If he committed a crime, it was the master who must sue or be
sued.
In many of the states there has been special legislation, giving to
married women the right to property inherited, or received by bequest,
or earned by the pursuit of any avocation outside of the home; also,
giving her the right to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such
separate property; but not a single state of this Union has ever secured
the wife in the enjoyment of her right to the joint ownership of the
joint earnings of the marriage copartnership. And since, in the nature
of things, the vast majority of married women never earn a dollar, by
work outside of their families, nor inherit a dollar from their fathers,
it follows that from the day of their marriage to the day of the death
of their husbands, not one of them ever has a dollar, except it shall
please her husband to _let_ her have it.
In some of the states, also, there have been laws passed giving to the
mother a joint right with the father in the guardianship of the
children. But twenty years ago, when our woman's rights movement
commenced, by the laws of the State of New York, and all the states, the
father had the sole custody and control of the children. No matter if he
were a brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the
mother's consent, to apprentice her sons to rumsellers, or her daughters
to brothel keepers.
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