ffering about us. Let us feed and clothe the hungry
and naked, gather children into schools, and provide
reading-rooms and decent homes for young men and women thrown
alone upon the world. Good schools and homes where the young
could ever be surrounded by an atmosphere of purity and virtue,
would do much more to prevent immorality and crime in our cities
than all the churches in the land could ever possibly do toward
the regeneration of the multitude sunk in poverty, ignorance, and
vice.

Susan B. Anthony, Chairman of the Central Committee, addressed the
meeting in a clear, forcible manner, alluding to the indifference
manifested by many women on the subject of temperance, and stated the
object of calling the women of the State together at this time. She
read letters[94] from Frances Dana Gage, Clarina Howard Nichols,
Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, and Horace Greeley. In the
discussion of the resolutions[95] during the different sessions, Giles
B. Stebbins, Benjamin Fish, William Barnes, Amy Post, Mrs. Albro, Mrs.
Vaughan, William C. Bloss, George W. Clark, and the Rev. Mr. Goodwin,
all took part. One resolution denouncing Mr. Gale, a State Senator,
for his insulting epithets in regard to the women who had petitioned
for a Maine law, called down on that gentleman some well-deserved
reprimands. The Rev. Mr. Goodwin expressed his indignation and shame,
that any man of education and position should use such language in
speaking of women who were so faithfully laboring in all the great
reforms of the day. Mrs. Bloomer in the course of her remarks also
criticised Mr. Gale for saying in a sneering way "that representatives
were not accustomed to listen to the voice of woman in legislating
upon great public questions; that the constitution of the female mind
was such as to render woman incapable of correctly deciding upon the
points involved in the passage of the proposed bill." After rousing
the attention of the people of the State by large and enthusiastic
meetings in all the chief cities, and sending into the Legislature a
mammoth petition for a Maine law, this was woman's answer. On the
Divorce resolution,

Mrs. BLOOMER said: We believe the teachings which have been given
to the drunkard's wife touching her duty--the commendable
examples of angelic wives which she has been exhorted to follow,
have done much to continue and aggravate the vices and crim