64 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



worn-out looking women, who wanted to do something 

 a little outside of their homes, and were not permitted 

 to do it, simply because they were not permitted to 

 handle one cent without special permission. It is a 

 life of beggary and a life that no mother of children 

 ought to live, so let me say to you that if you want 

 good children and self-respecting wives, take your 

 property so that the husband and wife will be joint 

 owners, so that no matter what happens, your wife 

 will have a proper provision after your death. You all 

 know how Lucy Stone took in hand the matter of 

 righting the laws of Massachusetts on this subject. 

 We have laws in Illinois by which a married woman 

 can earn and own her own property; but that is only 

 within a few years, and that grew out of Mrs. Liver- 

 more's experience with a washerwoman, who for years 

 and years saved up her scanty earnings to put them 

 into a little piece of property ; and when she went to 

 draw the money out of the bank to pay for the prop- 

 erty, she found her drunken husband had been there 

 the night before and taken it. Mrs. Livermore said then : 

 " God helping me, I will never rest until that law is 

 changed," and she and some others went to Spring, 

 field, and that very session it was changed. 



My brothers, think over these things, and if you 

 haven't done what is right in this matter of the pocket- 

 book, you, who are such noble men, if you haven't done 

 right in this matter, think it over. I do not believe it 

 has been intentional, it has been carelessness ; the wife 

 is often so patient and tender and don't want to find 

 fault, and she don't want you to know that she feels as 

 if she is a beggar, but she does, and even from the very 

 best husband it is hard for a woman to ask for money, 

 money that she has earned in her way just as much as 



