Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1916-05-17
EXTRACTS FROM THE AUTO
BIOGRAPHY OF
lane GREY SWISSHELM
First Newspaper Woman Of
Minnesota.
A Remarkable Woman Of Ante
bellum Days-1915-1965
CHI PIT Err xxx.
Boomers and WOman'S Rights
Conventions,


proved the existence Of an eating can
GER Of discomfort in the body polite.
Under the smooth surface Of society
lay a mass of moral disease, which sud
denly broke out into an eruption Of
from those who felt them
selves oppressed by the old Saxon and
ecclesiastical laws under which one
half the people Of the republic still
lived.
In the laws governing the interests
peculiar to men, and those affecting
their interests in common with woman.
great advance had been made during
the past six centuries. but those regard
ing the exclusive interests of women.
had remained in statu quo. since King
Alfred the Great and the knights Of his
Round Table fell asleep. The anti
negro slavery object Of my paper SEEM
ed to be lost sight Of, both by friends
and foes Of human progress. in the |
surprise at the innovation of a woman
entering the political arena, to argue
publicly on great questions Of national
policy, and while men were defending
their pantaloons, they created and
spread the idea, that masculine suprem
acy lay in the form of their garments.
would be as potent as he.
Strange as it may now seem, they
succeeded in giving such efficacy to the
idea, that no less a person than Mrs.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was led astray
by it, so that she set her cool, wise head
to work and invented a costume, which
she believed would emancipate woman
from thraldom. Her invention was
adopted by her friend, Mrs. Bloomer,
editor and proprietor of the Lily,
small paper then in infancy in SYRIA
cuse. N. Y, and from her, the dress
took its name-"the boomer" Both
women believed in their dress, and
staunchly advocated it as the SOW
ereignest remedy for all the Ills that
woman's flesh Is heir to.
made a suit and wore 1t at home
parts Of two days, long enough to feel
assured that it must be a failure; and
SO opposed it earnestly, but nothing I
could say or do could make it apparent
that pantaloons were not the real OBJ
jective point, at which all disconnected
woman aimed. I had once been tried
on charge Of purloining pantaloons,
and been acquitted for lack of evidence;
but now, here was the proof! The wo-
tents, promulgated and pressed their
claim to bifurcated garments, and the
whole tide Of popular discussion was
turned into that ridiculous channel.
The Visiter had large list Of sub
scribers in Salem, Ohio, and in the sum-
mer of 40 a letter from a lady came to
up so much interest in womens' rights
had ho17
committee appointed to get up wom-
ans rights convention, and she, as
chairman of that committee, invited me
to preside. I felt on reading this as
If I had had a douche bath; then, as a
lawyer might have felt who had car
ried a case for corporation through
the lower court, and when expecting
1t up before the supreme bench, had
learned that all his clients were coming
in to address the court on the merits
of the case
By the pecks of letters I had been
receiving, I had learned that there were
thousands of women with grievances,
and no power to state them or to dis
criminate between those which could be
reached by law and those purely per-
sonal; and that the love Of privacy with
a mistake, since most Of my corros-
pondents literally agoniZed to get be-
fore the public. Publicity! publicity!
was the persistent demand. To meet
the demand small papers, owned and
edited by women, sprang up all over the
land, and like Jonah's gourd persisted
in a night. Ruskin says to be noble is
to be known, and at that period there
was great demand on the part Of wo-
men for their full allowance of nobil-
ity; but not one in hundred thought
of merit as a means of reaching it. No
use waiting to learn to put two con-
secutive sentences together in any con-
nected form, or for an idea or the pow
er of expressing it. One woman was
printing her productions, and why
should not all the rest do likewise?
They had SO long followed some leader
like a flock OF sheep, that now they
would rush through the first gap into
newspaperdom.
I declined the presidential honors
rendered me, on the ground of inability
to fill the place; and earnestly entreat-
ed the movers to reconsider and give
up the convention, saying:
1T will open a door through which
make the cause Ridiculous"
The answer was that it was too late
to recede. The convention was held,
and justified my worst fears. When l
criticised it, the reply was:
IF you had come and presided, as we
wished you to do, the result would have
been different. You started the move
ment and now refuse to lead it, you
cannot stop it,
The next summer a convention was
held in Akron, Ohio, and I attended,
hoping to modify the madnes, but failed
utterly, by all protests I could make,
to prevent the introduction by the COM
mittee on resolutions of this:
Resolved, that the difference in sex
is one of education
A man stood behind the president to
prompt her, but she could not catch his
meaning, and when confusion came, she
rose and made little speech, in which
she stated that she knew nothing of
parliamentary rules, and when consent
ing to preside had resolved, if there
were trouble, to say to the convention
as she did to her boys at home:
"Quit behaving yourselves!"
This brought down the house, but
brought no order, and she sat down.
smiling, a perfect picture of self-com-
plaisance.
People thought the press unmerc1ful
in it's ridicule of that convention, but
felt in it all there was much forbear-
ance. No words could have done JUS
tice to the occasion. It was so much
more ridiculous than ridicule, so much