WELCOME July 13, 1998 Issue

To Our Readers

Russ Gerber

What Do Rugs, machine tools, yarn, automotive parts, and hosiery have in common? A place. They are some of the products that have come out of a small western New York town known as Seneca Falls.

But most people who visit the community remember Seneca Falls as the place where the women's rights movement began in the United States a century and a half ago. That movement grew out of the limitations and frustrations felt by Elizabeth Caby Stanton and a handful of other local women.

At one point, Mrs. Stanton would write of her feelings after moving with her husband and three children from Boston where she had led an active and stimulating life. "I suffered with mental hunger," she said, "which, like an empty stomach, is very depressing." Mrs. Stanton saw a similar kind of limitation reaching into other aspects of women's Lives—Social, legal, and religious. So she and other women in the area resolved to take action. In July of 1848, the first Women's Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls "to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman." Over 300 women and men attended.

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