Part 14 (2/2)
But alas! it was too good for that lat.i.tude and proved a financial failure. It was, to us, an oasis in the desert, where we would gladly have lingered if the opposition would have come to us for conversion.
But, as we had to carry the gospel of woman's equality into the highways and hedges, we left dear Mother Bickerd.y.k.e with profound regret. The seed sown in Kansas in 1867 is now bearing its legitimate fruits. There was not a county in the State where meetings were not held or tracts scattered with a generous hand. If the friends of our cause in the East had been true and had done for woman what they did for the colored man, I believe both propositions would have been carried; but with a narrow policy, playing off one against the other, both were defeated. A policy of injustice always bears its own legitimate fruit in failure.
However, women learned one important lesson--namely, that it is impossible for the best of men to understand women's feelings or the humiliation of their position. When they asked us to be silent on our question during the War, and labor for the emanc.i.p.ation of the slave, we did so, and gave five years to his emanc.i.p.ation and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. To this proposition my friend, Susan B. Anthony, never consented, but was compelled to yield because no one stood with her. I was convinced, at the time, that it was the true policy. I am now equally sure that it was a blunder, and, ever since, I have taken my beloved Susan's judgment against the world. I have always found that, when we see eye to eye, we are sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong. After we discuss any point together and fully agree, our faith in our united judgment is immovable and no amount of ridicule and opposition has the slightest influence, come from what quarter it may.
Together we withstood the Republicans and abolitionists, when, a second time, they made us the most solemn promises of earnest labor for our enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, when the slaves were safe beyond a peradventure. They never redeemed their promise made during the War, hence, when they urged us to silence in the Kansas campaign, we would not for a moment entertain the proposition. The women generally awoke to their duty to themselves. They had been deceived once and could not be again. If the leaders in the Republican and abolition camps could deceive us, whom could we trust?
Again we were urged to be silent on our rights, when the proposition to take the word ”white” out of the New York Const.i.tution was submitted to a vote of the people of the State, or, rather, to one-half the people, as women had no voice in the matter. Again we said ”No, no, gentlemen!
if the 'white' comes out of the Const.i.tution, let the 'male' come out also. Women have stood with the negro, thus far, on equal ground as ostracized cla.s.ses, outside the political paradise; and now, when the door is open, it is but fair that we both should enter and enjoy all the fruits of citizens.h.i.+p. Heretofore ranked with idiots, lunatics, and criminals in the Const.i.tution, the negro has been the only respectable compeer we had; so pray do not separate us now for another twenty years, ere the const.i.tutional door will again be opened.”
We were persistently urged to give all our efforts to get the word ”white” out, and thus secure the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the colored man, as that, they said, would prepare the way for us to follow. Several editors threatened that, unless we did so, their papers should henceforth do their best to defeat every measure we proposed. But we were deaf alike to persuasions and threats, thinking it wiser to labor for women, const.i.tuting, as they did, half the people of the State, rather than for a small number of colored men; who, viewing all things from the same standpoint as white men, would be an added power against us.
The question settled in Kansas, we returned, with George Francis Train, to New York. He offered to pay all the expenses of the journey and meetings in all the chief cities on the way, and see that we were fully and well reported in their respective journals. After prolonged consultation Miss Anthony and I thought best to accept the offer and we did so. Most of our friends thought it a grave blunder, but the result proved otherwise. Mr. Train was then in his prime--a large, fine-looking man, a gentleman in dress and manner, neither smoking, chewing, drinking, nor gormandizing. He was an effective speaker and actor, as one of his speeches, which he ill.u.s.trated, imitating the poor wife at the washtub and the drunken husband reeling in, fully showed. He gave his audience charcoal sketches of everyday life rather than argument. He always pleased popular audiences, and even the most fastidious were amused with his caricatures. As the newspapers gave several columns to our meetings at every point through all the States, the agitation was widespread and of great value. To be sure our friends, on all sides, fell off, and those especially who wished us to be silent on the question of woman's rights, declared ”the cause too sacred to be advocated by such a charlatan as George Francis Train.” We thought otherwise, as the accession of Mr. Train increased the agitation twofold. If these fastidious ladies and gentlemen had come out to Kansas and occupied the ground and provided ”the sinews of war,” there would have been no field for Mr. Train's labors, and we should have accepted their services. But, as the ground was unoccupied, he had, at least, the right of a reform ”squatter” to cultivate the cardinal virtues and reap a moral harvest wherever he could.
