y independent mind, and her "Rights of
Woman" is replete with fine sentiments, yet, she continues,
patronizingly, "we do not coincide with her respecting the total
independence of the sex." Mrs. Crocker evidently wanted her sex to
be not too independent, but just independent enough.[151]

In 1841, when Lydia Maria Child edited the _Anti-Slavery Standard_,
Margaret Fuller the _Dial_, and Harriot F. Curtis and Harriet
Farley the _Lowell Offering_, there were perhaps in New England no
other well-known women journalists or editors. Cornelia Walter of
the _Evening Transcript_ was the first woman journalist in Boston.
To-day, women are editors and publishers of newspapers all over the
United States; and the woman's column is a part of many leading
newspapers. Sallie Joy White was the first regular reporter in
Boston. She began on the _Boston Post_, a Democratic newspaper, in
1870. Her first work was to report the proceedings of a woman
suffrage meeting. She is now on the staff of the _Boston Daily
Advertiser_. Lilian Whiting is on the staff of the _Traveller_, and
most of the other Boston newspapers have women among their editors
and reporters. Some of the best magazine writing of the time is
done by women; one needs but to look over the table of contents of
the leading periodicals to see how large a proportion of the
articles is written by them. Really, the sex seems to have taken
possession of what Carlyle called the "fourth estate"--the literary
profession, and they journey into unexplored regions of thought to
give the omniverous modern reader something new to feed upon. The
census of 1880 reports 445 women as authors and literary persons.

The newspaper itself, that great engine "whose ambassadors are in
every quarter of the globe, whose couriers upon every road," has
slowly swung round, and is at last headed in the right direction.
Reporters for the daily press in Massachusetts no longer write in a
spirit of flippancy or contempt, and there is not an editor in the
State of any account who would permit a member of his staff to
report a woman's meeting in any other spirit than that of courtesy.
Teachers occupying high positions and presidents of colleges have
given pronounced opinions in favor of the reform. Said President
Hopkins of Williams College, in 1875:

I would at this point correct my teaching in "The Law of Love,"
to the effect that _home_ is peculiarly the sphere of woman, and
civil governmen