{"id":1712,"date":"2026-08-05T20:12:48","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T01:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2026-08-10T19:14:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T00:14:45","slug":"wcw11041871","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/blog\/wcw11041871\/","title":{"rendered":"Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly Excerpts – Nov. 4, 1871"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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November 4, 1871<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Page 14]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WOMAN ITEMS.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Germany has nineteen female editors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Widowers never die of grief. Just let them alone! They’ll soon re-wive….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Money is said to be the sinews of war. It is equally the sinews of marriage. Without it no couple can carry the war on….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Beecher says: “I do not believe there’s such a thing as he-work and she-work. I never saw a woman do a man’s work handily, but I liked her all the better for it.”…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An instance of female heroism, which has recently been given in Ireland, recalls the story of Grace Darling. The brig Manly was wrecked on Drogbeda bar, in plain sight of the life-boatmen, who refused to go to their assistance in consequence of the violence of the gale. Six men were carried off the hull by the surf and drowned. At last a lady put off from shore in a small boat, and, at the risk of her own life, saved that of one of the men left on board the vessel….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A distinguished ex-Governor of Ohio, famous for story-telling, relates that on one occasion, while addressing a temperance meeting at Georgetown, District of Columbia and depicting the misery caused by indulging too frequently in the flowing bowl, his attention was attracted by the sobs of a disconsolate and seedy looking individual in the rear part of the room. On going to the person and interrogating him, he was told the usual tale of woe, among other sad incidents that during his career of vice, he had buried three wives. The Governor having buried a few wives of his own, sympathized with the inebriate, and consoled him as much as was in his power. Said he: “The Lord has indeed inflicted you.” The mourner sobbingly replied: “Yes, yes, he has,” and pausing a moment, and wiping his nose, he continued, “But I don’t think the Lord got much ahead of me, for as fast as he took one away, I took another.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Page 6]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE SOCIAL EVIL.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n

REMARKS OF MR. RIDDLE, TO THE MASS MEETING OF THE WOMAN’S CLUB, AT LINCOLN HALL, WASHINGTON
SEPT. 22, 1871<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NOTE.\u2014This slight performance is one of several short addresses to a large meeting. With the exception of the Morning Chronicle<\/i>, the Washington press unqualifiedly condemned it as indecent, injudicious and unfit for utterance.”<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ladies and Gentlemen: I am here because I was asked to be, and for the same reason I arise to address you. No reluctance from indifference to this subject controls me; but in the presence of this momentous question, I frankly say I don’t know what to do. When asked to speak of it, I don’t know what to say. The fact that I am permitted to discuss it at all to such a numerous and variously constituted assemblage as this, marks a most important change in the public temper in reference to it. Six weeks ago he would have been a bold man who should dare to appear before a mixed or unmixed crowd and venture upon its discussion; and the woman who has brought this thing to an issue is something more than a heroine. Knowing this thing, so daintily called, ‘the social evil,’ as greater than the sum of all other human evils, as reaching further and striking deeper, we must appear as not knowing it. A nod of the head, a distinct wave of the hand, is all the allusion that has been permitted to it. And now we are brought to face it, to struggle with it, directly and seriously, as best we can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is no new thing; if it was we might deal with it. It is as ancient as antiquity. It commenced with the first outbreak of man’s passion and woman’s folly; and is incident to every phase of human society, whether barbarous or semi-civilized. It stained man’s savage life, and curses his highest civilization. Old philosophy knew no remedy for it, and the principles of Christianity, as we practice and apply them, have not eradicated. What can be done with it? What shall be said of it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exact the ten commandments and your courts cannot enforce them; attach penalties to the mandates of the later scriptures, and give your police courts jurisdiction over them, and they remain as now unheeded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are things that cannot be dealt with by law, and he is wise who will not attempt it rashly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no names and no denunciation for the more guilty of either sex involved in this sin. I am willing to think that both are often the victims of unhealthy conditions of society, inherited weakness and passion, and of temptations strong as necessity . None can measure for none can know the degree of crime that attended a first fall. We only know that society has awarded unequal punishment to offenders at most of equal guilt. In the nature of things, we know that woman cannot be the chief criminal; and yet whatever may be the punishment adjudged her by our common judge, society supplements it with a final irrevocable doom, that all men and all women conspire to execute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A daughter goes down, and forever, in the whelming flood, to be no more named; a son, reeking and dripping, comes up out of it, to be received and welcomed. We wonder why this should be. The solution is easy. Woman left to the impulses of her nature, in her horror of such impurity, would banish both, guilty men as guilty women; men, more largely involved, make common cause\u2014they shield and shelter each other, and decree that woman shall receive all men alike, with little reference to morality. And as they make, they enforce the law, and woman submits. Men have not the hardihood to ask her to receive their less guilty paramours, and she does not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think, then, of this loss of woman. Men perish by accident, by the hand of murder, in deserts, go down in the liquid swirl of stormy seas; but their memory lives and is cherished. Even the sea shall give up its dead. But she who is lost in a great town, who perishes amidst the hands and helps, and in the broad glare of Christian day, and Christian churches, is left to sink and rot in the stews and slums of infamy\u2014places that men declare are necessary, and treat with ribaldry whoever dares reach a hand to pluck the fallen back\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Pluck up drowned honor by the hair.