The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1891-03-22
MONEY VS.. MATRIMONY.
WILL wOMAN's RIGHTS AND BUsI-
NESS DECREASE MARRIAGES

Tho Opinions of Noted Female Think
ers-Susan IL. Anthony Says Bad Mar
riages Will Drop OT-Frances VIII
hard Gives Her Ideas of Nature and
the Sexes-May Wright Sewal1 Pre-
diets Love Matches Under the New
Regime and Lille Devereaux Blake
HncIines to Marriages of Reason-Par-
son Madame Shaw to the Effect of
SnCh Matches on Children-Harriet
Taylor Upton's Ideas and Rachel Fos-
Tor Avery's Personal Experience-The
Views ofJuIia Ward Howe and theirs.
Year by year the unmarried women of the
United States increase in number. There are
more than eighty thousand unmarried mar
rageable girls in Massachusetts, and the com
ing census will show that fewer marriages are
contracted now than ever before. The females
among the Government clerks at Washington
say they prefer independent single blessedness
at one thousand dollars year to dependent
matrimonial existence at hard work and no
pin money, and it is question as to whether
the new openings in business and professional
lives are not going to drive the wives and
mothers out of existence. During the past
winter nearly every noted independent female
thinker has visited Washington. / have met
most OF them and have questioned them on
this subject.
SUSAN b. ANTHONY ON MARRIAGE.
My first interview was with Susan B. Anth-
-ony. She said: ''Our business and profess
sonal life will of course affect marriage. It
will lessen bad marriages, and it will guard
women from ill-sorted ones. 1t will take
from immoral and unworthy men the advan-
tage they now have over some women as their
only means of support and will give them the
freedom to choose for themselves. On the
other hand, good marriages will be increased
by the present condition. When women
achieve real independence, and have their po-
litical, industrial and financial equality, they
Will no longer sell themselves to a so-called
husband for so-called home. They. will not
be satisfied with board and lodging IN some
mans house, and as much else of his worldly
goods as he chooses. Financial dependence
is the secret of this womens rebellion, for it is
the of her domestic unhappness. When
men recognize women as equal factors in
human government as creatures of financial
independence and apace with themselves, then
women will not only be wooed as real sweet
hearts, loved wives, and enjoyed as COM
paniOns, but they will be respected as self
respecting human entities. The woman of the
future is going to climb up where she can take
look over this field. She is not going to
snatch at anything that passes for man be-
cause 1t draws a salary, and the man of the
future will be just as apt to select woman
who is mentally developed for companionship
and morally fitted for motherhood as one
whose physical beauty has enthraled him or
whose form is especially adapted for showing
of fine rags
Miss Anthony pointed her argument with
story related of Anna Dickinson during the
time she vas nightly earning $3.50. She re-
ceyod at this time a proposal of marriage
from forty dollars-a-month Yankee school
teacher, who stipulated that such marriage
must be followed by her retirement from pub
lie life.
MAY WRIGHT sEwALI..
"Too many marriages are made because
women are driven to marriage for support
said May Wright Sewall, president-elect of the
Woman's National Council ''As women en-
ter the industrial world, acquire higher educa-
ton, and admitted to the professions
they will be fitted for self-support and able to
maintain that sef-respect which forbids un-
chasto marriage. The man of the future is
TO be enVied; he will be accepted because he is
loved, not as a mere means of a living Men
now have little assurance that they are ac-
cepted for love alone, when there are so many
other motives impelling women to matrimony.
Educational and industrial freedom will per-
NIT woman to give her heart with her hand.
These larger activities will improve domestic
life also. Intelligent and scientific method and
order have already been applied to domestic
work, and, more than this, current slander
that suffragsts were neglectful housekeepers
has put that class on its mette, and the best
housekeepers il the country to-day are these
same progressive women
FRANCES wILLARDs POETIC IDEAS.
''When was a child, said Frances Willard,
II lived in the country and close to the heart
of nature. / loved all animal life, and un-
consciously became a student Of natural laws.
1t was there, idly watching the mating of
birds and the association of the animate crea-
tion generally, that learned the fundamental
principles Of sex. Though my eyes were keen
in those days, ! saw nothing of what we call
domestic tyranny, nor of marriage based upon
anything but natural law The father and
mother birds to be first sang together flew
together, aud then together builded the nest.
Except in tribes that BETRAYED sex by plumape