The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1877-05-18
A SPECIMEN ARGUMENT.

If women who get so far from their
self-appointed 'sphere" as to neglect
babies and buttons long enough to owrite
nonsensical and vapid letters to the
newspapers did not always stick some
namby-pamby nom de plume to their
letters, we would take pleasure in occa-
sionally mailing to their address a copy
of the New NORTHWEST, that they
might see what thoughtful and intelli-
gent women think and what they say
concerning equal rights.
When, however, a woman is both a
Granger and Good Templar, and attends
to her duties as a member of these Or
ders and finds time to write letters con-
tanning such unchristian and irrelevant
bosh as the following for publication,
we are strengthened in our belief that
capable and sensible women can find
time to vote without neglecting their
household avocatiOns. One of the class
to whom allusion is first made writes
thus, and does not record herself as
ASHAMED Of it,"
belong to both orders, Granger and Good
Templars), and am not ashamed Of 1t. be-
lieve in woman's rights IN the right place. I
don't believe in women going to the polls and
voting and being judges of courts and masters
OF Oranges, etc, but all those who do think
ought to have an introduction 10 a good maui
and wedge and some respectabIe-looking rail
timber
Overcome with her Striking simile,
this writer closes abruptly, without tell
ing US why she thinks this introduction
would be serviceable, and utterly neg.
lects to say that she has never known
"a judge of court" who mauled rails
under penalty of being disfranchised.
That women, as we'll as men, exist in
large numbers who never go beyond
such trifiing and wholly irrelevant ar
guments % as the one above quoted j!
an apparent and humiliating fact
There is more excuse for them on the
one hand for their illogical illiberality
than for that of their brethren, for they
have been all of their younger days
cramped and narrowed by the petty
economies that belong to a subjugateC
and isolated station in life, and wha
kind nature does not beget in thei
hearts is unbegotten there forever.
AZ can listen with some degree Of pa
tience when a man argues against equa
rights" said a sorely tried friend upoI
one occasion, "but to hear a a0onlal turl
against her own sex and advocate a
right the serfdom that custom has s.
long imposed upon woman, makes m
consider her words too contemplate 70
answer"
"Don't blame her for what she dom
Know" said we, by way of soothing ou
friends impatience.
''But achg don't she know ?" persiste
the other. "She will consume tw
hours of my time with her illogical an
narrow clap-trap, and when interrogate
relative to facts and figures that th
NEW NORTHWEST has given to tn
breeze for years, she will declare tha
she has no time to read. May the fate
preserve me forever from association
with women who have no time for any
thing that looks to their own enlighter
ment, but have ample time to waste th
time of Others with their ignorant dis
QUESTIONS upon woman's sphere. Why
this woman would actually have us be-
lieve simply upon her unsupported az
sertion that if women were allowed {
vote they would forthwith have to TAX
their place at the plow, work the road
ETC., while the men washed the disht
and tended the babies"
We have all of us heard these sill
women talk, and felt irritated, eve
while we pitied them. Nine-tenths
all of the women who actively oppo
equal rights bring forward such obje
tions as sthese-objections that have bee
answered times without number, al
these are the women to whom our o.
posers among men point, saying, eXul
antly, "Women do not want to vote"
Is it any wonder that intelligent, e
ergetic, well-informed women object
being judged by this standard of won
anhOod and gauged by the capacity
these women?
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