Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1889-08-31
An Open Letter.

kindly accord me little space in your excellent
paper for the following letter which is addressed
to gentleman connected with the management of
one OF our prominent city papers:
Mr.. EDITOR: In conversation with a friend
not long since l learned that one of the gen
temen composing the staff of editors and man
ayers of your paper is an opponent of woman
woman suffrage | was the more surprised as
the tone of your paper is not only courteous
and helpful, so far as | have been able to
observe, toward all organizations of woman's
work, but progressive also. This can scarcely be
reconciled, in the present day, witha disbelief in
the power for good which the intelligent many
believe, must come with the ballot in the hands of
women.
| have been puzzled little, as to what position
you can occupy on this question. Are you in
trenched behind any one of the old arguments
against woman's suffrage or have you erected
barricade from the whole repertoire from sweak-
ness of intellect to ''negect of the baby?" Or
perhaps, like the Athenans of old, who, having
exhausted themselves in incense and libations to
their gods in time of trouble, without receiving
any relief, were fain to erect an altar to an I'M
known god.
So you, and the men of your belief, having
brought every argument so far known to inventive
minds to bear on the women of the nineteenth
century, and finding her still irrepressible, plead
ing, praying, demanding her political rights like
Banquo's ghost not down. say, finding this
state of affairs, you may have discovered a new
reason, or at least one not known to us, why we
should bear all burdens of citizenship without
sharing in its honors or responsibilities; why we
should be tried for our crimes against govern
ment which we have had no voice in forming why
should we not be exempt, as children and idiots
are; and tried before a justice or judge in whose
election we have had no part, and who, we may
think, totally unfit for the place. You may have
some reason, good and sufficient to you, why we
should be compelled to pay proportion to the
support of government, under which we may
claim one right, "the right to petition" and this
is accompanied by the right of the government
often INDUCED in, to laugh at and table our bills
and petitions in five minutes, while they spend
hours in wrangles over immateral matters or in
passing acts which we cannot endorse and against
which we cry out until ''the smoke of our torment
ascends up before God You, sir, may know
why the dirty, ignorant, villainous tramp should
have voice in these matters, and not the capable,
industrious farmers wife, who, in the generosity OF
her heart, gives him his breakfast, and, should the
occasion arise, before dinner, lectures her son,
and ntelligently, too, on the duties of citizenship
and the responsibility of the ballot. And sir, Go
you know a reason why son whose talk is
like unto the cracking of thorns under pot,
should exercise the privilege of the ballot, and
in so doing locate saloon and gambling hell to
the ruin of both his soul and body-while the gray
haired old mother who would almost risk her hope
of eternal happiness for the welfare of his wretched
polluted body and nfantsmal soul, has no recourse
except in prayer to God, prayer to man having
long since failed her.
You may also know a reason why you deem it
lust that the cultivated and refined lady prncl-
pals of our public and private schools should be
debarred from participating in these things, while
the freedmen, stepped in ignorance and perhaps