offended husband administer his
correction with the "cat-o'-nine-tails," or accomplish his coercion with
blood-hounds.

Again, the slave had no right to the earnings of his hands, they
belonged to his master; no right to the custody of his children, they
belonged to his master; no right to sue or be sued, or testify in the
courts. If he committed a crime, it was the master who must sue or be
sued.

In many of the states there has been special legislation, giving to
married women the right to property inherited, or received by bequest,
or earned by the pursuit of any avocation outside of the home; also,
giving her the right to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such
separate property; but not a single state of this Union has ever secured
the wife in the enjoyment of her right to the joint ownership of the
joint earnings of the marriage copartnership. And since, in the nature
of things, the vast majority of married women never earn a dollar, by
work outside of their families, nor inherit a dollar from their fathers,
it follows that from the day of their marriage to the day of the death
of their husbands, not one of them ever has a dollar, except it shall
please her husband to _let_ her have it.

In some of the states, also, there have been laws passed giving to the
mother a joint right with the father in the guardianship of the
children. But twenty years ago, when our woman's rights movement
commenced, by the laws of the State of New York, and all the states, the
father had the sole custody and control of the children. No matter if he
were a brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the
mother's consent, to apprentice her sons to rumsellers, or her daughters
to brothel keepers. He could even will away an unborn child, to some
other person than the mother. And in many of the states the law still
prevails, and the mothers are still utterly powerless under the common
law.

I doubt if there is, to-day, a State in this Union where a married woman
can sue or be sued for slander of character, and until quite recently
there was not one in which she could sue or be sued for injury of
person. However damaging to the wife's reputation any slander may be,
she is wholly powerless to institu