February 27–March 3, 1899

American writer and suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch ’78, gave a series of five lectures on “The Economic Position of Women.” Resident in England, Mrs. Blatch—the daughter of feminist pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with whom she and Susan B. Anthony collaborated on History of Woman Suffrage (1881)—conducted a statistical study of the working condition of rural English women which was submitted in 1893 as part of her work towards her Vassar masters degree.

“The first lecture,” reported The Vassar Miscellany, “on ‘Women in Politics’ was followed by a general consideration of the woman’s labor question. After stating the general economic laws which woman’s work follows and the reasons for their low wages, Mrs. Blatch traced the evolution of modern organized labor from the unspecialized labor of the primitive worker, and in her concluding lecture laid much emphasis upon the need of the same, general manual education for women as well as for men.”

Harriot Stanton Blatch lectured again at Vassar in January 1902 on “Handicrafts of England,” emphasizing the social and physical benefits of hand work and amateur industries.