Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1874-12-19
WHAT GOOD WILL THE BALLOT DO
WOMAN2

W0MAN7
In order to give an intelligent answer
to this question, we shall in the first
place be obliged to inquire into some Of
the disadvantages and liabilities under
which women labor in consequence OF
being deprived of the ballot-that most
powerful engine of American liberty
without which the free American citizen
becomes national slave, whose repre-
sentative, political and judicial rights
none Of the privileged class Chose pos
sossing the BALLOT are bound to respect.
In representative government, such as
ours, the right of the citizen to elect his or
her o,cn representatives is paramount to all
other rights. The word citizen, being
noun of the common gender, indi-
Gates either sex, the same as does the
word person, inhabitant, &C., and the
assumption that it means only persons
of the masculine gender, is both arbi-
trary and wrong. Did the term citizen
include only the men of our nation,
there would be no necessity for using
the term citizen, to distinguish it from
the female citizen; therefore, when the
Constitution of the United States de-
clares that the citizens of each State
shall be entitled to all the privileges
and immunities of the citizens of the
several States, it is evident that the
trainers of the Constitution neither
made nor intended to make any dis
tinction between the male and female
citizen. It is not the trainers of the
constitution who are to blame for the
present political status of woman, but
those who have put in execution the
provisions of the Constitution. These
have excluded woman from the exercise
of her just rights and this exclusion is
the principal, I might say the .fmnda-
mental, disadvantage, under which wo-
men labor, for on it rests all her other
disadvantages. Another disadvantage
under which women labor, and which
is the immediate result of the former,
is that being deprived of her right of
representation, she is unable to giue her
consent to the po,cers of the government by
,rhich she is governed. Our Declaratio on
OF Independence expressly declares, as
one of its vital principles, that "the
just powers OF government are derived
from the consent of the governed. D.
Judge Walker, in his work on Ameri-
can law, in speaking of the unjust re-
strictions in regard to the qualifications
of voters, such as that they must be
white male citizens, etc. ETC., says that
he "does not see how on strict Demo-
cratic principles this most precious of
all our rights can be much less than
universal" "Who" he asks, =" would
ever consent to government, which he
could have no voice in framing or d.
recting." Yet to this humiliating con-
dition is woman reduced. Being de-
prived of her representative right, and
through that Of her power to be heard
in the government, she necessarily Ia
bors under the disadvantage Of being
obliged to submit to laws not only un-
just, but cruel in their application to
her, such as the unjust discrimination
in regard to property, as possessed by
the husband and wife. The cruel and
barbarous law of depriving the mother
of the possession Of her children, for
whom she has suffered in agonies
untold, almost to deaths door, who she
has nourished with all the love and
tenderness of which only mother ia
capable, and who she has watched and
cared for by day and night, in sickness
and in health, with the solicitude that
none but q mother can feel. These
children whose very being is part OF
herself, this law, this relic of barbarous
ages, in the enactment of which she has
had no voice, tears from her arms and
gives to the father, who has never suf-
fered, never nourished, never spent
sleepless nights, nor performed for
them the thousand tender offices, nor
felt, nor ever can feel the mother love
for them, and who, as soon as these lit
tie ones are placed in his possession,
gives them into the care Of some other
woman and goes his way, thus virtually
acknowledging that the mother, not the
father, is natural guide and protection
Of childhood. These unjust and cruel
laws, as well many others equally OPP
pressive, still disgrace our statute books,
monuments Of the effect of woman be-
ing deprived of the exercise of her right
to voice in the Government. There
are also other disadvantages under
which women labor, which can only be
remedied by her possessing the ballot,
such as equal social advantages, equal
pay for equal labor, and many others
that might mention, but I pass on to
notice some of the liabilities to which
women are exposed under our one-sexed
government. .
In the possible future, but hope not
prospective, women are liable, owing to
their powerless condition, by laws which
those in authority have the power to
enact, to be subjected to the most de-
grading and humiliating condition that
q woman can be placed in. Let no
woman, nor virtuous man, say that this
is not possible. Did not the English
Parliament make attempt to pass that
outrageous g Contagious Disease Act"
and did not st. Louis, NO., pass such