Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-05-17
Allegiance to the Hearthstone Should
Not Make Them Slaves.
SOME FAMOUS MARRIED WOMEN
Platform Ambition Absorbs No More Time
Than Church Devotion.
SPHERE OF THE SEX ISN'T LIMITED
WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPATcH.]

she should not be allowed to go. He as
sumes to know all about what her business
should be, how she should live and to what
extent she should be permitted to exercise
her talents. Woman, he thinks, should be
allowed to progress up to certain point.
Her education and advancement, he believes
in, unless they should lead her beyond the
limit that he thinks proper. He admires
her onward march, but he is greatly alarmed
for fear she is progressing in the wrong di-
rection.
"The great element Of danger with
women's progress" he maintains, 'is that
it takes women away from home who ought
to be there and nowhere else. God intended
married woman to stay at home, and she
has no business to be anywhere else. There
is no mission so great or urgent that justifes
woman in leaving the home in which is her
husband and children. Wives should not
be seen attending public meetings. A
mother who has either sons or daughters to
educate should never undertake to speak
upon a public platform. She is mistaking
her mission in life when she tries to remedy
an evil by striding the lecture platform"
Brother bachelor will allow Clara Barton
and Frances Willard to do such shocking
thing as "stride" upon lecture platform,
or attend public meetings, or help along re-
forms, but he protests firmly and stoutly"
against married woman giving her talents
any scope beyond the four walls which are
to shut her in from the public
This is all very well for the women who
who haue taste for domestic life, and a
talent for housekeeping and nursing, but
those endowed with the gift of eloquence, the
power to sway the multitude, the capacity
to teach, or to preach, or to practice law or
medicine, are to smother their ambitions,
bury their talents, choke their desire for
congenial work, and sacrifice their lives in
drudging along at housework for which they
have neither taste nor inclination, and, we
may say, doing very poor and unsatisfactory
work at the best.
This sort of can't about the mission of
woman is very common among goody-
goody men who fondly imagine they know
more of what heaven intended woman to
do then the sisters themselves. Has this
brother who proposes to shut in all married
women, and restrain them from any mis-
sion or public reform never heard Of Eliza
beth Fry, who Notwithstanding the care Of a
large family, became
A Minister Among the Quakers,
and whose zeal in benevolence and prison
reform have made her name famous?
Through her noble efforts for the abate-
ment of barbarism and the refor-
nation Of criminals, the whole Grim
inal code of England was changed
for the better. She travelled all
through the country organizing societies
to aid in prison reform, she spent
hours in the jails, which then were de-
scribed as 'thells upon earth," where by
force of her intellect she controlled the ig-
,norant and brutalized inmates, and BY the
depth of her sympathy convinced them Of
her desire to help them in their distresses.
By her untiring work aided by those she
had enlisted in behalf of the prisoners the
horrors of Newgate prison and others were
mitigated, and the dungeons and chains
and cruelties gave way to light, fresh air
and schools for instruction and employ
ment.
She was the mother of II children who
rose up, as we are told, to call her blessed,
and her husband entered into and encour-
aged her in all her benevolence. She had
the gift of eloquence and magnetism, and
had power for good far beyond the common.
Has this bachelor brother, who proposes
to debar married women from public meet
ings and from taking part in anything that
will call them from home, no knowledge of
Lucretia Mott, who had large family of
children, was given to hospitality, made her
husband and home happy, and yet was
minister among the Quakers and one of the
foremost reformers in the country? She Or
ganized conventions, occupied the public
platforms, made speeches in favor Of tenn
perance, in opposition to slavery and for the
furtherance of woman's rights. She did not
require men to instruct her as to her mission
as housekeeper,. as mother, a wife or a
For brains, character, capacity
as manager of either her house or public
for ability as a speaker, for
sincerity in her convictions and power to
impress them, for devotion to truth and all
that is lovely and of good report, Lucretia
Mott was one of the most distinguished of
American women.
James Mott is described as "a magnificent
man" who was proud of his wife and gloried
in her talents. Her motto was ''Truth for
not authority for truth" AS a
she was model for system and
comfort.
Work OF Mrs. Gladstone.
1t will hardly be claimed that Mrs Glad
stone is not a good wife and mother in view
of what is known of her, and yet this
brother and those of his ilk would condemn
her. 1 don't know whether Sister Glad
stone "strides," but that she does attend
public meetings and make speeches
upon platforms in behalf of the Liberal
party in England is well known.
In the mother country women take large
part in politics. They canvass and make
brothers and fathers, or for any political
in whose success they are inter-
ested. The Primrose League is an associa-
tion of women who work for the Conserva-
tive party. To do service for the Liberals
ire the Women's Liberal Associations. Of
one of these Mrs. Gladstone is president.
Will the bachelor friend assert that she |
has not done her full duty to her husband |
and children? Will he make clear that all
IF these mothers and wives of England are
their families? Even the party
IN England, backed by the arch
bishops and clergy generally, have !
got to the point of imploring the women
% take part in politics, to attend public |
meetings, and use their powers of persua-
,ion in promoting the interests of the Con-
lpon the preaching of Paul, to be sure, but
he Liberals must be defeated at any risk.
A Country Preachers Famous Wife.
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore is among the |
women who are ordered to stay at home and |
approached for neglccting their greatest
luty to their God, their families and man |
lind" Everybody dy knows that Mrs Liver
more is the noble wife of a coun-
ry clergyman; that inspired by
patriotism, she left her home
md toiled bravely as nurse
or the sick and wounded soldiers in the
Jivil War; that possessing the power of
peech and the gift of eloquence she does
lot hesitate to leave her home and lecture