The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-08-25
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON.

l. Deg 10 achnOWleuSe WIFI STallJuue |
the receipt of two copies of the New
NORTHWEST, one of the ablest journals |
in the cause of humanity which it has
been my good fortune to see. The |
paper is full of interesting matter, and
ought 10 meet with liberal support on
this side of the Rocky Mountains.
Congress seems at last to be making
some progress on the legislative appro-
priation bill, which, by the heavy de-
duction of clerks called for under its
provisions, will create great suffering
throughout the departments, and in nu-
merous families in the District, to say
nothing of the indignation it naturally
calls forth from those who know that it
it is nothing but a mbastic, fill
clustering campaign fizzle. The re-
ductiOG of seven hundred and sixty
nomical, and will be made a Demo-
cratic trump card in the rural districts.
The sixty thousand dollars apprOpri-
ated for temporary clerks will be lost
III OiI anu LhO pAOullSC W b1hC Gdlly
action next session to remedy the evil
that may arise from insufficient clerical
force, will be entirely forgotten.
a House bill to abolish the religious
test in the courts has been amended in
the Senate by Mr.. Frelinghuysen, and
sent to the Judiciary Committee, where
it will probably remain until next ses-
sion. 1t is high time that some action
tell the truth according to his own
creed and conscience.
Campaign clubs are beginning to
grow active, and one of the surest signs
of energy and progress 1 have noticed,
is the admission of women as associate
members. This has been done by some
of the Republican Clubs, and others are
preparing to go still farther, and have
the obnoxious discrimination removed,
and hold out warm hand of welcome
to their sisters and fellow-workers in
proof of good will for the future hope
held out in the twelfth plank of the
platform nnder the protecting Hayes
and Wheeler banner.
Men give grudgingly every inch of
ground a woman fights hard to gain;
but this, in a measure, is woman's own
fault. A demand must first be created
in the market for an article to assume
value, and that value can only be rated
after the use of the commodity has
been fully tested. In the admission of
women to these clubs or primaries, the
ice has been fairly broken, and now it
depends upon herself to so work as to
make the demand for woman's services
increase, and her worth recognized and
acknowledged. AS general thing,
women who are at all favorable to the
cause of equal rights demand too much,
and do too little to prove themselves
really in earnest. They have now an
admirable chance. The Republican
clubs in the District have opened the
door half way. Let women throughout
the States make use of this precedent.
Let them press onward, quietly, earn
estly and increasingly, uutil, almost
imperceptibly, the doors will open
= wide. Men will acknowledge the good
moral influence, the quick intuitive
knowledge, the refining element, and
the practical manual labor which
women will be called upon to give
when documents are to be folded, ad-
dressed, and forwarded. Let us but
make ourselves indispensable to men,
and they will soon offer US the vote,
which we have been for years vainly
| demanding.
The Woman's National University
} has just been incorporated under the
laws of the District of Columbia. Mrs.
J Belva A. Lockwood is President, and
, with her usual activity and earnestness
) the enterprise cannot fail to succeed.
5 She is a practicing lawyer of increasing
popularity, and has won her way into
! the Courts and the estimation of the
! public through so fearful an ordeal as
2 would have crushed and subdued many
ordinary women. There could be nc
f better field for a WOman's University
4 than in this city, where hundreds Oi
= women congregate to earn temporary
< living in the departments, and many ot
r whom will gladly avail themselves Ol
o this opportunity to take up some pro-
f fession through which they may be able
D to secure to themselves employment
Y and independence for the future and es'
b cape from the anxious, restless, uncer
e tain condition of office life. Neither
B., the law nor the medical colleges would
a open their doors here to women, al
though repeatedly petitioned to do so
S and Mrs. Lockwood studied law, anC
: several ladies medicine, at the Howard
= University, a college established fol
: colored men. The main trouble will bt
Y the unfitness of the majority of womer
: to enter upon University studies
e through the lax and even inadequate
a primary education given to girls in the
J. United States. 1t is a somewhat sig
II nificant fact that whilst only ''seven ol
e eight" candidates a year have entered
q for the Harvard local examinations a
Cambridge, Massachusetts, the numbel
s of women over eighteen who responded