is master. If he were disobedient, the master
had the right to use correction. If the negro did not like the
correction and ran away, the master had the right to use coercion to
bring him back. By the laws of almost every State in this Union today,
North as well as South, the married woman has no right to the custody
and control of her person. The wife belongs to the husband; and if she
refuse obedience he may use moderate correction, and if she do not like
his moderate correction and leave his "bed and board," the husband may
use moderate coercion to bring her back. The little word "moderate," you
see, is the saving clause for the wife, and would doubtless be
overstepped should her offended husband administer his correction with
the "cat-o'-nine-tails," or accomplish his coercion with blood-hounds.

Again the slave had no right to the earnings of his hands, they belonged
to his master; no right to the custody of his children, they belonged to
his master; no right to sue or be sued, or to testify in the courts. If
he committed a crime, it was the master who must sue or be sued. In many
of the States there has been special legislation, giving married women
the right to property inherited or received by bequest, or earned by the
pursuit of any avocation outside the home; also giving them the right to
sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such separate property; but not
a single State of this Union has ever secured the wife in the enjoyment
of her right to equal ownership of the joint earnings of the marriage
copartnership. And since, in the nature of things, the vast majority of
married women never earn a dollar by work outside their families, or
inherit a dollar from their fathers, it follows that from the day of
their marriage to the day of the death of their husbands not one of them
ever has a dollar, except it shall please her husband to let her have
it.

In some of the States, also, laws have been passed giving to the mother
a joint right with the father in the guardianship of the children.
Twenty-five years ago, when our woman's rights movement commenced, by
the laws of all the States the father had the sole custody and control
of the children. No matter if he were a brutal, drunken libertine, he
had the legal right, without the mother's consent, to apprentice her
sons to rumsellers or her daughters to brothel-keepers. He even could
will away an unborn child from the mother. In most of the States this
law still