I do not want to be covetous, but I think I speak the minds of many a wife and mother when I say I would willingly work as hard as possible all day and all night, if I might be sure of a small profit, but have worked hard for twenty-five years and have never known what it was to receive a financial compensation and to have what was really my own.
ATTRIBUTION:
Emma Watrous, U.S. inventor. As quoted in Feminine Ingenuity, ch. 8, by Anne L. MacDonald (1992).
Written in 1891 in a letter to Woman Inventor. The holder of two patents, Watrous was frustrated by her inability to exploit their commercial potential.
