THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

541

She has some propaedeutical work before sharing the ballot-box. The money-mad men with outstretched, rake-like hands, who scamper into position of whatever nature, and who hope to scamper out again just grazing the portiere of the penitentiary, are so many villainous dynamite bombs in the good Ship of State that threaten to explode her. Does women see wherein she can help to avert the calamity? Does the thought occur to her that extravagance and vanity are the charges in these bombs? And does she entertain the thought that she has aided in charging them? That this desecration of our paradisical country is a reflection of her yieldance to the gorgeous serpents that woo her? Yes! Palatial mansions, regal toilets, Lucullus’ feasts and Dionysian pleasures are the tempters whispering to our Eves, and the Eves tasting first, make the Adams do likewise. Certainly neither luxury, nor aught contributing to refine­ment should be ignored. With every object created is also a corresponding thought in man, and when the affinity is attained, the object is unfolded into higher and higher degrees of usefulness and beauty; therefore there can never be any limitations to the production of what is called wealth; the earth is full of treasure and we only follow out the plan of a Divine beneficence in discovering, utilizing and enjoying it; but let “the means justify the end;” let “what happiness we justly call, subsist not in the good of one, but all. ”

There is not an hour of the day but some wail of woe from still-chained humanity pierces the American woman’s ears. She knows that industries are paralyzed, that idleness and want are generating anarchy, that the laborers stalk stolidly, flaunting pallid banners behind which Famine shrieks for bread, that the “ black bat, ” Desola­tion, is hovering over the land! She sees the handwriting on the wall, and knows there can be no delay. Before she claims her half of the ballot-box she will cope with the impending disaster.

“ Diseases, desperate grown by desperate appliance, are relieved, or not at all.” “ Similia similibus curantur will be the therapeutics she will practice. It is through the purse—the over-gorging of some and the evisceration of others—that this fair country has become sick, its once healthy, honest countenance scarcely recognizable in its present emaciation; and through the purse must it be cured. The remedy that the American woman proposes is indeed a desperate one. She is well aware that com­merce is the main pivot on which the civil world revolves, and that exchange with foreign nations is, in ,a degree, necessary to maintain it. She knows, too, that not­withstanding international courtesy, the Old World’s interest in the New World does not extend beyond the material advantage it can gain from her as a market and a dumping-ground. And the American woman feels justifiable in obeying the dictum, “self-preservation is the first law of nature.” She sees our ragged children, our despairing mothers, our hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked fathers sitting disconsolate by the silent mill, the mine, the manufactory. And whether it be the tariff, or whether it be the silver-purchase bill, or whether it be the monopolist, or whether it be the land-grabber, one thing can restore life and vigor to all, at least for the present, and that she proposes to do.

And this it is: That for the next three, four or five years, or as long as the tonic is required to get our country on its legs again, she will not buy for her house, for her person, for her cuisine, for her pleasure, or for any purpose except for sickness or education, any article that is not produced and manufactured in the United States. If the merchants must in consequence cease their importations, the gold will remain in our own land; and if exportations, in retaliation, cease, and stop the influx of gold, then let all the mines be worked and make up the deficiency; and if there be not enough gold, our silver coinage, under honest and discreet regulation, must be accorded its parity. Think of the resources that would have to be opened up to supply every­thing! Think of the hands that would be needed to do it, and to convert the raw materials into all their uses! Why are we dependent on the French bourse, the Eng­lish exchange, the Indian or Austrian monetary policy? Are we not a whole new world? Are we not sixty-five millions of people? But are we all fed, all clothed, and all housed as our colonial fathers planned we should be?