their own
households respectively, with the rearing and training of their
children. But many women, including some of the most noble and
estimable, are never called to preside over households; while
some of the called are impelled to decline the invitation. In
point of fact, then, there is and always will be a large
proportion of the gentler sex who are, at least temporarily,
required to earn their own subsistence, and vindicate their own
usefulness in some other capacity than that of the loved and
honored wife and mother. The maiden or widow, blessed with
opulence, ought to be insured against the worse calamities of a
reverse of fortune, by the mastery of some handicraft or
industrial avocation; she ought to lead a life of persistent and
efficient industry, as the fulfillment of a universal duty; while
her unportioned sister must do this or grovel in degrading
idleness and dependence on a father's or brother's overtaxed
energies, looking to marriage as her only chance of escape
therefrom. For man's sake, no less than woman's, it is eminently
desirable that that large portion of our women, who are not
absorbed in domestic cares, should be attracted and stimulated to
industry by a wider range of pursuits, and a consequent increase
of recompense. I deem it at once unjust and--like all
injustice--impolitic, that a brother and sister, hired by the
same farmer, the one to aid him in his own round of labor, the
other to assist his wife in hers, should be paid, the one twelve
to twenty, the other but four to six dollars per month. The
difference in their wages should be no greater than in their
physical and mental ability. Still more glaring is this
discrepancy, when the two are employed as teachers, and, though
of equal efficiency, the one is paid five hundred dollars per
annum, the other but two, or in that proportion, merely because
the former is a man and the latter a woman. While such
disparities exist, right here in this metropolis of American
civilization and Christianity, it is in vain that Conservatism
stops its ears and raises its eyebrows at the announcement of a
Woman's Rights Convention.

3. Regarding marriage as the most important, most sacred, and
tender of human relations, and deeming it irrevocable, save by
death, it see