odified
their laws. And Wisconsin--God bless these young States--has
granted almost all that has been asked except the right of
suffrage. And even this, Senator Sholes,[146] in an able minority
report on the subject, said, "is only a question of time, and as
sure to triumph as God is just." It proposed that the Convention
which meets in two years to amend the Constitution of the State
should consider the subject. In Michigan, too, it has been moved
that women should have a right to their own babies, which none of
you, ladies, have here in New York. The motion caused much
discussion in the Legislature, and it would probably have been
carried had not a disciple of Brigham Young's, a Mormon member,
defeated the bill. In Nebraska everything is bright for our
cause. Mrs. Bloomer is there, and she has circulated petitions,
claiming for women the right to vote. A bill to that effect
passed the House of Representatives, and was lost in the Senate,
only because of the too early closing of the session. That act of
justice to woman would be gained in Nebraska first, and scores
of women would go there that they might be made citizens, and be
no longer subjects.

In addition to these great legal changes, achieved so directly by
this reform, we find also that women have entered upon many new
and more remunerative industrial pursuits; thus being enabled to
save themselves from the bitterness of dependent positions, or
from lives of infamy. Our demand that Harvard and Yale Colleges
should admit women, though not yielded, only waits for a little
more time. And while they wait, numerous petty "female colleges"
have sprung into being, indicative of the justice of our claim
that a college education should be granted to women. Not one of
these female colleges (which are all second or third rate, and
their whole course of study only about equal to what completes
the sophomore year in our best colleges) meets the demand of the
age, and so will eventually perish. Oberlin and Antioch Colleges
in Ohio, and Lima College in New York, admit women on terms
nearly equal with men.

In England, too, the claims of women are making progress. The
most influential papers in London have urged the propriety of
women physicians. Also a petition was sent to Parliament last