Thus you see that, so far as the action of this convention is
concerned, our cause is defeated. Yet I do not feel discouraged.
I think there is hardly a State in the Union that has such just
and excellent laws concerning the property rights of women as
Texas. There is also great liberality of sentiment here
concerning the avocations of women. But the right of women to the
ballot seems to be almost a new idea to our people. I have never
lived in a community where the women are more nearly abreast of
the men in all the activities of life than here in this frontier
settlement. In our State a woman's property, real or personal, is
her own, to keep, to convey, or to bequeath. The unusual number
of widows here, due to the incursions of the Indians during and
since the war, has made the management as well as the ownership
of property by women so common a thing as to attract no notice. I
might give interesting instances, but that would take time, and
my point is this, that the laws which have enabled, and the
circumstances which have driven women to rely upon and to exert
themselves, have been educational, not only to them, but also to
the community. The importance of this education to the
future--who can measure it? It is true that many of them can
neither read nor write, but in this the men are not in advance of
them. It as often happens that the woman can read while the man
cannot, as the reverse. And they are almost universally resolved
that their children shall not grow up in the ignorance that has
been their portion. If the women could vote, our convention would
not think of submitting a constitution that did not secure to the
State a liberal free school system.

The legislature of 1885, after a hard struggle, enacted a law
making it compulsory on the heads of all departments to give at
least one-half of the clerical positions in their respective
offices to women. The action has extraordinary interest, and is
regarded as a victory for the woman's rights party. Mrs. Jenny
Bland Beauchamp of Dennison writes:

Texas claims to be a woman's State, in that her laws are
unusually just and lenient to women. A woman who has property at
marriage can keep it. She can even claim any property that she
can prove was bought with that money. The wife is entitled to
half the co