bsorbed in establishing or maintaining benevolent or
reform institutions; charitable societies, soup-houses, ragged schools,
industrial schools, mite societies, mission schools--at home and
abroad--homes and hospitals for the sick, the aged, the friendless, the
foundling, the fallen; asylums for the orphans, the blind, the deaf and
dumb, the insane, the inebriate, the idiot. The women of this century
are neither idle nor indifferent. They are working with might and main
to mitigate the evils which stare them in the face on every side, but
much of their work is without knowledge. It is aimed at the effects, not
the cause; it is plucking the spoiled fruit; it is lopping off the
poisonous branches of the deadly upas tree, which but makes the root
more vigorous in sending out new shoots in every direction. A right
understanding of physiological law teaches us that the cause must be
removed; the tree must be girdled; the tap-root must be severed.

The tap-root of our social upas lies deep down at the very foundations
of society. It is woman's dependence. It is woman's subjection. Hence,
the first and only efficient work must be to emancipate woman from her
enslavement. The wife must no longer echo the poet Milton's ideal Eve,
when she adoringly said to Adam, "God, thy law; thou, mine!" She must
feel herself accountable to God alone for every act, fearing and obeying
no man, save where his will is in line with her own highest idea of
divine law.

The president of the Howard Mission School, New York, said, "Miss
Anthony, it is a marvel to me that, with so much brain and common sense,
you should always devote yourself to mere abstractions. Why is it that
you never set yourself about some practical work?"

"Like the Howard Mission?" said I. "How many less children have you now
than ten years ago?"

"Oh, no less, but many, many more."

"Would it not be a practical work, then, to make it possible for every
mother to support her own children? That is my aim and my work; while
yours is simply to pick up the poor children, leaving every girl-child
to the mother's heritage of helpless poverty and vice. My aim is to
change the condition of women to self-help; yours, simply to ameliorate
the ills that must inevitably grow out of dependence. My work is to
lessen the numbers of the poor; yours, merely to lessen the sufferings
of their tenfold increase."

If the divine law visits the sins of the fathers upon the children,
equally so