self, and that other
must be woman. When no longer a subject, but an equal--a free and
independent sovereign, believing herself created primarily for her own
individual happiness and development and secondarily for man's,
precisely as man believes himself created first for his own enjoyment
and second for that of woman--she will constitute herself sole umpire in
the sacred domain of motherhood. Then, instead of feeling it her
Christian duty to live with a drunken, profligate husband, handing down
to her children his depraved appetites and passions, she will _know_
that God's curse will be upon her and her children if she flee not from
him as from a pestilence.

It is worse than folly, it is madness, for women to delude themselves
with the idea that their children will escape the terrible penalty of
the law. The taint of their birth will surely follow them. For pure
women to continue to devote themselves to their man-appointed mission of
visiting the dark purlieus of society and struggling to reclaim the
myriads of badly-born human beings swarming there, is as hopeless as
would be an attempt to ladle the ocean with a teaspoon; as
unphilosophical as was the undertaking of the old American Colonization
Society, which, with great labor and pains and money, redeemed from
slavery and transported to Liberia annually 400 negroes; or the Fugitive
Slave Societies, which succeeded in running off to Canada, on their
"under-ground railroads," some 40,000 in a whole quarter of a century.
While those good men were thus toiling to rescue the 400 or the 40,000
individual victims of slavery, each day saw hundreds and each year
thousands of human beings born into the terrible condition of
chattelism. All see and admit now what none but the Abolitionists saw
then, that the only effectual work was the entire overthrow of the
system of slavery; the abrogation of the law which sanctioned the right
of property in man.

In answer to my proposal to speak in one of the cities of Iowa, an
earnest woman replied, "It is impossible to get you an audience; all of
our best women are at present engaged in an effort to establish a 'Home
for the Friendless.' All the churches are calling for the entire time of
their members to get up fairs, dinners, concerts, etc., to raise money.
In fact, even our woman suffragists are losing themselves in devotion to
some institution."

Thus, wherever you go, you find the best women, in and out of the
churches, all a