NY.

As will be seen by the above letters, both Mr. Colvin and Mr. Folger
make mistakes in regard to the effect of these bills. In speaking of
the complete equality of husbands and wives under the law of 1860, Mr.
Colvin said, "All the wife then had to ask was the right of suffrage,"
quite forgetting that the wife has never had an equal right to the
joint earnings of the copartnership, as no valuation has ever been
placed on her labor in the household, to which she gives all her time,
thought, and strength, the absolute sacrifice of herself, mind and
body, all possibility of self-development and self-improvement being
in most cases out of the question. Mr. Folger in saying the repeal of
section eleven affected man as much as woman, falls into the same
mistake, assuming that the joint earnings belong to man. We say that
the wife who surrenders herself wholly to domestic life, foregoing all
opportunities for pecuniary independence and personal distinction in
the world of work, or the higher walks of literature and art, in order
to make it possible for the husband to have home and family ties, and
at the same time, his worldly successes and ambitions, richly earns
the place of an equal partner. In their joint accumulations, her labor
and economy should be taken into account.

This is _the vital point_ of interest to the vast majority of married
women, since it is only the _few_ who ever possess anything through
separate earnings or inheritance. A law securing to the wife the
absolute right to one-half the joint earnings, and at the death of the
husband, the same control of property and children that he has when
she dies, might make some show of justice; but it is a provision not
yet on the statute-books of any civilized nation on the globe.

The seeming sophistry of Judge Folger may be traced to the universal
fact that man does not appreciate the arduous and unremitting labors
of the wife in the household, or her settled dissatisfaction in having
no pecuniary recompense for her labors. No man with cultured brain and
skilled hands would consider himself recompensed for a life of toil in
being provided with shelter, food, and clothes while his employer was
living, to be cut down in his old age to a mere pittance; yet such is
the fate of the majority of wives and widows under the most beneficent
provisions of our statutes in this favored republic. True, the law
says "the husband shall maintain the wife in accordance with hi