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CHAPTER XXX.

FEMALE JOURNALISTS.

THE LADIES' MAGAZINE-THE LOWELL OFFERING.-EARLY FEMALE PERIODICAL WRITErs.-Sarah JOSEPHA HALE.—THE WOMAN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT. THE REVOLUTION.-The Sorosis.-WOMAN'S JOURNAL.-WOODHULL & CLAFLIN'S WEEKLY.-THE TRUE WOMAN.-FREE LOVE.-FEMALE SUFFRAGE-THE TROUBLES OF THE Reformers.

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THE first daily newspaper printed in the English language was published by a woman. Elizabeth Mallet began the publication of the Daily Courant in London in March, 1702, and it was issued to "spare the public at least half the impertinences which the ordinary papers contain." But the Courant was not intended as a woman's paper.

Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale was probably the first to establish a magazine in this country wholly devoted to the tastes and interests of women. It was not a newspaper in any sense. It was a magazine. It can scarcely, therefore, come within the scope of a compilation like this. But, as Mrs. Hale was the first of female periodical writers, it is fair to begin with her enterprise. In 1827, in connection with a Boston publisher, she established the Ladies' Magazine in that city. It was afterwards united with Godey's Lady's Book of Philadelphia, of which Mrs. Hale became the editor, and is still the editor in 1872, although in her 85th year, 45 of which have been devoted to that periodical. Mrs. Hale has, therefore, long been before the public. She wrote Northwood, Woman's Record, and Household Receipt-books. The publication of the Ladies' Magazine led to others, such as the Ladies' Companion, issued in New York by W. W. Snowden, Graham's Magazine, in Philadelphia, by C. R. Graham, the Artist, Peterson's Magazine, the Gem, the Passion Flower, by the accomplished daughters of Captain Samuel G. Reid, and numerous others. These were illustrated with steel and colored engravings and fashion plates, some of which were very creditably executed. This art, indeed, received its first important impulse in America from these publications. Since then, however, our national banking institutions and the national government have given it an impulse beyond all others in furnishing choice historical engravings, some of the finest specimens the world has ever seen, for millions of greenbacks and National Bank bills. But the first impulse and encouragement came from these magazines.

The Lowell Offering, originating with the factory girls of Lowell in 1840, was another development of female writers in the United States in periodical literature. It was filled with the productions of factory girls or "female operatives" exclusively. This was before the foreign element crowded the native talent out of the mills at Lowell and elsewhere. Madame Demorest's Magazine, on the plan of le Mode, le Follet, and the Bazar, was established several years ago in New York, and is almost entirely absorbed with the fashions for ladies at home and abroad, with handsome colored plates and engravings. But, as we have said, these were not strictly newspapers some gave the latest news of the fashions; they were, however, literary and fashionable publications of the light, gossamer order; they led ultimately, however, to newspapers and periodicals more devoted to the wants, desires, interests, dreams, eccentricities, and æsthetics generally of women here and around the world.

The more modern class of publications for women are above fashion, above the small-talk of the ballroom, or the gossip and envy of the reception-rooms of the modistes. Some of these papers are edited by strong-minded women, seeking a higher sphere for female labor, and the right of women to vote, to buy and sell stocks in Wall Street, to fulminate from the pulpit, to visit sick-rooms as physicians as well as nurses, to a right to surrender their seats in railway cars to tired old gentlemen, to labor on farms, in digging canals, in grading railroad beds, in running locomotives, to serve in the army and navy, in Congress, on school committees, to run with the fire-engines, to be newspaper carriers, governors of states, policemen, diplomats, hod-carriers, ward politicians, and drivers of garbagecarts. There is now the Woman's Journal and the Revolution to urge these social changes on the world. They have taken the place of the old lecturers, and talk to the millions. They are active and persistent workers, full of poetry and poverty, boldness and beauty, independence and impudence, pouts and persuasiveness, in pushing their plan of reform before the monster public.

