Wichita eagle., 1889-11-27
THE COMING WOMAN.
MOVING ALONG ON SOLID LINES IN
THE UNITED STATES.

me UNI ~ . ia 20.
Female Suffrage Recognized in Several
States-Whether for Good or Evil, One
of Those Revolutions That Do Not Turn
Back Is Well Started.
Could an American statesman Of q century
ago come back to life, the thing that would
amaze him most would not be, suspect, the
existence of electric lights and Of phono-
graphs, for these would lie outside the sphere
of public life, which would be our supposed
Rip Van Wrinkles chief concern. Nor would
it even be, within his own domain, the Aus
tralian ballot law, or civil service reform, or
the efforts Of great nation to get rid of its
surplus money. 1t would be the spectacle OF
a strange alteration in the very basis Of gov
eminent; it would be the fact that in organ
izing five new states each of vast area and
unknown resources, a large part Of the time
of the organizing body has been devoted to
deciding whether men alone, or women also,
should become voters in these new born COM
monwealths. Nay, his chief wonder would
lie in the fact that the final debate in each
case did not turn On the question whether, II
but rather on the question show far" since
all five states have finally made women vot-
ers about something. Idaho and Washington
| have given them school suffrage by their con-
situations, so have North and South Dakota
| while in Montana those women who pay
taxes viii vote ON all questions submitted to
the vote of taxpayers Moreover, in two OF
these states washington and South Dakota
the question of giving women full suffrage is
| har tor IN ho mt fp vfltsa
ton women already qualified as voters for
any purpose can also vote.
WOULD SURPRISE THEM
We hereabouts take all these things very
quietly, because we have come to them by
| degrees. But were some Rip Van Wrinkle
of deceased statesman to open his eyes upon
them suddenly, he would justly pronounce
them to involve more deeply rooted change
! than any Australian ballot law. while the
longest train of electric cars could not be SO
much as named in comparison.
He could only end in accepting Victor
Hugos high sounding phrase that this is
rightly or wrongly-the woman's century.
All the traditions about the sphere Of the
two sexes, as being something interchangeable
and eternal, must fail before this simple fact.
/ A local experiment, as in Massachusetts,, or
Kansas, or Wyoming, proves very little, il
| may be urged.
But the founding of five new states by
| popular action, in communities drawn to-
gether from all quarters of the GLOBE is not
only an extraordinary demonstration Of self
government, but offers, as it were, a cross
section of current American thought on gov
ornamental principles That in five different
constitutional conventions, acting not merely
.,,I. H. h,,% It'll
degree of mutual independence, the uniform
outcome should be some form OF woman
suffrage, brings with it irresistible differences
For good or for evil, it is an advance along
the whole line; it is one of those revolutions
which do not turn back It is also revo-
luton based, like most American steps, rot
merely ON facts, but on principles,
No matter what was the motive-whether
impulse, or logic, or persuasion-the conces-
sion has been made That this has been done
in every one of five different states virtually
settles the prevailing course of all our future
national development
IAN ACQUIRED INTELLIGENCE"
That the result is to be of immediate, in
variable and unmixed good, do not, for one,
believe. If it WERE it would be unlike the
result of all previous extensions of the suf-
frage 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 somesof their own.
Men have, in many years of voting, partially
attained to what the once famous juriSt
Theophilus Parsons called 'an acquired in
teligence' on many practical matters, which
women, as a class, have yet to gain. Men
have also learned how to get on with one an
other politically, even under apparent differ
ences, and to acQuiesce with amazing equa-
nirnity in the results of election day They
are, I suspect, a little more patient of public
evils than women, and little less ardent In
expectation.
On the other hand, this very habit Of mod
Grafton has its dangers. and there are many
households which would so to pieces had not
the wife more decision, at least in ordering
the chickens out of the door yard, than her
easy going husband. This strong quality
again has its dangers, and the chickens some
times yield, not so much TO persuasive 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 doubt
less many persons-though the writer Is not
among then-who viii look with dismay on
the action of these five commonwealths.
But the main thing 10 be considered is that,
whatever we may think about it, and whether
We approve II or not, the action Is taken
When We look st the little fossil horses Of the
Peabody museum at Yale university. and see
the unconscious, inevitable way IN which
those little creatures became 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 saddle-we can easily
imagine that had those early races been con
suited they might not have approved Of the
change, and might even hare filed renou-
strances and held mass meetings to oppose it.
A political tendency wkica ave new state
constitutional conventions have recognized
can certainly not be ignored even II not one
81 tleD Ras put 1t In any final and coynp,ete
shape. generation Of women who grow Up
10 see their own sex admitted 20 colleges and
voting for school officials can never hook at
he precisely as their grandmothsrs did, for
whom such state OF things ouid have been
incescsivAbie. Before US stands tina. new
seueTstiea, and we have got. with or with
out our own approval. 70 make way for the
coming wonan--T. W. 81 in Earper's Bar.