an's rights movement. Alas! that the painful necessity
should exist, for woman's calling a Convention to claim her
rights from those who have been created to go hand in hand, and
heart in heart with her; whose interests can not be divided from
hers. Why does she claim them? Because every human being has a
right to all the advantages society has to bestow, if his having
them does not injure the rights of others. Life is valueless
without liberty, and shall we not claim that which is dearer than
life? In savage life, liberty is synonymous with aggression. In
civilized countries it is founded on equality of rights.
Oppression always produces suffering through the whole of the
society where it exists; this movement ought, therefore, to be
called a human rights movement. The wrongs of woman are so many
(indeed there is scarcely anything else but wrongs) that there is
not time to mention them all in one convention. She would speak
at present of legal wrongs, and leave it to her hearers, if all
are not--men, perhaps, more than women--sufferers by these
wrongs. How can woman have a right to her children when the right
to herself is taken away? At the marriage altar the husband says
in effect, "All this is mine, all mine is my own." She ceases to
exist legally, except when she violates the laws; then she
assumes her identity just long enough to receive the penalty.
When the husband dies poor, leaving the widow with small children
(here the speaker pictured thrillingly the suffering of a poor,
weak-minded, helpless woman, with small children dependent on
her), she is then acknowledged the guardian of her children. But
any property left them takes away her right of control. If there
is property the law steps in as guardian of it and therefore of
the children. The widowed mother is their guardian, only on
condition that the husband has made her so by will. Can any human
being be benefited by such gross violations of humanity?

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE said: The legal disabilities of woman are
many, as not only known to those who bear them, but they are
acknowledged by Kent, Story, and many other legal authorities. A
wife has no management in the joint earnings of herself and her
husband; they are entirely under control of the husband, who is
obliged to furnish