Reaching New York, Mr. Train made it possible for us to establish a newspaper, which gave another impetus to our movement. The _Revolution_, published by Susan B. Anthony and edited by Parker Pillsbury and myself, lived two years and a half and was then consolidated with the New York _Christian Enquirer_, edited by the Rev. Henry Bellows, D.D. I regard the brief period in which I edited the _Revolution_ as one of the happiest of my life, and I may add the most useful. In looking over the editorials I find but one that I sincerely regret, and that was a retort on Mr. Garrison, written under great provocation, but not by me, which circ.u.mstances, at the time, forbade me to disown. Considering the pressure brought to bear on Miss Anthony and myself, I feel now that our patience and forbearance with our enemies in their malignant attacks on our good, name, which we never answered, were indeed marvelous.
We said at all times and on all other subjects just what we thought, and advertised nothing that we did not believe in. No advertis.e.m.e.nts of quack remedies appeared in our columns. One of our clerks once published a bread powder advertis.e.m.e.nt, which I did not see until the paper appeared; so, in the next number, I said, editorially, what I thought of it. I was alone in the office, one day, when a man bl.u.s.tered in. ”Who,”
said he, ”runs this concern?” ”You will find the names of the editors and publishers,” I replied, ”on the editorial page.” ”Are you one of them?” ”I am,” I replied. ”Well, do you know that I agreed to pay twenty dollars to have that bread powder advertised for one month, and then you condemn it editorially?” ”I have nothing to do with the advertising; Miss Anthony pays me to say what I think.” ”Have you any more thoughts to publish on that bread powder?” ”Oh, yes,” I replied, ”I have not exhausted the subject yet.” ”Then,” said he, ”I will have the advertis.e.m.e.nt taken out. What is there to pay for the one insertion?”
”Oh, nothing,” I replied, ”as the editorial probably did you more injury than the advertis.e.m.e.nt did you good.” On leaving, with prophetic vision, he said, ”I prophesy a short life for this paper; the business world is based on quackery, and you cannot live without it.” With melancholy certainty, I replied, ”I fear you are right.”
CHAPTER XVII.
LYCEUMS AND LECTURERS.
The Lyceum Bureau was, at one time, a great feature in American life.
The three leading bureaus were in Boston, New York, and Chicago. The managers, map in hand, would lay out trips, more or less extensive according to the capacity or will of the speakers, and then, with a dozen or more victims in hand, make arrangements with the committees in various towns and cities to set them all in motion. As the managers of the bureaus had ten per cent. of what the speakers made, it was to their interest to keep the time well filled. Hence the engagements were made without the slightest reference to the comfort of the travelers. With our immense distances, it was often necessary to travel night and day, sometimes changing cars at midnight, and perhaps arriving at the destination half an hour or less before going on the platform, and starting again on the journey immediately upon leaving it. The route was always carefully written out, giving the time the trains started from and arrived at various points; but as cross trains often failed to connect, one traveled, guidebook in hand, in a constant fever of anxiety. As, in the early days, the fees were from one to two hundred dollars a night, the speakers themselves were desirous of accomplis.h.i.+ng as much as possible.
In 1869 I gave my name, for the first time, to the New York Bureau, and on November 14 began the long, weary pilgrimages, from Maine to Texas, that lasted twelve years; speaking steadily for eight months--from October to June--every season. That was the heyday of the lecturing period, when a long list of bright men and women were constantly on the wing. Anna d.i.c.kinson, Olive Logan, Kate Field,--later, Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Howe, Alcott, Phillips, Dougla.s.s, Tilton, Curtis, Beecher, and, several years later, General Kilpatrick, with Henry Vincent, Bradlaugh, and Matthew Arnold from England; these and many others were stars of the lecture platform.
