14" ii~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~r1
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
13
them; even as there are countless masculine minds who still interpret governments and religions in masculine tongues.
Doubtless it has occurred to many of the thoughtful that humanity itself will eventually solve this stupendous racial and sociological question that women have dared to raise-this question of the equality of the sexes. Aye, humanity must settle it; but there will be no compromise; it must be settled by a natural, an absolute equation.
It has not been so many years since women, seeking admission to the university at Oxford, were denounced as making an effort to defeat Divine Providence and Holy Scripture-to unsex themselves. To-day there are but few university doors closed upon them; but mark the mental reservation, the note of foreboding that mars the beauty of man's growing graciousness. Education means emancipation; it means that women are becoming a formidable factor in intellectual, industrial, and economic conditions by reason of this mental growth, and herein are the tokens of apprehension and unrest. The world's work is held out to them; but again a note of alarm is sounded from the watchtower-they are displacing man, the legitimate wage-earner; they are complicating economic problems by receiving less hire for their labor, since they must live; they are threatening the stability of social institutions, the family, and the home; again are they forging fetters for themselves, and from "subordinates and inferiors;" they are become, by the cruel exactions of physical need, " man's enemy and rival."
How we hug these soulless creeds to our bosoms! What a cloak we make of conservatism and religion!
But this question of labor and monopoly-these industrial revolutions, political, social, are the courier avant of a greater revolution than the world yet has known. It requires no prophetic eye to see that mind is gaining ascendency over things of baser mold; that with our enlarged conceptions of the dignity and strength of the human intelligence we are equalizing surely as sexes, we are blending forces in the battles to be fought; we will yet share the glories of victory.
What is the basic principle of this revolution that each succeeding day foreshadows with increased intensity? The recognition of women, not merely as "daughters of men," but as created and equal intelligences in the harmony of nature. It has been a painful, a tedious journey. Every step has been tracked with blood; but withal it has been a passage cheered by the consciousness of right, sustained by that faith that sees in truth the ultimatum of the soul's best desires.
Many of the harsh and tyrannical conditions that governed the lives of women have been obliterated-vastly many; but the spirit of the law by which they are bound is not yet thoroughly subdued.
The battles that have been fought since 1797, when Charles Fox said, "It has never been suggested, in all the theories and projects of the most absurd speculation, that it would be advisable to extend the elective franchise to the female sex" the battles waged and won since then have been stupendous. Then, her humanity was questioned; now, her spiritual and i.oral force is the corner stone of civilization. Then, individualism, and masculine individualism, was a science; to-day, socialism is a religion. This is the true significance of the peace congresses, of the triumphs of arbitration, of the demand for an equitable division of labor, for a practical apotheosis of an ideal republic where government shall be "of, for, and by the people."
No menace so great to home and society to-day as the trusts, as those governmental policies that can not subserve the best interests of the masses as a discriminative legislative power. Is our present
NdW        1                            ....... - -rm .