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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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to own their own property and control their own property, and a few things of that sort. The idea that they should vote was just one of a number of them, but of course it was the strongest because it was specific and it was assumed that many of the other rights of women would follow rather naturally upon their being recognized as first class citizens as a right to vote.

These ideas didn't strike me until these Chicago and Philadelphia days of mine. I had been brought up in a group where the women were very well-treated, very well-advantaged and where they had their own property. I don't know what the laws were in Massachusetts, but I never heard of any woman in Massachusetts not being able to control her own property. If her father left her $10,000, it was hers and not her husband's. At this moment I can't recall the law, but certainly it didn't seem peculiar to them that a woman should control her own property. Of course there are an awful lot of blue-stockings all over Massachusetts and all over New England. The blue-stockings were at least two generations ahead of me.

The higher education of women, while not universal, was pretty common - certainly not unusual - among New England families where the men of the family were highly educated. I was never asked if I wanted to go to college. I was sent. It was just taken for granted. My mother was a graduate of





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