Woman’s World Column – Sept. 17, 1885 | Archives of Women's Political Communication

Carrie Chapman Catt (Carrie Lane at the time) retired from teaching after the end of the 1884 school year and married Leo Chapman, publisher and editor of the Mason City Republican newspaper, in February 1885. In the March 5 issue of The Republican, Catt’s name appeared in the masthead as co-editor of the paper with Chapman, and on March 19, the first installment of her new column, “Woman’s World,” was published. The Mason City Public Library has microfilm of every issue of The Republican from 1885 except one, and Catt’s column appears nearly weekly through early November. The Chapmans sold the newspaper in April 1886, and there are no extant copies of the paper from that year.

The last legislature of Texas passed a law requiring that half of the public clerks employed should be women.

Theft is regarded in Scotland, as in England, as a good deal worse than wife murder. At the High Court of Justiciary, in Edenburg, Lord Young condemned a man to two months imprisonment for having knocked his wife down and kicked her to such an extent that she died almost immediately from the effect. The next prisoner was convicted of having stolen a letter containing two half-sovereigns and sixty stamps. His sentence was five years’ penal servitude. Labouchere says: “The moral of this is, kill your wife, but never commit the far-greater crime of stealing a postage stamp.” A woman would say that the moral is to give her sex a voice in the law making of the realm.—New Northwest.

At Waldeck, a German principality, a decree has been issued that no license to marry will hereafter be granted to any individual who is addicted to drunkenness; or having been so, he must exhibit full proofs that he is no longer a slave to this vice. The same government has also directed that in every report made by the ecclesiastical, municipal and police authorities upon petition for license to marry, the report shall distinctly state whether either of the parties desirous of entering into the matrimonial connection is addicted to intemperance, or otherwise.

This is an excellent law, and if it were established in America in connection with the disfranchisement of drunkards advocated by Mrs. Harbert would certainly reduce the voice of intemperance to its minimum. Let us as advocates of good morals build these two columns as the foundation stone of scientific instruction and the next generation will see our nation redeemed from the evils of excessive drinking.—Woman’s Tribune.

Hon. William L. Bowditch, of Boston, writes to Woman’s Realm an article on the disabilities of women, of which the following are closing paragraphs:

“A few years since a married woman in Massachusetts who earned wages agreed with her husband who also earned wages, to form a common fund for the use of both, and the fund was accordingly so-formed and placed in the husband’s hands for safety and for mutual use. Afterwards, with the consent of the husband, she took part on this common fund to buy some clothing for herself, and our court, after solemn argument, decided that this clothing, which could only be used by a woman, belonged to a husband.

If I had been this woman, I should have felt as if I really were a slave, even though on Massachusetts soil. She did not legally own the very shoes and stockings on her feet any more than the slave in Leverette Street Jail owned the jacket on his back. This was the law if Massachusetts until down to 1879, and would have been the law down to to-day had it not been for the persistent efforts of woman suffragists. It is still the law in Ohio and do doubt in other States also.”

Why can not woman make good lawyers?” asks an exchange. We never gave the subject much thought but we suppose it is because they can’t sit on the small of their backs, pile their feet on a table, spit half way across the room into a box full of sawdust and charge $15 a minute for it. There may be some minor reasons, in addition, but these appear to us to be the principal ones in the way to her success at the bar.—Bob Burdette.

The St. Louis Republican said, not long ago, concerning the mental equality of women: “Mary Somerville and Caroline Herschel in science, Queen Elizabeth and Madame Roland in politics, Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot in literature, Joan of Arc in was, Burdetts-Couts in finance—these, and a score of others who might be named prove that there is no inevitable and inexorable inferiority warring against woman. In proportion to the number of women who have entered the fields of science, politics, literature, was, and finance, there have been fewer failures than among the men; and if we could search the annals of private life, we should find enough instances of first-class executive ability to convince the most incredulous that what woman wants to achieve success in the struggle of like is not brains, but practical and thorough education, supplemented by encouragement and a fair chance.”

A curious story is related of Horace Greeley and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. At a Constitution Convention in New York an effort was made to have woman suffrage made a part of organic law. Horace Greeley made a report against it. Hundreds of petitions were presented for it and Mrs. Stanton managed it so that a petition headed by the name of Mrs. Horace Greeley was presented just after that presented by Mr. Greeley. Mr. Greeley went afterwards to Mrs. Stanton and said: “You are so tenacious about your own name, why did you not inscribe my wife’s maiden name, Mary Cheney Greeley, on her petition?” “Because,” replied Mrs. Stanton, “I wanted all the world to know that it was the wife of Horace Greeley who protested against her husband’s report.” “Well,” said he, “I understand the animus of that whole proceeding, and now let me tell you what I intend to do. I have given positive instructions that no word of praise shall ever again be awarded you in the Tribune, and that if your name is ever necessarily mentioned it shall be as Mrs. Henry B. Stanton.”

Notes about Women

—Mrs. Radabhal, a (Hindoo) widow in India, instead of cremating herself on her late husband’s funeral pyre, has gone into business as a bookseller.—Woman’s Journal.

—Mrs. Napier Higgins is writing in England a history of women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, showing that the decay of chivalry, the rise of the new learning and the progress of the Reformation marked an age in which woman was more influential in politics, society and thought than she had been before or has been since.

—Iowa scores another laurel for her women in the election of Dr. Jennie McCowen, of Davenport, to membership in the New York Medico-Legal society, at its January meeting. With a membership of between four and five hundred of the most eminent lawyers, physicians and chemists in the United States, this society has hitherto admitted to fellowship but two other women, both physicians.

Chapman, Carrie Lane. 1885. “Woman’s World.” Mason City Republican, September 17.

PDF version, courtesy of Mason City Public Library