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The Past and Future of the Ladies’ Liberal League63 1895–96 I have assumed a serious and severe of‹ce that of historian and prophet. But, pardon me, I intend to be neither serious nor severe; for this is an occasion rather for exchanging greetings and putting ourselves in good humor than being serious, and my talk will be somewhat governed thereby. Our history is short, but, to borrow a ponderous phrase of Renan’s “of interest to the philosophic mind.”64 At last [least] it ought to be; if it is not so much the worse for the philosophic mind. We were born in February 1892, and like the celebrated author of Innocents Abroad,65 we ran alone ten minutes after we were born,—only he had the misfortune to get tangled up in his long clothes, while we, being the child of the New Woman and the New Man, (comparatively new I mean, not of the “bloomer”66 yet, but considerably outside orthodox traditions) we were never swaddled in long clothes, but kicked freely and healthily from the beginning. I spoke with levity, but if we had dubbed ourselves the Kicking Society, in all seriousness it would not have been amiss. The ‹rst act of our life was to kick against an unjust decree of our parents, and we have un›inchingly stood for the kicking principle ever since. Now, if the word kicking is in bad repute with you, substitute non-submission, insubordination, rebellion, revolt, revolution, whatever 260 63. See pp. 87–90. Source: The Rebel 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 (Oct. 20 and Nov. 20, 1895, Jan. 1896). 64. What Renan actually says is that, for the philosophic mind, there are only three histories of primary interest: Greek, Jewish, and Roman (11). De Cleyre is adding the Ladies Liberal League to this list. 65. Mark Twain, who was on the fringes, at least, of freethought, both as an admiring reader of such “in‹dels” as Robert Ingersoll and as a writer of joking accounts of Bible stories and satires on Christianity, missionaries, and imperialism. 66. Baggy predecessor of modern pants for women, associated with feminist dress reform in de Cleyre’s day and named for the woman who did most to popularize it, Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818–1894). name you please which expresses non-acquiescence to injustice. We have done this because we love liberty and hate authority, and the sentiment is bound to ‹nd vent somehow, “as the sap climbs upward to the ›ower,” to make use of an illustration from Kropotkine. How then, some stranger will inquire, does it happen that you, standing for so bold a principle, have such an–innocuous name,—Ladies’ Liberal League? Sirs, though our parents were reformers, men and women grown gray in a good cause, we beg you to remember that they are gray, and to look leniently on their foibles. We are the child of the Friendship Liberal League, and that worthy society, grand and courageous as it has been and still is, and no one enjoys paying so deserved a tribute better than I, has yet approached that mellowness of age when it has a tendency to smoothness and respectability. Respectability is a sort of secular saint to be considered in the matter of baptisms, and “Ladies” is a very respectable word. Besides our dear parents, as is often the case with parents , conceived us quite otherwise, than as we turned out to be. They had an idea of forming a sort of machine wherethrough the working force of the women of the Friendship League could be brought to bear upon the Liberal Hall Association plan; in other words we were to be a Ladies Aid, after the model of the church,67 and make money after the manner of women, by fairs, sociables, picnics, excursions, et cetera. We were to smile men into ticket-buying, and shame them into candy purchase, and wheedle them into ice-cream. I presume that bedquilts done up gorgeously with silks and raf›ed at ten cents a ticket may have been distantly in view. I could not say authoritatively; I did not join the society until after the girls had decided they were born for other purposes. How came it about? Well, the trouble lay right here: our parents assumed that the child was wise enough to earn the money, the best way it could, but not wise enough to control it after it was earned; the child...

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