Some of us occasionally managed to spend Sunday together, at a good hotel in some city, to rest and feast and talk over our joys and sorrows, the long journeys, the hard fare in the country hotels, the rainy nights when committees felt blue and tried to cut down our fees; the being compelled by inconsiderate people to talk on the train; the overheated, badly ventilated cars; the halls, sometimes too warm, sometimes too cold; babies crying in our audiences; the rain pattering on the roof overhead or leaking on the platform--these were common experiences. In the West, women with babies uniformly occupied the front seats so that the little ones, not understanding what you said, might be amused with your gestures and changing facial expression. All these things, so trying, at the time, to concentrated and enthusiastic speaking, afterward served as subjects of amusing conversation. We unanimously complained of the tea and coffee. Mrs. Livermore had the wisdom to carry a spirit lamp with her own tea and coffee, and thus supplied herself with the needed stimulants for her oratorical efforts. The hards.h.i.+ps of these lyceum trips can never be appreciated except by those who have endured them. With accidents to cars and bridges, with floods and snow blockades, the pitfalls in one of these campaigns were without number.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIZABETH SMITH MILLER.] [Ill.u.s.tration]
On one occasion, when engaged to speak at Maquoketa, Iowa, I arrived at Lyons about noon, to find the road was blocked with snow, and no chance of the cars running for days. ”Well,” said I to the landlord, ”I must be at Maquoketa at eight o'clock to-night; have you a sleigh, a span of fleet horses, and a skillful driver? If so, I will go across the country.” ”Oh, yes, madam!” he replied, ”I have all you ask; but you could not stand a six-hours' drive in this piercing wind.” Having lived in a region of snow, with the thermometer down to twenty degrees below zero, I had no fears of winds and drifts, so I said, ”Get the sleigh ready and I will try it.” Accordingly I telegraphed the committee that I would be there, and started. I was well bundled up in a fur cloak and hood, a hot oak plank at my feet, and a thick veil over my head and face. As the landlord gave the finis.h.i.+ng touch, by throwing a large buffalo robe over all and tying the two tails together at the back of my head and thus effectually preventing me putting my hand to my nose, he said, ”There, if you can only sit perfectly still, you will come out all right at Maquoketa; that is, if you get there, which I very much doubt.”
It was a long, hard drive against the wind and through drifts, but I scarcely moved a finger, and, as the clock struck eight, we drove into the town. The hall was warm, and the church bell having announced my arrival, a large audience was a.s.sembled. As I learned that all the roads in Northern Iowa were blocked, I made the entire circuit, from point to point, in a sleigh, traveling forty and fifty miles a day.
At the Sherman House, in Chicago, three weeks later, I met Mr. Bradlaugh and General Kilpatrick, who were advertised on the same route ahead of me. ”Well,” said I, ”where have you gentlemen been?” ”Waiting here for the roads to be opened. We have lost three weeks' engagements,” they replied. As the General was lecturing on his experiences in Sherman's march to the sea, I chaffed him on not being able, in an emergency, to march across the State of Iowa. They were much astonished and somewhat ashamed, when I told them of my long, solitary drives over the prairies from day to day. It was the testimony of all the bureaus that the women could endure more fatigue and were more conscientious than the men in filling their appointments.
The pleasant feature of these trips was the great educational work accomplished for the people through their listening to lectures on all the vital questions of the hour. Wherever any of us chanced to be on Sunday, we preached in some church; and wherever I had a spare afternoon, I talked to women alone, on marriage, maternity, and the laws of life and health. We made many most charming acquaintances, too, scattered all over our Western World, and saw how comfortable and happy sensible people could be, living in most straitened circ.u.mstances, with none of the luxuries of life. If most housekeepers could get rid of one-half their clothes and furniture and put their bric-a-brac in the town museum, life would be simplified and they would begin to know what leisure means. When I see so many of our American women struggling to be artists, who cannot make a good loaf of bread nor a palatable cup of coffee, I think of what Theodore Parker said when art was a craze in Boston. ”The fine arts do not interest me so much as the coa.r.s.e arts which feed, clothe, house, and comfort a people. I would rather be a great man like Franklin than a Michael Angelo--nay, if I had a son, I should rather see him a mechanic, like the late George Stephenson, in England, than a great painter like Rubens, who only copied beauty.”
One day I found at the office of the _Revolution_ an invitation to meet Mrs. Moulton in the Academy of Music, where she was to try her voice for the coming concert for the benefit of the Woman's Medical College. And what a voice for power, pathos, pliability! I never heard the like.
Seated beside her mother, Mrs. W.H. Greenough, I enjoyed alike the mother's anxious pride and the daughter's triumph. I felt, as I listened, the truth of what Vieuxtemps said the first time he heard her, ”That is the traditional voice for which the ages have waited and longed.” When, on one occasion, Mrs. Moulton sang a song of Mozart's to Auber's accompaniment, someone present asked, ”What could be added to make this more complete?” Auber looked up to heaven, and, with a sweet smile, said, ”Nothing but that Mozart should have been here to listen.”
Looking and listening, ”Here,” thought I, ”is another jewel in the crown of womanhood, to radiate and glorify the lives of all.” I have such an intense pride of s.e.x that the triumphs of woman in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can.
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