compensation was voted to the male teachers and $25 to the women,
who thereupon held a meeting and passed an ironical resolution
thanking the board for their liberal allowance. The board then
required them to sign a paper saying they did not intend an insult,
and those who did not make such recantation were discharged. The
speaker then referred to the power of the ballot. No politician
dared oppose the eight-hour agitation, because the workingman held
the franchise. Give the workingwoman a vote and she, too, can
protect herself.

A form of petition was approved asking that women might be members of
the coming Constitutional Convention and vote on the new constitution.
Respectful reports were made by the New York papers with the exception
of the World, which said in a long and abusive article:

Altogether the ablest, most dignified and best-balanced man in the
body is Frederick Douglass, and there is a deep feeling for him for
United States senator in spite of the drift of the convention,
which is evidently in favor of Susan B. Anthony; notwithstanding
which Elizabeth Cady Stanton is likewise a candidate with
considerable strength, favoring as she does the Copperheads, the
Democratic party and other dead and buried remains of alleged
disloyalty. Susan is lean, cadaverous and intellectual, with the
proportions of a file and the voice of a hurdy-gurdy. She is the
favorite of the convention. Mrs. Stanton is of intellectual stock,
impressive in manner and disposed to henpeck the convention which
of course calls out resistance and much cackling.... Susan has a
controlling advantage over her in the fact that she is unencumbered
with a husband. As male members of Congress rarely have wives in
Washington, so female members will be expected to be without
husbands at the capital....

Parker Pillsbury, one of the notabilities of the body, is a
good-looking white man naturally, but has a cowed and sneakish
expression stealing over him, as though he regretted he had not
been born a nigger or one of these females.... Lucy Stone, the
president of the convention, is what the law terms a "spinster."
She is a sad old girl, presides with timidity and hesitation, is
wheezy and nasal in her pronunciation and wholly without dignity or
command.... Mummified and fossilated females, void of domestic
duties, hab