ett
Stevenson, of Chicago, who had asked for a word of encouragement in
regard to a hospital she was founding for mothers whose children were
born out of wedlock:

I hope your beneficent enterprise may succeed. I trust the day will
come when there will be no such unfortunate mothers, but until
then, it certainly is the duty of society to provide for them. The
first step towards bringing that day is to make women not only
self-supporting but able to win positions of honor and emolument.
Since no disfranchised class of men ever had equal chances in the
world, it is fair to conclude that the first requisite to bring
them to women is enfranchisement. It is not that all when
enfranchised will be capable, honest and chaste, but it is that
they will possess the power to control their own conditions and
those of society equally with men. Therefore my panacea for the
ills which your hospital would fain mitigate is the ballot in the
hands of women.

The editor of the Voice wrote for her opinion as to the cause of the
prevailing "hard times," and she answered:

The work of my life has been less to find out the causes of men's
failure to successfully manage affairs, than to try to show them
their one great failure in attempting to make a successful
government without the help of women. It used to be said in
anti-slavery days that a people who would tacitly consent to the
enslavement of 4,000,000 human beings, were incapable of being just
to each other, and I believe the same rule holds with regard to the
injustice practiced by men towards women. So long as all men
conspire to rob women of their citizen's right to perfect equality
in all the privileges and immunities of our so-called "free"
government, we can not expect these same men to be capable of
perfect justice to each other. On the contrary, the inevitable
result must be trusts, monopolies and all sorts of schemes to get
an undue share of the proceeds of labor. There is money enough in
this country today in the hands of the few, if justly distributed,
to make "good times" for all.

Reporters were constantly besieging her for her views on "bloomers,"
which had been re-introduced by the bicycle, and she usually replied in
effect:

My opinion about "bloomers" and dress generally for both men and
women is that people sho