Year: 1875

Y9 victoria woodruff.


Mrs. Victoria WoodhuIPs lecture
on ''Naked Truths at Cincinnati,
on the sth inst, was largely attend
ed, and by a good class of people
The "Naked Truths" which she pro-
duced were not startling in their nu-
dity, consisting largely of the ordi-
nary stock in trade of the dissatis-
fed politician, and the persistent
shrieker for woman's rights.


She commenced by telling how
pure the trainers of our Constitution
meant the country to be, how pure
it really was i'll the hands of the ear
ly fathers, but how utterly corrupt
and worthless it had become She
said the people no longer had a
voice in the Government; that they
were ruled by lot of scheming,
wire-pulling politicians, who made
them believe they carried the elec-
tion by their votes, one way or an
other, but who actually set every
thing up before the election came off.
And it made no difference which
party of politicians got into Office,
the people were bamboozIed and
plundered all the same. The Demo-
cratic party was rotten in the core,
and the Republican party was not a
bit better. After a century's trial,
our Government was a failure. She
had no respect for the laws it made
and would not submit to them, and
there was not a woman of common
sense in the country that should.
When women should sit with men
ill the legislative halls and have an
equa! share with them in the making
of the laws, she would recognize
them, but while ignorant, bieoted,
.prejudiced men held full sway, made
arbitrary laws and attempted to
hold woman by them, sne would
simply spit upon them. She then
gave some attention to the financial
question, which she claimed every
woman should understand as well as
men. Her rallying point in this part
of the lecture was reputation, which
she advocated on the ground that
the people who produced the wealth
of the Countryside laboring classes
had nothing to show for their Ia
Dor, while the aristocratic drOnes
and swindlers had everything. She
was also in favor of a new system of
taxation-one that should exempt so
much property, say $4,000, and
then progressively tax $4,000 such
a per cent, $4O,O00 such a per cent,
100000 such per cent, and so on
up to a. million. The succession
struck the audience as being novel
and amusing, and they gave the fair
lecturer good laugh. Then she
said our social system was all wrong,
that the American women didn't
know how to have children,a and when
they did have them were not capa-
Bile of raising them. There wasn't
one woman in one hundred thou
sand that was fit to be mother, and
the proportion against fathers was
even worse than that. ThCre were
thousands of agricultural fairs all
over the country every year, and for
two hundred years people had been
improving different species of dumb
beasts. At the fairs the women were
full of information about boars and
chickens, and went wild with enthu-
siasm over this splendid stallion, or
that magnificent Durham bull. But
let some poor, broken mother come
along, who had, perhapsS two chill
dren in the graveyard, a reckless
boy running the streets, and a girl
at home dying of consumption or
deformed by spinal curvature, and
what did she know about the i'm
proving or even the preservation of
the human race. She referred with
horror to the fact, according to med.
ical statistics, that seven tenths Of
the women all over the land were af-
fiicted with diseases peculiar to wo-
man, and made the calculation if
remedy was not found for this the
American blood per sc would run
out completely within twenty-five
years, She insisted that parents did
not bring their children up right;
that they did not surround them
with the influences that make home
attractive, and that in consequence
the young boy that could not play
an innocent game of cards, or chess,
or dominoes at home with his broth
ers or sisters, or his parents them
selves, stole away to the beer saloon,
or to worse places. A motherwould
say, "Oh, my son has sowed all his
wild oats now and is going to marry
and settle down." But while that
son was sowing his wild oats, whose
daughter was he debauching, and
what was to become of her-was
she going to marry and settle down!
If a child was depraved it was the
mothers fault. Her treatment OF