About two hundred people assembled for the supper, and entering the hall, Susan found it festooned with cedar and red flannel and to her amazement saw letters in evergreen on one of the walls, spelling out Susan B. Anthony.
"I hardly knew how to conduct myself amidst so much kindly regard,"[27] she confided to her family.
She had carefully written out her speech and had sewn the pages together in a blue cover. Now in a clear serious voice, she read its formal flowery sentences telling of the weekly meetings of "this now despised little band" which had awakened women to the great need of reform.
"It is generally conceded," she declared, "that our sex fashions the social and moral state of society. We do not assume that females possess unbounded power in abolishing the evil customs of the day; but we do believe that were they en masse to discontinue the use of wine and brandy as beverages at both their public and private parties, not one of the opposite sex, who has any claim to the title of gentleman, would so insult them as to come into their presence after having quaffed of that foul destroyer of all true delicacy and refinement.... Ladies! There is no neutral position for us to assume...."[28]
The next day the village buzzed with talk of the meeting; only a few criticized Susan for speaking in public, and almost all agreed that she was the smartest woman in Canajoharie.
While she was busy with her temperance work, there were stirrings among women in other parts of New York State in the spring and early summer of 1848. Through the efforts of a few women who circulated petitions and the influence of wealthy men who saw irresponsible sons-in-law taking over the property they wanted their daughters to own, a Married Women's Property Law passed the legislature; this made it possible for a married woman to hold real estate in her own name. Heretofore all property owned by a woman at marriage and all received by gift or inheritance had at once become her husband's and he had had the right to sell it or will it away without her consent and to collect the rents or the income. The new law was welcomed in the Anthony household, for now Lucy Anthony's inheritance, which had bought the Rochester farm, could at last be put in her own name and need no longer be held for her by her brother.