or her bread;" and when, after
melting all hearts by a course of farewell readings, she decided to begin
reading again, she said she was doing it "for her butter." So long as women
are often obliged to support themselves and their children, and perhaps
their husbands, by their own labor, they have no right to work cheaply,
unless driven to it. Anna Dickinson had no right to make fifteen dollars a
week by sewing, if, by stepping out of the ranks of needle-women into the
ranks of the talkers, she could make a hundred dollars a day. Theorize as
we may, the fact is that there is no kind of work in America which brings
such sure profits as public speaking. If women are unfitted for it, or if
they "know the value of peace and quietness," as the hand-organ man says,
and can afford to hold their tongues, let them do so. But if they have
tongues, and like to use them, they certainly ought to make some money by
the performance.

This is the utilitarian view. And when we bring in higher objects, it is
plain that the way to get anything in America is to talk about it. Silence
is golden, no doubt, and like other gold remains in the bank-vaults, and
does not just now circulate very freely as currency. Even literature in
America is utterly second to oratory as a means of immediate influence. Of
all sway, that of the orator is the most potent and most perishable; and
the student and the artist are apt to hold themselves aloof from it, for
this reason. But it is the one means in America to accomplish immediate
results, and women who would take their rights must take them through
talking. It is the appointed way.

Under a good old-fashioned monarchy, if a woman wished to secure anything
for her sex, she must cajole a court, or become the mistress of a monarch.

That epoch ended with the French Revolution. When Bonaparte wished to
silence Madame de Stael, he said, "What does that woman want? Does she want
the money the government owes to her father?" When Madame de Stael heard of
it, she said, "The question is not what I want, but what I think."
Henceforth women, like men, are to say what they think. For all that
flattery and seduction and sin, we have substituted the simple weapon of
talk. If women wish education, they must talk; if better laws, they must
talk. The one chief argument against woman suffrage, with men, is that so
few women even talk about it.

As long as the human voice can effect anything, it is the duty of women to
us