The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-08-17
TUESDAY, AUGUST II, 1869.
TUB WOMAN QUESTION IN THE
LAROR NONGRESS.

Nrss SUSAN b. ANTHONY made her appear
ance Yesterday as the disturbing element inthe
National Labor Congress, and the Congress,
after lowering undecided for time between
oallantrv and desire not to be overwhelmed
bv the invincible champion of woman rights,
tool, tbe only course they could with safety
TO themselves, and excluded the lady from
participation in their deliberations, Nissan
thony. however, is not a woman to be re-
pressed in such summary manner as TINS,
even by SO highly intellectual a body as the
Labor Congress, and she consequently made
y sneech. two or three of them in fact, in
which. if she did not get the better of her
opponents she at least managed to have the
last word Miss Anthony presented herself
at this Congress as the representative OF the
Working Women's Association of New York,
but the Committee on Credentials, after
mature deliberation, rejected her on the
ground that her papers were not made out in
proper form, and that the association she
proposed to represent was not labor organi-
zation, but in reality because they did not
care about the pleasure of her company.
Miss Anthony in her two or three speeches
explained her position at length, and if the
matter stands exactly as she stated it, it is
difficult to see why her association was not
entitled to representation and hearing as
well as the other labor organizations Of the
country The question of finding means for
women to earn their living in a respectable
and profitable manner is one of the most i'm
portant of the day, and it has bearing upon
the good of society which demands for it the
consideration Of all thoughtful men. The
trouble. however, is that Miss Anthony and
her co-laborers in the woman's rights move
ment have entirely too many irons in the fire
Womens work and wages is even less than a
secondary consideration, and neither in this
nor in good many other things that they
talk about do they appear to know what they
really do want or what the actual necessities
of women are.
One of the delegates yesterday, in protest
ing against Miss Anthony's admission to the
deliberations of the Congress, contended that
the Working Women's Association of New
York, which she professed to represent, was
an organization of male and female agitators
for the advocacy of female suffrage, and that
it was not in reality labor organization
There is good deal more truth than poetry
in this, for Miss Anthony, Mrs. Cady Stanton
and the other masculine women who thrust
themselves forward on every conceivable op-
portunity, affect to believe that if women had
the right of voting, wearing breeches, and
aping the manners, good and bad, of the
masculine portion of creation generally,
plenty of work and remunerative wages
would follow as natural consequences. Female
suffrage is and has been the main plank in the
womans rights platform, and it is lugged il
on all occasions, in season and out of season
notwithstanding the fact that it has practi
cally been repudiated by nine hundred ant
ninety-nine out of every thousand women il
the country.
That the right to vote would increas
woman's wages is notion as crude anC
illogical as any of the absurdities advanced
by some of the male participants in th
congress, and this is saying good deal TO
its worthlessness as practical question; anC
it is a very good thing that Miss Anthony wa
not admitted to the deliberations yesterday, a
there will be enough nonsense perpetrated by
the band of political economists at the
Assembly Buildings without speeches from
her every FIVE or ten minutes.
The determination on the part of its ad
vocates to have notoriety at all hazards hai
been the bane of the woman's rights move
ment, and the really important questions
connected with it have been set aside o.
brought into discredit, in order that a set o.
noisy agitators, whose ideas are frequently a,
nasty as they are crude, may keep themselye
before the public. II is such as these tha
have forced the earnest women who deplor,
the disabilities of their sex to refraiI
from having any connection whateve
with the clique of sharp-tongued virago
who mix up womens rights, free love, suf
frage labor, breeches, wages, Repubhcanism
Democracy, temperance, socialism, and othe
questions, into "A hodge-podge that respecta
BILE people stand back from aghast.
As for the Labor Congress, it has appa
rently as much as it can attend to with tn
knotty questions that have been and will b
brought before it for discussion and decision
without having an additional complication {
deal wlth IN the shape of woman's rights; an
the rejection of Miss Anthony's credentia
is the less to be regretted, as il will give tn
Revolution topic to vituperate upon Il
many weeks 10 come, and we NAV rest assure
that il will receive full justice at the hands
the editress Of that sheet