ladies and gentlemen. The morning session was occupied with the usual preliminary business matters, choosing officers, presenting resolutions, and planning new aggressive steps for the coming year. Susan B. Anthony was President on this occasion, and fulfilled her duties to the general satisfaction. During the evening session the hall was crowded, all the available space for either sitting or standing was occupied, the platform and steps were densely packed, and this at twenty-five cents admission.
Mr. Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Rose, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Higginson, Miss Brown, and Lucy Stone all spoke with their usual effect. Mrs. Eliza Woodson Farnham, the author of "Woman and her Era," spoke at length on the "Superiority of Woman."
Mrs. Farnham[1] enforced her theory of woman's superiority in a -long speech, which was received with apparent satisfaction by the audience, though several on the platform dissented from the claim of superiority, thinking it would be a sufficient triumph over the tyrannies of the past, if popular thought could be educated to the idea of the equality of the sexes.
Mrs. Sarah Hallock read an extract from the Statutes of New York, giving the items set aside by law for use of the wife and minor children, in case the husband died without a will.
(Extract from the Statutes of New York).
ARTICLES INVENTORIED, BUT NOT APPROVED, BELONGING TO THE WIDOW AND MINOR CHILDREN.
1st. All spinning-wheels, weaving-looms, or stoves put up for use.
- ↑ Eliza Farnham was in many respects a remarkable woman. As matron of the Sing Sing prison at one time, she introduced many humane improvements in the occupation and discipline of the women under her charge. She had a piano in the corridor, and with sweet music touched the tender chords in their souls. Instead of tracts on hell-fire and an angry God, she read aloud to them from Dickens' most touching stories. In every way, assisted by Mariana Johnson and Georgiana Bruce, she treated them as women, and not as criminals.