and the bitter hostility she noted on every side. However, with a clear, distinct voice, which filled the hall, she said: "It seems to me, gentlemen, that none of you quite comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which you complain. Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman? And this, too, is the reason that teaching is a less lucrative profession, as here men must compete with the cheap labor of woman. Would you exalt your profession, exalt those who labor with you. Would you make it more lucrative, increase the salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen."
This said, Miss Anthony took her seat, amid the profoundest silence, broken at last by three gentlemen, Messrs. Cruttenden, Coburn, and Fanning, walking down the broad aisle to congratulate the speaker on her pluck and perseverance, and the pertinency of her remarks. The editor of The Rochester Democrat said the next morning, that "whatever the schoolmasters might think of Miss Anthony, it was evident that she hit the nail on the head."
To give the women of to-day some idea of what it cost those who first thrust themselves into these conventions, at the close of the session Miss A. heard women remarking: "Did you ever see anything like this performance?" "I was actually ashamed of my sex." "I felt so mortified I really wished the floor would open and swallow me up." "Who can that creature be?" "She must be a dreadful woman to get up that way and speak in public." "I was so mad at those three men making such a parade to shake hands with her; that will just encourage her to speak again." These ladies had probably all been to theatres, concerts, operas, and gone into ecstasies over Fanny Kemble, Rachel, and Jenny Lind; and Fanny Elsler, balanced on one toe, the other foot in the air, without having their delicacy shocked in the least. But a simple Quaker girl rising in a teachers' convention to make a common-sense remark modestly, dressed, making no display of her neck, or arms, or legs, so tried their delicate sensibilities that they were almost afraid to attend the next session.
At the opening of the next morning's session, after Miss Anthony's début, Professor Davies, in all his majesty and pomposity, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his regulation buff vest, called the Convention to order, and said: "I have been asked by several persons, why no provisions have been made for women to speak, and vote, and act on committees, in these assemblies?" My answer is, "Be hold yonder beautiful pilaster of this superb hall! contemplate its pedestal, its shaft, its rich entablature, the crowning glory of the whole. Each and all the parts in their appropriate place contribute to the strength, symmetry, and beauty of the whole. Could I aid in taking down that magnificent entablature from its proud elevation, and placing it in the dust and dirt that surround the pedestal? Neither could I drag down the mother, wife, and daughter, whom we worship as beings of a higher order, on the common plane of life with ourselves."
If all men were pedestals and shafts capable of holding the women of their households above the dirt and dust of common life, in a serene atmosphere of peace and plenty, the good professor's remarks would have had some significance; but as the burdens of existence rest equally on the shoulders of men and women, and we must ever struggle together on a common plane for bread, his metaphor has no foundation. Miss Anthony attended these teachers' conventions from year to year, at Oswego, Utica, Poughkeepsie, Lockport, Syracuse, making the same demands for equal place and pay, until she had the satisfaction to see every right conceded. Women speaking and voting on all questions; appointed on committees, and to prepare reports and addresses, elected officers of the Association, and seated on the platforms. In 1856, she was chairman of a committee herself, to report on the question of co-education; and at Troy, before a magnificent audience of the most intelligent men and women of the State, she read her report, which the press pronounced able and conclusive. The President, Mr. Hazeltine, of New York, congratulating Miss Anthony on her address, said: "As much as I am compelled to admire your rhetoric and logic, the matter and manner of your address and its delivery, I would rather follow a daughter of mine to her grave, than to have her deliver such an address before such an assembly." Superintendent Randall, overhearing the President, added: "I should be proud, Madam, if I had a daughter capable of making such an eloquent and finished argument, before this or any assembly of men and women. I congratulate you on your triumphant success."
In 1857, at Binghamton, Professor Fowler, of Rochester, took up the gauntlet thrown down by Miss Anthony, and presented the other side of the question, taking the ground that boys and girls should not be educated together, and that women should not be paid equal wages even for equally good work. The gentlemen who sustained the side demanding equal rights for women in these conventions, were Randall, Rice, Cruttenden, Cavert, Fanning, Johonett, Coburn, Wilder, and Farnham. The opposition was led by Davies, Valentine, Buckley, Anthony (not S. B. A.), Ross, an old bachelor, the butt of ridicule, the clown of the Convention; and McElligott, the latter hardly ranking with the rest, for though opposed, he was always a gentleman, the others being ofttimes so coarse in their sneers and innuendoes, that they disgraced the positions they occupied, as the educators of the youth of the State. In the discussion at Binghamton, where Miss Anthony introduced a resolution in favor of co-education, Mr. McElligott said "he was in favor of allowing her full and equal opportunity with any other member to present resolutions, or to call them up for discussion. Standing up as she does before large audiences, to advocate what she conscientiously considers the rights and privileges of her sex, gives a touch of moral sublimity to our proceedings worthy the admiration of all."
Professor Davies denounced the resolutions in the strongest terms. "He had for four years been trying to escape this discussion; but if the question must come, let it be boldly met and disposed of. These resolutions involve a great social rather than an educational question, calculated to introduce a vast social evil; they are the first step in that school which seeks to abolish marriage, and behind the picture presented by them, I see a monster of deformity."102
In view of the grand experiment of co-education, so successful in every part of our country, the fears of those timid men thirty years ago provoke nothing now but a passing smile. How few of them with a sober face could at this time defend their old positions. It is creditable to the stronger sex that so many men in all those encounters, took no counsel with their fears nor prejudices, but seeing the principle steadfastly maintained it.
But the temperance and educational conventions, the clergy and the pedagogues, were alike abandoned now for the legislators. All this escapading of Miss Anthony's was mere child's play, compared with the steady bombardment kept up until the war on the legislators of the Empire State. Calls, appeals, petitions to rouse the women, fell like snow-flakes in every county, asking for the civil and political rights of woman; they were carried into the Legislature, frequent hearings secured, the members debating the question as hotly there as it had already been discussed in popular conventions. As New York could boast a larger number of strong-minded women than any other State, whose continuity of purpose knew no variableness nor shadow of turning, the agitation was persistently continued in all directions.
THE SYRACUSE NATIONAL CONVENTION,
September 8, 9, and 10, 1852.
This Convention, lasting three days, was in many respects remarkable, even for that "City of Conventions." It called out immense audiences, attracted many eminent persons from different points of the State, and was most favorably noticed by the press; the debates were unusually earnest and brilliant, and the proceedings orderly and harmonious throughout. Notwithstanding an admission fee of one shilling, the City Hall was densely packed at every session, and at the hour of adjournment it was with difficulty that the audience could gain the street. The preliminary103 editorials of the city papers reflected their own conservative or progressive tendencies.
In no one respect were the participants in these early Conventions more unsparingly ridiculed, and more maliciously falsified, than in their personal appearance; it may therefore be wise to say that in dignity and grace of manner and style of dress, the majority of these ladies were superior to the mass of women; while the
