running its work, was under the charge of a young Canadian girl, Miss Allison, who, from childhood, had loved machinery, spending much time in the large saw and grist mills of her father, run by engines of two and three hundred horse-power, which she sometimes managed for amusement. When her name was proposed for running the pavilion machinery, it caused much opposition. It was said that the committee would, some day, find the pavilion blown to atoms; that the woman engineer would spend her time reading novels instead of watching the steam gauge; that the idea was impracticable and should not be thought of. But Miss Allison soon proved her capabilities and the falseness of these prophecies by taking her place in the engine room and managing its workings with perfect ease. Six power looms, on which women wove carpets, webbing, silks, etc., were run by this engine. At a later period the printing of The New Century for Woman, a paper published by the centennial commission in the woman's building, was done by its means. Miss Allison declared the work to be more cleanly, more pleasant, and infinitely less fatiguing than cooking over a kitchen stove. "Since I have been compelled to earn my own living," she said, "I have never been engaged in work I like so well. Teaching school is much harder, and one is not paid so well." She expressed her confidence in her ability to manage the engines of an ocean steamer, and said that there were thousands of small engines in use in various parts of the country, and no reason existed why women should not be employed to manage them,—following the profession of engineer as a regular business,—an engine requiring far less attention than is given by a nursemaid or a mother to a child.
But to have made the Woman's Pavilion grandly historic, upon its walls should have been hung the yearly protest of Harriet K. Hunt against taxation without representation; the legal papers served upon the Smith sisters when, for their refusal to pay taxes while unrepresented, their Alderney cows were seized and sold; the papers issued by the city of Worcester for the forced sale of the house and lands of Abby Kelly Foster, the veteran abolitionist, because she refused to pay taxes, giving the same reason our ancestors gave when they resisted taxation; a model of Bunker Hill monument, its foundation laid by Lafayette in 1825, but which remained unfinished nearly twenty years, until the famous German danseuse, Fanny Ellsler, gave the proceeds of a public performance for that purpose. With these should have been exhibited framed copies of all the laws bearing unjustly upon women—those which rob her of her name, her earnings, her property, her children, her person; also the legal papers in the case of Susan B. Anthony, who was tried and fined for claiming her right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, and the decision of Mr. Justice Miller in the case of Myra Bradwell, denying national protection for woman's civil rights; and the later decision of Chief Justice Waite of the United States Supreme Court against Virginia L. Minor, denying women national protection for their political rights; decisions in favor of State rights which imperil the liberties not only of all women, but of every white man in the nation.
Woman's most fitting contributions to the Centennial Exposition would have been these protests, laws, and decisions, which show her political slavery. But all this was left for rooms outside of the centennial grounds, upon Chestnut Street, where the National Woman's Suffrage Association hoisted its flag, made its protests, and wrote the Declaration of Rights of the women of the United States.
To many thoughtful people it seemed captious and unreasonable for women to complain of injustice in this free land, amidst such universal rejoicings. When the majority of women are seemingly happy, it is natural to suppose that the discontent of the minority is the result of their unfortunate individual idiosyncrasies, and not of adverse influences in established conditions. But the history of the world shows that the vast majority, in every generation, passively accept the conditions into which they are born, while those who demanded larger liberties are ever a small, ostracized minority, whose claims are ridiculed and ignored. From our standpoint we would honor any Chinese woman who claimed the right to her feet and powers of locomotion; the Hindoo widows who refused to ascend the funeral pyre of their husbands; the Turkish women who threw off their masks and veils and left the harem; the Mormon women who abjured their faith and demanded monogamic relations. Why not equally honor the intelligent minority of American women who protest against the artificial disabilities by which their freedom is limited and their development arrested? That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real, only proves their apathy and deeper degradation. That a majority of the women of the United States accept, without protest, the disabilities which grow out of their disfranchisement is simply an evidence of their ignorance and cowardice, while the minority who demand a higher political status clearly prove their superior intelligence and wisdom.
At the close of the Forty-seventh Congress we made two new demands: First, for a special committee to consider all questions in regard to the civil and political rights of women. We naturally asked the question, As Congress has a special committee on the rights of Indians, why not on those of women? Are not women, as a factor in civilization, of more importance than Indians? Secondly, we asked for a room, in the Capitol, where our committee could meet, undisturbed, whenever they saw fit. Though these points were debated a long time, our demands were acceded to at last. We now have our special committee, and our room, with "Woman Suffrage" in gilt letters, over the door. In our struggle to achieve this, while our champion, the senior Senator from Massachusetts, stood up bravely in the discussion, the opposition not only ridiculed the special demand, but all attempts to secure the civil and political rights of women. As an example of the arguments of the opposition, I give what the Senator from Missouri said. It is a fair specimen of all that was produced on that side of the debate. Mr. Vest's poetical flights are most inspiring:
"The Senate now has forty-one committees, with a small army of messengers and clerks, one-half of whom, without exaggeration, are literally without employment. I shall not pretend to specify the committees of this body which have not one single bill, resolution, or proposition of any sort pending before them, and have not had for months. But, Mr. President, out of all committees without business, and habitually without business, in this body, there is one that, beyond any question, could take jurisdiction of this matter and do it ample justice. I refer to that most respectable and antique institution, the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. For thirty years it has been without business. For thirty long years the placid surface of that parliamentary sea has been without one single ripple. If the Senator from Massachusetts desires a tribunal for a calm, judicial equilibrium and examination—a tribunal far from the 'madding crowd's ignoble strife'—a tribunal eminently respectable, dignified and unique; why not send this question to the Committee on Revolutionary Claims? It is eminently proper that this subject should go to that committee because, if there is any revolutionary claim in this country, it is that of woman suffrage. (Laughter.) It revolutionizes society; it revolutionizes religion; it revolutionizes the Constitution and laws; and it revolutionizes the opinions of those so old-fashioned among us as to believe that the legitimate and proper sphere of woman is the family circle, as wife and mother, and not as politician and voter—those of us who are proud to believe that
"Woman's noblest station is retreat:
Her fairest virtues fly from public sight;
Domestic worth—that shuns too strong a light.
"Before that Committee on Revolutionary Claims why could not this most revolutionary of all claims receive immediate and ample attention? More than that, as I said before, if there is any tribunal that could give undivided time and dignified attention, is it not this committee? If there is one peaceful haven of rest, never disturbed by any profane bill or resolution of any sort, it is the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. It is, in parliamentary life, described by that ecstatic verse in Watts' hymn—
"There shall I bathe my wearied soul
In seas of endless rest.
And not one wave of trouble roll
Across my peaceful breast.
"By all natural laws, stagnation breeds disease and death, and what could stir up this most venerable and respectable
