I was born a mechanic, and made a barrel before I was ten years old. The cooper told my father, “Fanny made that barrel, and has done it quicker and better than any boy I have had after six months’ training.” My father looked at it and said, “What a pity that you were not born a boy so that you could be good for something. Run into the house, child, and go to knitting.”
ATTRIBUTION:
Frances D. Gage (1808–1884), U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, ch. 18, by Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and herself (1882).
Gage said this on May 10, 1867, at a national convention of the American Equal Rights Association.
