As society is constructed at present, it must look to legislation to produce forms and to enforce order through them, that society may observe in their operations the better results to them.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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Public opinion is a force capable of many things, but is powerless to redress grievances or to institute the new and better for the old and decayed, unless it is directed by the formula of law.
All the energies of labor reform, then, should be directed to the main point, from which benefit to itself must spring.
It should waste no time nor strength upon the minor issues, but concentrate all upon the one strategic point.
Instead, it should direct all its capacities to substitute a new and better foundation, upon which a new and better superstructure of society can be reared.
Legislation is the primary constructive point from which better conditions must emanate.
The laboring classes, then, must see to it that they are properly represented in legislation.
Nor should they be deceived into the support of any who, by bluster and tongue, loudly proclaim themselves the champions of labor, without the understanding of the first principles that control the relations of labor to capital.
Let it be set down, once for all time, that he who denounces capital as the oppressor is not the representative labor should choose to right its wrongs.
In every community there are some who think a great deal and say little; these, as a general thing, are the antipodes of those who say a great deal and think little.
Though the last are usually found floating about the surface of society, it is to the first, society must look for that wisdom, judgment and executive ability that shall guide it to the desired harbor.
Charity, with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a multitude of sins.