Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/548

tion. One of the brightest anti-slavery orators was at that time in the habit of saying, "It is not the press, nor the pulpit, which rules the country, but the counting-room"; proving his assertion by showing the greater power of commerce and money, than of intellect and morality. So Mr. Greeley saw the purse to be woman's first need; that she must control money in order to help herself to freedom.

Second, ignoring woman's pauperized condition just admitted, he suggested that women engaged in this reform should pay those employed in the household larger wages than was customary, although these very women were dependent upon others for their shelter, food, and clothes; so impossible is it for a governing class to understand the helplessness of dependents, and to fully comprehend the disabilities of a subject class.

The declaration of sentiments^[1] adopted at the Westchester Convention was read by Martha C. Wright, and commented upon as follows by

Clarina Howard Nichols: There is no limit to personal responsibility. Our duties are as wide as the world, and as far-reaching as the bounds of human endeavor. Woman and man must act together; she, his helper. She has no sphere peculiar to herself, because she could not then be his helper. It is only since I have met the varied responsibilities of life, that I have comprehended woman's sphere; and I have come to regard it as lying within the whole circumference of humanity. If, as is claimed by the most ultra opponents of the wife's legal individuality, the interests of the parties are identical, then I claim as a legitimate conclusion that their spheres are also identical. For interests determine duties, and duties are the land-marks of spheres. The dependence of the sexes is mutual.

It is in behalf of our sons, the future men of the Republic, as well as of our daughters, its future mothers, that we claim the full development of our energies by education, and legal protection in the control of all the issues and profits of our lives called property. Woman must seek influence, independence, representation, that she may have power to aid in the elevation of the human race. When men kindly set aside woman from the National Councils, they say the moral field belongs to her; and the strongest reason why woman should seek a more elevated position, is because her moral susceptibilities are greater than those of man.

Mrs. Mott thought differently from Mrs. Nichols; she did not believe that woman's moral feelings were more elevated than man's; but that with the same opportunities for development, with the same restrictions and penalties, there would probably be about an equal manifestation of virtue.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith: My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less

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1. See Pennsylvania Chapter, page 360.