Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1886-03-29
COMPLIMENTARY TO EDMUNDs

In an Eastern exchange which came to
hand to-day we find the following extract
from Mrs. Clemence S. Lozier's letter to
Senator Edmunds 1t is reproduced
here solely for the purpose of showing
the style of argument" indulged in by
this representative of the Woman's Suf-
frage cause, and as fully justifying the
remark made by the Senator from Yer
mont to the effect that Mrs. Lozier does
not know what she is talking about:
You are already guilty, with your confed-
crates, of peculiarly unjust and wicked
crime against the first wives of polygamous
men in Utah. These women are not RESPONSE
BILE for their husbands taking additional
wives; in most cases they were practically
powerless to prevent this, yet you have not
only disfranchised them, and thus punished
them for the acts of their husbands, but you
have unconstitutionally deprived them of
that trial by court and jury, and that oppor-
tunity to prove their innocence, which the
Constitution and natural justice both secure
to the worst felon. Not content with your
guilt herein. you now seek to treble it by
expressing two other classes of the sex you
pretend to respect.
The right of suffrage belongs to those
women as God-given right of their nature,
and as a legal right it has vested in them by
sixteen years possession and use. 1t can
not be disturbed without fagrant breach
of settled principles of law. If you are the
lawyer you claim to be, you well know that
this is true; if you do not know it, you are
| too ignorant of law and justice to be fit for
Senator. Either way, your action shows
| that your constituents will do wisely to
remove you from the Senatorial seat wherein
| YOU have shown yourself aristocratic, tyran-
nical and reactionary.
The preteXt whereupon you seek to enact
| this new wrong deserves no serious consid-
Grafton. The n-polygamous Mormon men
are largely in the majority; and so long as
stand together and control the elections.
To disfranchise their wives and daughters
will not change the situation. Your effort is
n sheer attack on womanhood, an attempt
| to stigmatize and punish thousands of pure
| women for the crime of being women. Your
| ottempt is of piece with your stubborn
| efforts in the Senate to prevent women from
earning an honest living at the bar, and is
an outgrowth, not of n desire to promote
virtue, but of disposition which you have
ON all occasions shown, to prolong the OPP
| preston of the weaker sex.
Yonr intimation that the woman sutfrag-
lists do not understand the state of things in
| Utah is rs impertinent as your suggestions
on the floor of the Senate, that the ladies OF
your own State and elsewhere, who seek to
| DC TelieNeu tue wrong Ol
ment, are trying to degrade themselves, was
unsenatorial and ungentemanly.
But you are bent-or were, till you discov-
cred the strength of the opposition you pro-
yoke-on degrading every innocent women
in Utah, and stabbing the movement for JUS
tice to women throughout the world.
You are free TO ally yourself with grasp
ing corporations, cattle kings and land
grabbers, who veil their purposes of whole
sale plunder beneath professed zeal for vir-
tue-if you choose. The country can stand
your doing so if you can. But when you
dare to lay hostile hand on the ark OF
American liberty and civiization-univers
suffrage-you deserve, and will receive,
scorn and hostility, whose extent'and power
will astonish you.
OF course, Senator Edmunds knows
| just how much value to attach to an
eruption OF this kind, and will doubtless
treat it accordingly. Still, one cannot
help thinking that, ii Mrs. Lozer could
throw rocks with the same ease that she
slings the Queens English around, she
would be able to make it mighty warm
for the neighbors' chickens that might
fly over the fence and insist upon depre-
dating in her back yard.