as many as fifty men or more, whose only business is to discuss
religion and politics, as they watch the trains come and go at
the depot, or the passage of a canal boat through a lock; to
laugh at the vagaries of some drunken brother, or the capers of a
monkey dancing to the music of his master's organ. All these are
supported by their mothers, wives, or sisters.

Now, do you candidly think these wives do not wish to control the
wages they earn--to own the land they buy--the houses they build?
to have at their disposal their own children, without being
subject to the constant interference and tyranny of an idle,
worthless profligate? Do you suppose that any woman is such a
pattern of devotion and submission that she willingly stitches
all day for the small sum of fifty cents, that she may enjoy the
unspeakable privilege, in obedience to your laws, of paying for
her husband's tobacco and rum? Think you the wife of the
confirmed, beastly drunkard would consent to share with him her
home and bed, if law and public sentiment would release her from
such gross companionship? Verily, no! Think you the wife with
whom endurance has ceased to be a virtue, who, through much
suffering, has lost all faith in the justice of both heaven and
earth, takes the law in her own hand, severs the unholy bond, and
turns her back forever upon him whom she once called husband,
consents to the law that in such an hour tears her child from
her--all that she has left on earth to love and cherish? The
drunkards' wives speak through us, and they number 50,000. Think
you that the woman who has worked hard all her days in helping
her husband to accumulate a large property, consents to the law
that places this wholly at his disposal? Would not the mother
whose only child is bound out for a term of years against her
expressed wish, deprive the father of this absolute power if she
could?

For all these, then, we speak. If to this long list you add the
laboring women who are loudly demanding remuneration for their
unending toil; those women who teach in our seminaries,
academies, and public schools for a miserable pittance; the
widows who are taxed without mercy; the unfortunate ones in our
work-houses, poor-houses, and prisons; who are they that we do
not now represent? B