It does not seem to occur to these wise people that the right to talk is
itself one of the chief rights in America, and the way to reach all the
others. To talk is to make a beginning, at any rate. To catch people with
your ideas is more than to contrive a rat-trap; and Isotta Nogarola,
carving thirty-six empty heads, was not working in so practical a fashion
as Mary Livermore when she instructs thirty-six hundred full ones.

It shows the good sense of the woman-suffrage agitators, that they have
decided to begin with talk. In the first place, talking is the most
lucrative of all professions in America; and therefore it is the duty of
American women to secure their share of it. Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble used
to say that she read Shakespeare in public "for her bread;" and when, after
melting all hearts by a course of farewell readings, she decided to begin
reading again, she said she was doing it "for her butter." So long as women
are often obliged to support themselves and their children, and perhaps
their husbands, by their own labor, they have no right to work cheaply,
unless driven to it. Anna Dickinson had no right to make fifteen dollars a
week by sewing, if, by stepping out of the ranks of needle-women into the
ranks of the talkers, she could make a hundred dollars a day. Theorize as
we may, the fact is that there is no kind of work in America which brings
such sure profits as public speaking. If women are unfitted for it, or if
they "know the value of peace and quietness," as the hand-organ man says,
and can afford to hold their tongues, let them do so. But if they have
tongues, and like to use them, they certainly ought to make some money by
the performance.

This is the utilitarian view. And when we bring in higher objects, it is
plain that the way to get anything in America is to talk about it. Silence
is golden, no doubt, and like other gold remains in the bank-vaults, and