Women, under peculiar circumstances, have managed newspapers long before our day. Mrs. Franklin, for instance, carried on the Newport Mercury for a while in the middle of the last century, and Mrs. Holt managed the New York Gazette some time after the death of her husband. When Lynde M. Walter, of the Boston Transcript, departed this life in 1842, his sister, Miss Cornelia M. Walter, supplied his place as editor of that paper. Mrs. M. Elizabeth Green has managed the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot since the death of her husband. Miss Piney W. Forsythe succeeded her father as proprietor and editor of the Liberty (Miss.) Advocate in 1868. She is assisted by two sisters who were brought up as practical printers. She lately

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declined to attend a convention of Mississippi editors for fear her male contemporaries would stare at her. Mrs. Jane G. Swishelm, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, one of the oldest of female journalists, is still attached to a newspaper in that smoky place, and has made no little noise in the world; and is not Fanny Wright known to fame as a political newspaper writer and lecturer in New York, with the Tammany Hall leaders of 1829-'30-'31? Who has forgotten Mrs. Bloomer? Over the world, wherever short petticoats were worn by one sex and admired by the other, her name is enshrined; and that agreeable and affable Polish woman, Madame Ernestine Rose, became well known several years ago as a spirited contributor to the Press.

There are now quite a number of female managers and publishers of newspapers in the United States. They do not push themselves forward or make themselves very conspicuous in their profession. They are not propagandists; they are simply getting a living, and making what money they can without ostentation. Iowa has three lady editors: Mrs. Mary L. Morey, of the Jefferson Era, Mrs. Mary Hartshorn, of the Corydon Monitor, and Mrs. Mary Reed, of the Wright County Register. But, apart from these, the modern female journalists are smart and demonstrative. They start for the amelioration of woman. All else must subserve that point. Woman is a wretched slave, with nothing to wear. The Revolution was established for her emancipation, and edited, for some time, by Susan B. Anthony. In May, 1870, she disposed of her interest to Laura C. Bullard, of Brooklyn, who then became its editor. The paper is owned in shares. Theodore Tilton, of the Golden Age, it is said, is one of the shareholders. The Revolution has been the leading organ of the Sorosis, or Woman's Rights Party, from its inception. Some idea of the scope of its principles and doctrines may be gathered from the following neatly-worded extract from that paper:

Multitudes of our noblest girls are perishing for something to do. The hope of marriage, all we offer girls, is not enough to feed an immortal mind; and if that goal is never reached, what then? The more fire and genius a girl has, with no outlets for her powers, the more complete is her misery when all these forces are turned back upon herself. The pent-up fires, that might have glowed with living words of eloquence in courts of justice, in the pulpit, or on the stage, are to-day consuming their victims in idiot and insane asylums, in domestic discontent and disgust, in peevish wailings about, in the vaín pursuit of pleasure and fashion, longing for that peace that is found only in action.

Another paper was issued in New York in 1869 by the female bankers and brokers of Broad Street. It is called Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly. It was a sixteen-page paper, and dealt in finance and fashion, stock-jobbing and strong-minded women, sporting and sorosis, politics and president-making, supporting a woman even for the executive mansion. This periodical is edited by Victoria C.

Woodhull and Tennie C. Claflin, two sisters who seem capable of accomplishing what they undertake. the motto of these editors in crinoline.

"Upward and Onward" is Their course and comments

on men and corporations are particularly peculiarly bold.

All that glitters is not any better gold with the female than with the male journalists and reformers of this prosperous country. There are heart-burnings and troubles even among those who are thus seeking the amelioration of their sex and race. It is probable, however, that rascal man is at the bottom of an occasional unpleasantness with these reformers. Indeed, the New York Sun, a paper constantly and actively engaged in social excavations, in ventilating one of these troubles in 1869, published the following paragraph:

It was stated in the Revolution not long ago, that after a formal invitation had been extended to Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton to attend the recent Woman's Rights Convention in Boston, the invitation was as formally withdrawn. This excited surprise with the public, who regard Mrs. Stanton as the most conspicuous lady identified with the so-called women's cause. We are informed that the reason for this withdrawal was the following rather amusing state of facts:

Mrs. Stanton, through the columns of the Revolution, has taken occasion now and then to point her sharp pen at Mr. Wendell Phillips's inconsistency in confining his advocacy of universal suffrage exclusively to masculine negroes, seemingly overlooking the claims of white women to a place on his broad platform. Taking umbrage at this, Mr. Phillips declared that he would not attend the Boston Convention if Mrs. Stanton did. So the committee recalled their invitation to her. Just at this juncture came another hitch in the proceedings. Strange to say, a feud has for some time existed between Mr. Phillips and Mr. William Lloyd Garrison; and Garrison declared that he would not attend the Convention if Phillips did. The upshot of this phase of the affair was, that Phillips fell to the rear and Garrison came to the front, and, in company with Senator Wilson, played a leading part in the assemblage.

