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Seven Who Led the Battles
8. Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Unwavering Campaigner
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Dear Revolution: Your patriotic heart will palpitate to think that the women of The Revolution have taken possession of the home of the President, and propose to hold a Woman Suffrage Convention right under the very shadow of his flagstaff . . . . . We have had a most enthusiastic meeting . . . . Theodore Tilton had just preceded us, and some ladies laughingly told us that Theodore said they would certainly vote in twenty years! . . . Why, Mr. Tilton, when you go to the Senate some wise woman will sit on your right, and some black man on your left. You are to pay the penalty of your theorizing and be sandwiched between a woman and a black man in all the laws and constitutions before five years pass over your curly head. Twenty years! Why, Theodore, we expect to be walking the golden streets of the New Jerusalem by that time . . . . Do you not know, Theodore, that we have vowed never to go disfranchised into the Kingdom of Heaven? In the meantime, we propose to discuss sanitary and sumptuary laws, finance, and free trade, religion and railroads, education and elections with such worthies as yourself in the councils of the American republic. Twenty years! Why, every white male in the nation will be tied to an apron-string by that time, while all the poets and philosophers will be writing essays on "The Sphere of Man"!
9. Susan B. Anthony: Tireless Traveler
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I had an experience in publishing a paper about twenty-five years ago and I came to grief. I never hear of a woman starting a suffrage paper that my blood does not tingle with agony for what that poor soul will have to endure -- the same agony I went through. I feel, however, that we shall never become an immense power in the world until we concentrate all our money and editorial forces upon one great national daily newspaper, so we can sauce back our opponents every day in the year; once a month or once a week is not enough.
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10. Maria (Midy) Morgan: Reporter with Muddy Boots
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Towering well above the average man, with more than six feet to her credit, and clad in roomy serge, stout shoes showing to the ankles, and a bonnet defiant of wind and rain, she passed along at a swinging gait with more momentum to it than most men would venture to check. But this odd exterior housed qualities of heart and mind which won and kept friends for her and commanded respect and professional success. . . . Miss Morgan was one of the first women to take up daily newspaper work in this city, and was called a pioneer. The designation was deserved in more senses than one, for, while women have followed her, they have not gone into her field. She stood alone in the specialties she cultivated.
11. Jenny June, Hewer of New Paths
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Sex alone, not at all capacity. There are plenty of women who would be preferred as workers to men, if they were not women. But men are not accustomed to act with women from a business point of view, and their presence oppresses them. They will stand carelessness, negligence, even drunkenness from a man, because that is in the regular order of things, but a woman, without trial, is generally understood to be a "nuisance" in a newspaper office. Then, it is true that they cannot as yet be put upon subordinate routine work. A large part of the work of a daily paper has to be done at night, and editors say, with truth, that a sense of impropriety attaches to the idea of a woman going unattended to night meetings for the purpose of reporting them, returning late to the office, writing her report and traveling home alone after midnight. Still, there are many things that a woman can do upon a daily journal, and women could be used upon them much more than they are, with benefit to the journals themselves.
12. Augusta Lewis: Organizer of Working Women
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We beg to call your attention to the large number of women working at the trade, whose neglected interests, uncared-for welfare, and disorganized labor are obstacles to your perfect organization, a detriment to the trade, and disastrous to the best interests of printers. Heretofore women compositors have been used to defeat the object for which you have organized--have been the prey of those philanthropic persons who employ women because they are cheap--their labor has been used during strikes to defeat you. When that object has been accomplished they are set adrift, disorganized and unprotected, their necessity compelling them to work for a price at which they cannot earn a living, and which tends to undermine your wages. In view of these facts, and the injustice we have done you, as well as ourselves, and believing the interests of Labor--whether that labor be done by male or female--are identical, and should receive the same protection and the same pay, we, the women compositors of New York, have taken the initiative in this, and formed the Women's Typographical Union No. 1, of New York.
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13. Victoria Woodhull: Prophet of Women's Power
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14. Emily Warren Roebling: Engineer of City's Growth
The arches of the Brooklyn Bridge might not have been finished in 1883 had it not been for Emily Warren Roebling. After her husband, Washington Roebling, suffered decompression sickness, she took over, as "Field Engineer," the execution of what the American Institute of Architects calls "New York's supreme icon." Because creating the first bridge over the East River took so long, there were anxieties about its soundness. Delivering a plea that she and her husband be permitted to finish the work, she became the first woman to address the American Society of Civil Engineers. Early in May 1883, Emily Roebling was the first passenger to cross the completed bridge.
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http://www.womensenews.org/opening-the-way-seven-who-led-the-battles
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