women of real influence in America?  They are the schoolteachers, through whose hands each successive American generation has to pass; they are those wives of public men who share their husbands’ labor, and help mould their work; they are those women who, through their personal eloquence or through the press, are distinctly influencing the American people in its growth.  The influence of such women is felt for good or for evil in every page they print, every newspaper column they fill:  the individual women may be unworthy their posts, but it is they who have got hold of the lever, and gone the right way to work.  As American society is constituted, the largest “social success” that can be attained here is trivial and local; and you have to “make believe very hard,” like that other imaginary Marchioness, to find in it any career worth mentioning.  That is the foam, but these other women are dealing with the main currents.

IN SOCIETY

One sometimes hears from some lady the remark that very few people “in society” believe in any movement to enlarge the rights or duties of women.  In a community of more marked social gradations than our own, this assertion, if true, might be very important; and even here it is worth considering, because it leads the way to a little social philosophy.  Let us, for the sake of argument, begin by accepting the assumption that there is an inner circle, at least in our large cities, which claims to be “society,” par excellence.  What relation has this favored circle, if favored it be, to any movement relating to women?

It has, to begin with, the same relation that “society” has to every movement of reform.  The proportion of smiles and frowns bestowed from this quarter upon the woman-suffrage movement, for instance, is about that formerly bestowed upon the anti-slavery agitation:  I see no great difference.  In Boston, for example, the names contributed by “society” to the woman-suffrage festivals are about as numerous as those which used to be contributed to the anti-slavery bazaars; no more, no less.  Indeed, they are very often the same names; and it has been curious to see, for nearly fifty years, how radical tendencies have predominated in some of the well-known Boston families, and conservative tendencies in others.

The traits of blood seem to outlast successive series of special reforms.  Be this as it may, it is safe to assume, that, as the anti-slavery movement prevailed with only a moderate amount of sanction from “our best society,” the woman-suffrage agitation, which has at least an equal amount, has no reason to be discouraged.