is powerless so long as she eats the bread of dependence.  Were man today dependent upon woman for his subsistence, I have no doubt he would very soon find himself compelled to square his life to an entirely new code, not a whit less severe than that to which he now holds her.  In moral rectitude, we would not have woman less but man more.

It is to put an end to such heresies as the following, from the Rochester Democrat, that all women should most earnestly labor.  That paper begs us not to forget, “that what may be pardonable in a man, speaking of evils generally, may and perhaps ought to be unpardonable in one of the presumably better sex; because there can not and must not be perfect equality between men and women when the disposition to do wrong is under discussion.  Women are permitted to be as much better than men as they choose; but there ought to be no law, on or oft the statute books, recognizing their social and political right to be worse or even as bad as men; and it is shameful that intelligent women should claim such a right, or even dare to mention it at all.”  No human being or class of human beings would venture to talk thus to equals.  It is only because women are dependent on men that such cowardly impudence can be dished out to them day after day by puny legislators and editors, themselves often reeking in social corruption which should banish them forever from the presence of womanhood.  Yours for an even-handed scale in morals as well as politics, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

[Footnote 57:  The committee reported January 30, 1871, John A. Bingham, of Ohio, chairman.  The minority report, signed by Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, and William Loughridge, of Iowa, is perhaps the strongest and most exhaustive argument ever written on woman’s right to vote under the Constitution.  It is given in full in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol.  II, p. 464.]

CHAPTER XXIII.

FIRST TRIP TO THE PACIFIC COAST.

1871.

At the close of the New York convention Miss Anthony, Rev. Olympia Brown and Josephine S. Griffing went with Mrs. Hooker to Hartford for a short visit, which it may be imagined was one protracted “business session.”  Then Miss Anthony hastened to her own home to prepare for a long journey, as she and Mrs. Stanton had decided to make a lecture tour through California.  She left Rochester the last day of May, and met Mrs. Stanton in Chicago where a reception was given them by the suffrage club, in its elegant new headquarters.  They spoke in a number of cities en route and attended numerous handsome receptions held in their honor.  At Denver they were entertained by Governor and Mrs. McCook.  Their audiences were large and enthusiastic, the press respectful and often cordial and appreciative.[58] At Laramie City they were accompanied to the station by a hundred women whom Mrs. Stanton addressed from the platform.  A letter written by Miss Anthony during the journey contains these beautiful paragraphs: