Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1889-10-19

like most American steps, not merely on facts, but
on principles. To some extent it is step in the
dark; that u.s. we do not know in detail what the
result will be, whether on women or men it is the
result of an unconscious evolution which has
brought these masses of men SO far. 1t is not
usually very easy to extend the suffrage, because
this calls on a privileged class to give up power.
Yet in each of these five prospective common
Wealths the hitherto governing class has to some
extent-done just that thing. No matter, again,
what was the motive-wheher impulse or logic,
or persuasion-the concession has been made
That this has been done in every one of five differ
ent States virtually settles the prevailing course of
all our future national development.
That the result is to be of Immediate invariable
and unmlxed good, do not, for one, believe If
it were, it would be unlike the result of all pre-
yious extensions of the suffrage. Every newly
enfranchised class needs to learn its work, to get
control of its weapons, and this usually involves
some cut fingers. Women are not so unlike men
as to be free from all the perils and weaknesses of
men, and they may even have some of their own
Men have, in many years of voting, partially at
tanned to what the once famous jurist, Theophus
Parsons, called ''an acquired intelligence on
many practical matters, which women, as class
have yet to gain Men have also learned hsw to
get on with one another politically, even under APP
parent differences and to acquiesce with amazing
equanmity in the results of election-day They
are, suspect, little more patient of public evils
than women, and little less ardent in expectation
On the other hand, this very habit of MODERATION
has its dangers, and there are many households
which would go to pieces had not the wife more
decision, at least in ordering the chickens out of
the dooryard, than her easy -going husband. This
strong quality again has its dangers, and the
chickens sometimes yield, not so much to persua-
sve and angelic qualities as to certain shrillness
OF voice which does not make the indoor hearth
very tempting to others than chickens What
with the fear that women will prove too weak, and
the yet more anxious fear lest they turn out too
strong, there are doubtless many persons-though
the writer is not among them-who will look with
dismay on the action of these five commonwealth
But the main thing to be considered is that,
whatever we may think about it, and whetherwe
approve it or not, the action is taken. Wheiwe
look at the little fossil horses of the Peabody Mu-
scum at Yale University, and see the unconscious
inevitable way in which those little creatures be-
came larger of size and more compressed as to
foot-fve toes, four toes, three toes, two toes
until at last emerged the large and single-hoofed
horse we now ride under the sadde-we can easily
imagine that had those early races been consulted
they might not have approved of the change, and
might even have filed remonstrances and held mass
meetings to oppose it, A politica tendency which
five new State Constitutional Conventions have re-
cognized can certainly not be ignored, even if not
one of them has put it in any final and complete
shape. generation of women who grow up to
see their own sex admitted to colleges and voting
for school officials can never look at life precisely
as their grandmothers did, for whom such a state
of things would have been inconceivable. Before
us stands that new generation, and we have got
witch or without our own approval, to make way
for the Coming Woman.
Encourage the Children.