Woman's World Column - May 28, 1885

In 1885, Catt (Carrie Lane) resigned from her position as superintendent of schools in Mason City, Iowa, and married Leo Chapman, editor of the Mason City Republican, a weekly newspaper. She became co-editor of the newspaper and started the column “Woman's World,” which she wrote would be “devoted to the discussion of such questions as purport to the welfare, the social, political and intellectual position of women.”

Mrs. Coggeshall in an address before the annual meeting of Des Moines Suffrage Association says: “What a fearful price humanity has paid for this loss of woman’s personality in the weakened or vicious character grown in the unborn souls that have for months been nourished under a mother’s rebellious heart; and then society marvels that a child should have the instincts of a murderer from the beginning. Gen. Walker, in his last census report, in remarking about the increased number of occupations open to women, expressed sorrow to see in this a liability to celibacy, or to a lock of home life and influence. The grounds of his fears are exceedingly well taken. A girl with a salary of nine hundred a year to expend according to her own judgement, naturally weighs the expediency of exchanging her liberties for the privilege of serving even a family of her own all the rest of her life for her board, clothing and a reasonable amount of medicine. A woman is as prone to love as the sparks to fly upward and the last fifty years of cultivation and refinement have rendered her none the less so; but her broadened soul seeks its complement and is coming to demand in marriage the same purity that she brings to the altar. Woman’s perfect equality before the law would tend so strongly to ennoble his character that if her enfranchisement was sought for this end alone, the world would do well to hasten its accomplishment. Women have come to demand that they no longer be held amenable to laws which they have no voice in making, or help to support a government which welcomes to its shores the refuse of all nation, and invites them, not only to become their own rulers, but to an equal share in the ruling of its more than twenty millions of women. We are a nation that proclaims to all the world that here all men are equal, that to tax any class without its consent is tyranny, and yet has gone on for a hundred years extracting millions of dollars in taxes from one-half the people whom it allows no more voice in their levy or distribution than the vilest criminal behind the bards. I love my country; yet as solemnly as I believe that ‘no liar can inherit the kingdom of Heaven,’ so I believe that no government can continue to be which is, from the initial sentence down to the selection of its officials, one systematic and organized lie.”

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In speaking of marriage, Charles W. Dorsett says in the Woman’s Journal: “There can be no true union where one party regards himself as superior and the other looks upon herself as subordinate. One of the great benefits of the movement for women’s advancement will be the establishment of the complete equality of the sexes. In giving to woman the ballot, we take the last step in the recognition of her equality with man. Being thus left free, she will gradually come to take the position of an equal, to which her talents and abilities entitle her. Then her influence will be felt in all the affairs of state, the same as man’s, as it already is in the home, in society and in all charitable and religious matters. She will no longer be considered as an inferior order of being. The same standard of morality for men and women will be established. Women will be less inclined to marry for the sake of being housed and fed and clothed. Men will seek and find intellectual and spiritual companions for wives, instead of mere temporal helpmeets. Then marriages will take place between equals. Children will be born with better inheritances. Divorces will be less frequent. Love will be mutual and the union harmonious and perfect.

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The young women have this year acquitted themselves with credit at the examinations in Toronto University College. One of them has taken the prize in the second year in mental science and logic, two subjects usually regarded as peculiarly formidable to the average female intellect. Women have been admitted for only a few years to universities on the same footing as men. Before long it will be generally admitted that no intellectual sphere or employment is unsuited to woman as woman, though some occupations may be unsuited to her on physical grounds. Women as a class are deeply indebted to the pioneers in a movement which is likely to secure something like justice for their sex. A few years ago, a young woman of eighteen took a high position among the “wranglers”—that is, first class honor men in mathematics—at Cambridge, but the laws of the university prevented her name from appearing in its proper place simply because she was a woman. And there are still to be found, even in Canada, men who question the wisdom of admitting women into universities, and women who look with a certain among of horror on those of their sisterhood who venture into an institution once devoted exclusively to men.—Canapa Citizen.

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Among the many safeguards of female purity in the Roman Republic was an enactment forbidding women ever to taste wine, and this law, being enforced with the earliest education, became at last by habit and traditionary reverence; so incorporated with the moral feelings of the people, that its violation was spoken of as a monstrous crime.—Women’s Journal.

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Mrs. Josephine Reccing [Redding], the editor of the Art Interchange, asserts that no one of the awful prophecies about the fate of woman, should she devote herself to other pursuits than housewifery and motherhood, have come to pass. “Woman in ever increasing numbers,” she says, “enters colleges and becomes a factor in commercial and industrial life, and little by little the obstacles in the way of the achievement of her political rights are being removed, and still she is neither an invalid, a corpse nor a virago, as was confidently predicted she would be.”

Chapman, Carrie Lane. 1885. “Woman’s World.” Mason City Republican, May 28.

PDF version, courtesy of Mason City Public Library