We hope there is some mistake about this. If there is not, we would say to these eminent reformers, in the language of a distinguished public character, “Let us have peace."

Still later, in May, 1871, there was more discord among these organs in developing their peculiar views. Stephen Pearl Andrews, in Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which is the organ of the free lovers, made the annexed statement:

The Steinway Hall Convention-the Boston wing of the movement-felt called upon to hedge against the imputation of meaning just what many of the women sitting, then and there, on the platform, do really mean and intend, and what the logic of the whole movement really means, and resolved against free love, confessing surely, negatively, that that is now the issue, since the suffrage question is disposed of. The Apollo Hall Convention-the more enterprising and progressive, the more logical and consistent wing of the movement-planted itself, on the contrary, boldly and unhesitatingly upon the ground of absolute emancipation"the right of private judgment in matters of conscience" ultimated in morals. The resolutions offered by Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, the President of the meeting, cover the whole ground, go the whole length, and are as conclusive on the subject as a demonstration of Euclid. They will bear continued study as an epitomized ethical code, and will shine brighter and brighter the more they are rubbed.

This large and enthusiastic woman's meeting has, then, put the movement on a new basis. It has propounded three new, and startling, and pregnant propositions:

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First: That it is no longer the suffrage question, but the social question entire, and the complete social enfranchisement of the sexes, which are to be discussed and vindicated on this platform.

Second: That a new government, adapted to the wants of the whole world, but continuing for the present in America, has to be inaugurated, and may be requisite at a very early day, to complete the political revolution in behalf of woman's rights.

Third: That from now, henceforth, the inquisitional impertinence of an investigation in the personal characters of women who are able and willing to co-operate in the movement, an investigation to which men are not called upon to submit, shall be completely and definitely set aside and ended.

T.W. Higginson, in the Woman's Journal, the organ of woman's suffrage, spoke on that subject in the following manner:

Our strength thus far has been in the weak logic of our opponents. But men do not adopt a change merely because there is nothing to be said against it; there must be good reasons for it. Those reasons will be mainly determined, at last, by the instincts and preferences of sensible and high-minded women. It is useless to overlook the fact that the overwhelming majority, even of such women, are still indifferent or opposed. It is harder to reach them than to reach men, but they must be reached. There is no other way to make substantial progress. Mere denunciation, and ridicule, and childish threats will never do it. I have no doubt that a time will come when women will vote, equally with men, in all the states of this Union. But it is certain that it will not be done in 60 days, and I should be glad to have some guarantee that it will be done in sixty years. Facts are abundant, so are arguments; the want is of something less easy to supply. Reason as we may, the community will predict the results of our agitation from its tone; and every thing that lowers the tone will perceptibly postpone the results.

Messrs. Andrews and Higginson, it thus appears, are the male attaches to this great movement of the female revolutionary party. Other men are interested in its progress. The active spirits in the contemplated reform in our social system begin to suspect some of their male co-operators, and seem to think that the politicians are endeavoring to use the women in the accomplishment of some of their schemes. Man is a selfish being. The Revolution is very emphatic on this point. There is evidently danger of a counter revolution-the Communists in crinoline against the Versaillists. This is the latest manifesto of the Revolution:

In spite of resolutions recently passed at Apollo Hall, we are convinced that the mass of the good, earnest women of the country will only allow themselves to rank as followers of those who, by purity of life, nobility of purpose, and elevation of character, have won their right to wield the sceptre of an exalted and conspicuous station. Our reform has heretofore been led by noble captains, who gravitated to the positions they held through force of intellect and moral worth. A nobler band of women never trod the earth, and it is in vain now to ask those who have been educated in the school of the past to swear allegiance to a different order of leaders in the present. They have pinned their faith to women who have every requisite to enable them to speak with authority, and without fuss, noise, or tumult, they will, we believe, quietly refuse to lower their standard of leadership or muddle their ideas of right.

The true growth of this reform must be in the hearts and minds of good and honest people. We can not afford to sacrifice one iota of integrity. The eternal law of justice is the eternal law of rectitude. No matter how often the ark of our faith is carried into the wilderness, we believe it will always return to the one straight path. The devout workers, in a religious spirit, look to this reform for the regeneration of society; they believe the moral forces women will bring into