Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-02-25
THE ETERNAL GAME OF .sWIG-
WAG.v
Women Seeking Emancipation The
ThraldOm of FashiOn-Annual Meeting
of the Suffrage Association.

Boston Globe.
The opening session Of the second an
nual meeting of the National Woman Suf-
TRACE Association of Massachusetts was
held in the Melonaon at 80 O'Clock Tues
day evening. About tWo-thirds of the
seats In the house were taken, most of the
audience being women, though not a few
Of the other sex were present. The OPEN
ing address was made by Mrs. Harriette
K. Shattuck, the President, who said that
the great and acknowledged advance of
women during the last thirty years has
been largely due to the woman's suffrage
movement, and that the ultimate sue
cess of the cause was inevitable. She
went on to show how woman had
advanced from a condition where she
could own nothing but an illegitimate
child, saying that her advance during the
last thirty years had been greater than
during the 300 years preceding it. The op-
position to wOman's suffrage, the speaker
thought, struck blow at the foundation
principles of this republic. History
points to the fact that wherever woman
has co-operated with man in all fields of
life better result has come about. 1t is
absolutely necessary for the progress of
civilization that the two elements of hui
manity, the manly and the womanly,
should work together. Woman has i'm
proved every social department into
which she has been admitted, and reason
ing from analogy it Is obvious that she
will improve the State when she is at last,
as she must inevitably be, admitted to it.
The only question is one of time. The
opposition, fully alive to the progress of
the cause, arms itself in defense. The
beginning Of the end has been seen: let
the women and the men Join in the good
work now, and not come tagging into it
after 1t has been established, as they
would surely be obliged to do in not
very long time.
Miss Nancy Willard CovilI spoke next
on the announced topic of ''The Reason
Why" She said it was her somewhat I'M
pleasant task of setting forth the folly and
toibles of women and giving reasons for
them. George Eliot had somewhere said
that man had been accustomed to consider
woman as pretty animalOf the ape kind,
and it was lamentable fact that woman
had done much to justify this judgment.
The chief idea advanced by Miss Covill
was that if men had not had a better
chance socially than the other sex they
would not have come out any better, and
the laugh would have been on the other
side. She criticised the senseless follow
ing Of fashion which bound woman down
to an eternal game of 'swig-wag," until
she escaped from which there could
be no mental life for her. Nobody
would deny, she said, that this was
the condition of the majority of
women. What did it all show except
that woman was foolish and ignorant, as
she had been accused OF being? Simply
this-that she has bOundless energy and
persistence which must and will find eX-
preston in some way, and that when she
has aspired to take a higher position than
this she has been frowned down and dis
cOuraged, or tainted with being mascu-
line, indicate and strOng-minded, until
there has come to be full assortment of
women who are Weak-minded. 1t is little
wonder that after all the ages of repres-
sion and lost opportunity that have passed
woman does not always show herself a
genius or a philosopher. Until liberty
was finally secured for women the popu-
lar notices of the country ought to be
changed to Equal rights for half the peo-
pie" 1.-The land of free males" Repub-
lican institutions are not safe until woman
suffrage arrives.
Miss Mara l.. Pratt, of Maiden, made
her first speech before a woman suffrage
convention on the subject of "Right vs..
EXpediency." She said that a thousand
absurd and contradictory arguments had
been advanced from time to time against
the right of woman to vote, but they were
fast being sifted down to a question of eX-
pediency. This question she believed to
be answered in the affirmative.
Miss Phoebe w. COuZins was the last
speaker of the evening. She pleaded for
the cause by appealing to the heart rather
than to the head, inasmuch, she said, as
the latter method had many and able adj
YOcates. All of the speakers were listened
to with attention and received not little