their train; then the Fifth Avenue Union Committee affair, which seems not less likely to be under Republican man-power.  With Mrs. Stanton’s utter refusal to stand at the helm of the National, and our merging it into the Union Society, and with my transferring The Revolution to the new company—­we, E.C.S. and S.B.A., have let slip from our hands all control of organizations and newspapers; thus leaving them, I fear, to drift together into the management of mere politicians.  All are lulled into the strictest propriety of expression, according to the gospel of St. Republican.  And unless that saint shall enact some new and more blasphemous law against woman, which shall wake our confiding sisterhood into a sense of their befoolment, you will neither see nor hear a word from suffrage society or paper which will be in the slightest out of line with the plan and policy of the dominant party.  Nothing less atrocious to woman than was the Fugitive Slave Law to the negro, can possibly sting the women of this country into a knowledge of their real subserviency, and out of their sickening sycophancy to the Republican politicians associated with them.

So while I do not pray for anybody or any party to commit outrages, still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a self-respect which will compel them to see the abject degradation of their present position; which will force them to break their yoke of bondage, and give them faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their allegiance to woman first; which will enable them to see that man can no more feel, speak or act for woman than could the old slaveholder for his slave.  The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it.  O, to compel them to see and feel, and to give them the courage and conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they face the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!

Not another woman possessed this strong grasp of the whole situation, this deep comprehension of the abject condition of women, the more hopeless because of their own failure to feel or resent it.

During the summer Miss Anthony attended the National Labor Congress in Philadelphia.  A great strike of bookbinders had been in progress in New York and she had advised the women to take the vacant places.  They were denied admission to all labor unions and their only chance of securing work was when the men and their employers disagreed.  This gave a pretext for those who were opposed to a representation of women in labor conventions, and a bitter fight was made upon accepting her as a delegate.  Charges of every description were preferred against her which she refuted in a spirited manner, but her credentials were finally rejected.  The newspapers took up the fight on both sides, the opposition to Miss Anthony being led by the New York Star, always abusive where the question of woman’s rights was concerned.  During this controversy the Utica Herald contained a disgraceful editorial, saying: