INTRODUCTORY.


The introduction to the "History of Woman Suffrage," published in 1881-85,
edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn
Gage, contains the following statement: "It is often asserted that, as
woman has always been man's slave, subject, inferior, dependent, under all
forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition;
but that her condition is abnormal is proved by the marvellous change in
her character, from a toy in the Turkish harem, or a drudge in the German
fields, to a leader of thought in the literary circles of France, England,
and America."

I have made this quotation partly on account of its direct application to
the subject to be discussed, and partly to illustrate the contradictions
that seem to inhere in the arguments on which the claim to Woman Suffrage
is founded. If woman has become a leader of thought in the literary
circles of the most cultivated lands, she has not always been man's slave,
subject, inferior, dependent, under all forms of government and religion;
and, furthermore, it is not true that there has been such a marvellous
change in her character as is implied in this statement. Where man is a
bigot and a barbarian, there, alas! woman is still a harem toy; where man
is little more than a human clod, woman is to-day a drudge in the field;
where man has hewn the way to governmental and religious freedom, there
woman has become a leader of thought. The unity of race progress is
strikingly suggested by this fact. The method through which that unity is
maintained should unfold itself as we study the story of the sex
advancement of our time.