September 9, 1871
[Page 14]
WOMAN ITEMS.
…Donn Piatt, or someone else in the Capital, objects to ladies wearing corsets beneath a loose muslin wrapper in hot weather. First, how does he know? Secondly, whose funeral is it?…
A Boston lady has started a society to do away with false forms of speech. Instead of “Ah, dear; how glad I am to see you,” of polite society, the new formula will be, “Cuss yer. Git out.”
Horace Greeley’s advice to women to learn how to cook a steak, and not to mind suffrage, is good under circumstances. But without the steak the knowledge to cook it is valueless. This is where the suffrage will come in….
FROM MRS. DAVIS.
PROVIDENCE, August 26.
MY DEAR VICTORIA: Despite the Tribune’s idea of my idleness and ennui I find every hour so filled with duties that friendly letters are often deferred, not wholly neglected, for I usually bring up at the last moment. This must be my excuse for not having sooner congratulated you upon your nomination by the VICTORIA LEAGUE to the Presidency. But I have not been either idle or unmindful of our, your interests, for in the one I consider the other bound up.
From the time when I picked up your paper with your name at the head as the future President of the U.S.A., and read your pronunciamento, I have never named any other candidate for President.
That step at once proved you fearless, self-sacrificing and strong in the right. Your platform of a just government I regard as a most able state paper, one that will bear a favorable comparison with any which has been put forth for years; and I am proud that it is bound up with the history of the first twenty years’ work for human freedom. It is a most excellent beginning of the history of the next decade.
The meeting held in Apollo Hall, though seemingly so near a failure, has certainly not been without its results. If there had been no other, the issuing that one document (though not endorsed, as it should have been, by the meeting) would have been worth the time; but the great social question receives an impetus that it will not soon lose in its onward progress. I believe people begin to see that suffrage will not give woman social equality any more than it gives it to the negro now; it is but a stepping-stone toward the greater. The black man votes, but ask him if he does not still feel the ban of public sentiment against his tinted skin, and he will answer yes; and sex will still be the word to stifle woman’s aspirations for a larger life, even though she may vote for years.
Though as a scientist, I regard the social questions as of the greater importance, I am none the less ready to accept your nomination; and though I may be on the other side [of] the globe, I shall come home to vote for you in 1872; and every woman will be recreant to duty who fails in standing firmly in this crisis by your side, strengthening, encouraging and aiding in all and every possible way.
Yours ever truly, PAULINA W. DAVIS
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. Sentences or paragraphs that have been removed are indicated with the ellipsis (….)
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company: