The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-04-24
STUDYING POLITICS.
Women as Well as Men Should Make
Themselves Familiar with Il

Women as Well Men Should Make
Themselves Familiar with 1t.
Up to the present time we seem to
have gone upon the principle that poll
ticians, like poets, are born, not made;
any man has vote and any woman
an interest in affairs pertaining not
only to present interests, but to the
worlds future history. That a man
should vote has been deemed a
matter worthy of being secured at the
cost of the uprooting of States and the
overturning of civilizations; how he
shall vote has been deemed to be
matter of concern only to the candi-
dates for election.
Yet the study of politics is study
not only important, but very interest
ing. To Judge by the amount of talk
bestowed upon every political question,
even the most trivial, there are few
minds that would not find keen pleas
ure in the intelligent investigation of
political with their allied social ques-
tions; and although radical difficulty
in the formation of a proper school of
practical politics would seem to lie in
the fact that most people imagine they
know all about the subject already, yet
there is rising generation unaware,
perchance, of the extent of their en-
dowments in this particular, and from
their numbers it may be hoped that
some pupils for the proposed school
may be secured.
There are two kinds of women in the
world: those who hate the very mention
of politics and those who are deeply in
terested in the subject. With a few
notable exceptions, both are about
equally ignorant; both have a strong
influence on the present voting popula-
ton; both at same possible future time
may themselves become voters. To both
the study of politics would be useful
and not merely as a means of correct
ing an influence often highly pernic-
ious, or of stimulating to the exercise
of a beneficent influence. 1t would,
above all, be useful as opening to them
new avenues of thought, as estab-
fishing for them new points of
contact with the outer world and as
creating new channels through which
intelligence and culture may flow into
their homes. The narrow range of
women's interest has dwarfed many
mind endowed with large powers or
growth; the pettiness, the untruthful-
ness, the little WEAKNESSES to which
woman is thought to be more prone
than man are generally the result of
the narrowness of her vision. She
does not see truth in broad light and
therefore she can not see it truly. Let
her intelligence be exercised in matters
practical beyond the sphere of her
home duties and she will gain morally,
even more than intellectually.
1t is especially important that women
who are already interested in large
questions, charitable workers, religious
teachers, temperance reformers, should
be thoroughly well founded in the
science of politics. The adjustment of
political action to the social problems
of modern life is to be the great duty
of the future. With these great prob
lens women have much to do, on their
practical side, and the true adjustment
of social and political conditions is a
work which demands the best powers
of our brightest women as well as our
most promising young men. Prob
lens of sanitary science, of public
health, of providing work for the idle
and industrial education for the inca
pable; problems relative to the housing
of the poor, the employment of prison
ers, the relation of ignorance to crime,
of amusement to public morals, of re-
ligion to charitable work-all these
problems have to do with politics quite
as surely as does woman suffrage, and
all of them demand that women,
whether voters or not, should come to
an intelligent acquaintance with the
fundamental principles on which polit-
ical science and practical politics are
based. = philadelphia Times.