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420 & ••••••••• 197 • ECS to the Editor, New York EVENING POST 1 New York, January 22 [1902]. To the Editor of the Evening Post, Sir: A class of tolerably-well-educated college graduates, among some of our leading men in Church and State, have grown perfectly hysterical on the question of sex, so afraid are they that the feminine element in humanity is about to be wholly obliterated; that woman, through higher education, social freedom, political equality, industrial liberty, and just and equal laws, will become exactly like man; that the difference in sex will be lost altogether, and that in woman we shall simply have a coarser, rougher, ruder, and more war-like kind of man. Every step in woman’s emancipation from slavery to freedom is, in their minds,fraught with innumerable dangers to civilization.I will not mention the names of any of these hysterical writers, because by and by, when they come to see, as they must in the near future, the weakness and absurdity of their present position, they will be grateful for the omission. I would urge these illogical thinkers to a patient consideration of nature ’s immutable laws, and the great fact that sex pervades every department of vegetable,mineral,and animal life; that there has been no cessation, variableness, or shadow of turning in this law from the dawn of creation to the present hour; through all the terrible convulsions of nature, earthquakes , cyclones, hurricanes, tidal-waves, volcanic eruptions, the intense cold of winter, the intense heat of summer, through thunder, lightning, and floods, the male and female elements in every rock and tree and flower, in every animal, fish, and bird, have preserved their integrity. The feminine element has been as perfectly maintained in the fragrant little violet and sweet-scented rose as has the masculine element in the mighty oaks and giant trees in the groves of California; the little wintergreen-berry blooms and buds and blossoms mid wintry winds and ice and snow,as in the balmy month of June, and thus vindicates her sex from year to year. In spite of all convulsions of nature, the process of creation and recreation goes on everywhere, and the great elements of male and female are 22 january 1902 ^ 421 preserved intact; there is no more reason to fear the annihilation of the masculine and feminine elements as two distinct forces,than there is to fear the annihilation of the centripetal and centrifugal forces,the law of gravitation, of attraction and repulsion, the positive and negative electricity. If these doubting Thomases ever are able to conjure up one monster, we shall have millions of tender-hearted mothers, affectionate wives, sisters, and daughters still left, to adorn the social world, as the feminine flowers, birds, and gentle animals do their phase of existence. Scientists suffer no anxieties in these directions. They do not warn the florists to cease cultivating double roses, lest they should turn into cabbages, or the smaller fruits, lest they should turn into pumpkins. However much the rose may be increased in size, varied in color, and intensified in fragrance, it will be a rose still. The co-education of the sexes,the study of mathematics,abstruse sciences,and languages, medicine, and theology, and skill in the industries, will have no more influence in changing girls into boys and women into men than have these improvements in vegetable life in changing the characters of fruits and flowers. And sex is as perfectly maintained in both cases. U Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Y New York Evening Post, 1 February 1902. 1. That is,Horace White.Several other journals published this essay under the title “Hysterical Gentlemen.” ••••••••• 198 • ECS to Ida Husted Harper 250 West 94th St [New York] Jan 26—1902 Dear Friend, Every time I have read one of your articles, I have said, these should be put in a permanent form.To-day this feeling is so strong that I am impelled to conjure you to do this work the moment that you escape from Susan’s grip! You have touched every vital point of our movement, and we cannot afford to lose one of your articles in the “Sun” 1 Y L incomplete, in hand of E. L. White, Ida Harper Woman Suffrage Scrapbook 1, Rare Books, DLC. 1. “The Cause of Woman,” New York Sun, 26 January 1902. 22 january 1902 ...

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