consume four months eventually
extended through ten years and was not completed until the closing
days of 1885. The pamphlet of a few hundred pages had expanded into
three great volumes of 1,000 pages each, and enough material remained
unused to fill another.[1]

It was almost wholly due to Miss Anthony's clear foresight and
painstaking habits that the materials were gathered and preserved
during all the years, and it was entirely owing to her unequaled
determination and persistence that the History was written. The demand
for Mrs. Stanton on the platform and the cares of a large family made
this vast amount of writing a most heroic effort, and one which
doubtless she would have been tempted to evade had it not been for the
relentless mentor at her side, helping to bear her burdens and
overcome the obstacles, and continually pointing out the necessity
that the history of this movement for the emancipation of women should
be recorded, in justice to those who carried it forward and as an
inspiration to the workers of the future. And so together, for a long
decade, these two great souls toiled in the solitude of home just as
together they fought in the open field, not for personal gain or
glory, but for the sake of a cause to which they had consecrated their
lives. Had it not been for their patient and unselfish labor the story
of the hard conditions under which the pioneers struggled to lift
woman out of her subjection, the bitterness of the prejudice, the
cruelty of the persecution, never would have been told. In all the
years that have passed no one else has attempted to tell it, and
should any one desire to do so it is doubtful if, even at this early
date, enough of the records could be found for the most superficial
account. In not a library can the student who wishes to trace this
movement to its beginning obtain the necessary data except in these
three volumes, which will become still more valuable as the years go
by and it nears success.

Miss Anthony began this work in 1876 without a dollar in hand for its
publication. She never had the money in advance for any of her
undertakings, but she went forward and accomplished them, and when the
people saw that they were good they usually repaid the amount she had
advanced from her own small store. In this case she resolved to use
the whole of it and all she could earn in the future rather than not
publish the History. Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, of New York, a generous