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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 35.
poor a way of putting it, but we will ask who are these who are thus forgotten? Are they so unworthy that their brave deeds may not entitle them to recognition? Certainly not! We ask that honor be done, not to the foolish and undeserving, but to the mothers of the race.
But turning from the scenes of the past, let us look forward to the swiftly coming time of our emancipation. The forgetfulness of the past is rapidly giving way to the acknowledgments of the present. Already government has honored women by equality of position in the great World’s Fair, and the time approaches rapidly when we shall have complete enfranchisement. To recall again the memory of the Pilgrim mothers, we find the contrast between woman’s position today and hers two hundred and seventy-two years ago, as great as that between the comforts and luxuries we enjoy and the hardships that the pioneers endured. Where they had cold and darkness and wretched habitations, we have warmth and light and the palaces of our great cities. Where our ancestors had oppression and subordination, we have opportunity and almost equality. The end is nearly in sight, and the time will surely come when the deeds and the achievements of the foremothers will be applauded with those of the forefathers, and the daughters and the sons of the Pilgrims will sit side by side in their councils and at their feasts.
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