the
State Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity.[143]

These great changes in legislation for the women of Massachusetts
are the result of their own labors. By conventions and documents
they have informed the people and enlightened public sentiment. By
continued agitation the question has been kept prominently before
their representatives in the legislature. And, though so much has
been gained, they are still hard at work, nor will they rest until,
woman's equality with man before the law is firmly established.

Among the most important acts passed recently is one of 1879, by
which a married woman is the owner of her own clothing to the value
of $2,000, although the act granting this calls such apparel the
"gifts of her husband," not recognizing the fact that most married
women earn or help to earn their own clothes. A law was passed, in
1881, to "mitigate the evils of divorce." Two important acts were
passed by the legislature of 1882, one allowing women to become
practising attorneys, and the other providing, that in case of the
death of a married woman intestate and leaving children, one-half
only of her personal estate shall go to her husband, instead of the
whole, as in previous years. In 1883, a wife was given the right of
burial in any lot or tomb belonging to her husband. In 1884, the
only measures were a bill providing for the appointment of women on
the board of State lunatic hospitals, and another providing for the
appointment of women assistant physicians in the same hospitals,
and an act giving women the power to dispose of their separate
estates by will or deed. In 1885, very little was done to improve
the legal status of women.

When any vote on the Suffrage bill is taken, it is enough to make
the women who sit in the gallery weep to hear the "O's" and the
"Mc's," almost to a man, thunder forth the emphatic "_No!_"; and to
think that these men (some of whom a few years ago were walking
over their native bogs, with hardly the right to live and breathe)
should vote away so thoughtlessly the rights of the women of the
country in which they have found a shelter and a home. When they
came to this country, poor, and with no inheritance but the
"shillalah," the ballot was freely given to them, as the poor man's
weapon for defence. Why cannot men, who have been political serfs
in their own country, see the incongruity of voting against the
enfranchisement of over one-half of the inhabitants of the State
which