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The woman is fallen\u2014the man escapes, sore, leprous and diseased, to poison and blast the present and future generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all the courses of vice, none visits upon its votary such awful consequences as the race of sensual license. When once a man falls under the sway of this passion it subordinates all the elements of his nature to its purpose. Intellect, instinct, ambition, aspiration, physical energy and vitality are all corrupted and made its pimps and ministers. He lives but tor one purpose ; restraint, morality and religion are less than names. God vanishes from the heavens and his soul perishes within him. For him woman performs but one office. His brain is rotten, his imagination distempered, his heart dead, and he is but a breathing, diseased, physical mass, filled with the larv\u00e6 of every foul passion and appetite, from which swarm an obscene brood of vices and crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t say to me that woman, through any sin, can fall below man; and if there can remain in him elements that claim sympathy and toleration, how much more should we hopefully seek tor them in the person of his victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t care to dwell upon the causes of this evil; all that ever existed are now in full force, strong and vigorous in our stimulating modes of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This world of ours is a queer thing, and when it goes wrong it visits its sins on the most helpless, and often the least offending of its children ; and never dreams of mending its own ways; declares that it can’t in the very nature of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Men are born into it, to find all the homes and food and warm clothes already appropriated, nothing left for them ; and when the boy begs for education and food and clothes, the world tells him to work; and when he holds up ready hands, that is refused him ; and when in starvation he steals to live, this world sends him to the penitentiary as logically as can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the child girl raises her meek face and lifts weak hands for help and sustenance, and with mute tears appeals, she is thrust into the gutter; and when starved and broken she crawls to the brothel, her only shelter, the world sends an organized band of police “to raid,” as it is so sententiously called, her only retreat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some imprudent, not impure woman, becomes the theme of gossip; her name is lightly pitched from tongue to tongue, till she is certainly and surely forced into the path that goes to infamy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world dooms woman\u2014the whole sex\u2014to wifehood and motherhood, and if through no matter what perfidy of men she is betrayed to the last without the first, no angel can save her and mortals scarcely weep for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who can speak of the victims of seduction\u2014and they appear on both sides sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world wants churches and it builds them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also wants these numberless places of sin and it builds them, and men declare they are necessary. If it would be rid of them let it extinguish this want, and this generation shall not pass away, ladies, until all you labor for shall be fulfilled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what can we do? Who shall do it? Where shall we commence ? Who will help; who will give money and sympathy; who will dare to oppose?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is said that our municipal authorities have decreed that the haunts of this sin, the only refuge of these banned and exiled outlaws, shall on a given night be set upon by the armed police. I shrink from this. It used to be said by the apostles of slavery that spreading it did not strengthen, but only diffused it. I was never in favor of this diffusion of slavery, and I am opposed to the diffusion of this thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So cruel and cowardly does this “raiding” seem to me, that, were I an officer and received an order to set upon the miserable abodes of these helpless outcasts, and to break in upon them and seize and hurry them off to noisome station-houses, and then in the morning to parade them through the streets to the police court, and there present them in the presence of the ribald, blasphemous, reeking throng that crowd that stew, to receive justice\u2014as we call it\u2014I would resign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Regulate this thing; regulate it,” exclaim voices never heard in opposition to any wrong. Yes, regulate it; it needs it, and then regulate the regulators, mayhap. “License these places,” men say. No doubt a revenue could be raised from them, but what could be done with such money? We are pointed to St. Louis and told to copy the example she borrowed from Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, this is an awful phase of this dreadful subject, requiring a few direct words, that must be spoken even here. It has in it the bitterness of death and the mockery of the grave; and ribald scoffing may not compel silence, or squeamishness forbid utterance. Things unfit to be spoken of good are unfit to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 (….)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAN<\/strong><\/td>FEB<\/strong><\/td>MAR<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
January 20, 1872<\/a>
January 27, 1872<\/a><\/td>		February 3, 1872<\/a>
February 10, 1872<\/a>
February 17, 1872<\/a>
February 24, 1872<\/a><\/td>		March 2, 1872<\/a>
March 9, 1872<\/a>
March 16, 1872<\/a>
March 23, 1872<\/a>
March 30, 1872<\/a><\/td><\/tr>
APR<\/strong><\/td>MAY<\/strong><\/td>JUNE<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
April 6, 1872<\/a>
April 13, 1872<\/a>
April 20, 1872<\/a>
April 27, 1872<\/a><\/td>		May 4, 1872<\/a>
May 11, 1872<\/a>
May 18, 1872<\/a>
May 25, 1872<\/a><\/td>		June 1, 1872<\/a>
June 8, 1872<\/a>
June 15, 1872<\/a>
June 22, 1872<\/a>
June 24, 1871<\/a><\/td><\/tr>
JULY<\/strong><\/td>AUG<\/strong><\/td>SEPT<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
July 1, 1871<\/a>
July 2, 1870<\/a>
July 8, 1871<\/a>
July 15, 1871<\/a>
July 22, 1871<\/a>
July 29, 1871<\/a><\/td>		August 5, 1871<\/a>
August 12, 1871<\/a>
August 19, 1871<\/a>
August 26, 1871<\/a><\/td>		September 2, 1871<\/a>
September 9, 1871<\/a>
September 16, 1871<\/a>
September 23, 1871<\/a>
September 30, 1871<\/a><\/td><\/tr>
OCT<\/strong><\/td>NOV<\/strong><\/td>DEC<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
October 7, 1871<\/a>
October 14, 1871<\/a>
October 21, 1871<\/a>
October 28, 1871<\/a><\/td>		November 2, 1872<\/a>
November 4, 1871<\/a>
November 15, 1873<\/a>
November 18, 1871<\/a>
November 25, 1871<\/a><\/td>		December 2, 1871<\/a>
December 9, 1871<\/a>
December 16, 1871<\/a>
December 23, 1871<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin\u2019s Weekly<\/em> available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woodhull & Claflin\u2019s Weekly at IAPSOP<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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November 4, 1871 [Page 14] WOMAN ITEMS. Germany has nineteen female editors. Widowers never die of grief. Just let them alone! They’ll soon re-wive…. Money is said to be the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-woodhull-claflins-weekly"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1990,"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions\/1990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoria-woodhull.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}