Santa Fe daily New Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1885-1897, 1889-02-12

ent form it fails to do, the minor is far
safer and better off under tl e present law.
EDMUND G. Ross.
EXECUTIVE OFFICE
Territory of New Mexico,
Santa Fe, Feb. II, 1889.
To the Council of the 2sth Legislative Assembly.
Gentlemen: 1 have the honor to re-
turn herewith, to the house in which
originated, council bill No. 109, an act to
prevent women from entering saloons for
the purpose of drinking therein, without
executive approval
The title of this bill is misleading.
While it declares itself to be an act to
prevent women from entering saloons for
the purpose Of drinking therein, it goes
further, and prohibits them from going
there to earn an honest livelihood, as
many do, and are forced to do by the
keen competition in crowded localities
for employment. Practically every city
in the country affords illustrations Of this
fact. To shut off this or any other re-
source Of honest employment would but
narrow the opportunities for labor and in
crease the outward pressure into crime,
and widen and strengthen, instead of re-
pressing, the tendencies to dissolute and
criminal life.
This bill is not only useless legislation,
but it is legislation in vicious direction,
in that it presupposes that women are
something less than rational beings as
compared with men, and must be hedged
about with statutory enactments to keep
them from degradation and vice.
The time has gone by, in this county at
least, when women were considered a
lower order of humanity, lacking in rea-
son and judgment, with no defined rights,
no place in the body polite, and needing
man-made laws to keep them within the
walks Of rectitude, propriety and safety.
The spirit of the time and of our insti-
tutions, and the public politics of America
combine to establish a broadening and
elevating sphere for woman, and to make
her the equal of man in all public and
social rights before the law. She is no
longer toy, q slave or nonentity, but
has become o moral, social and political
force-recognized Us such everywhere,
and to that force is the world largely in
debted for its wonderful advancement in
the amenities of life and the amelioration
of human conditions that have character
lied human progress and become the
glory of the age in which We live.
The spirit and effect of this bill is to
weaken her self-reliance, and with that
her independence and power for self help
fulness and usefulness. Under the in
spiration of American civilization, prog
ress and development, she has reached
that point where she no more needs the
protecting shield of the law to keep her
within the bounds Of rectitude and pro-
priety than does man himself, and no law
should be permitted that seeks or has the
effect to circulnscribe her independence
or diminish her power of self reliance.
In view Of the wide range of vocations
and employments that have in the past
generation been thrown open to women,
and in view, furthermore, of the modera-
ton, wisdom and success, and the great
benefit to themselves and the world, with
which women have exploited this wide
field OF vocation and employment, the dis
elimination established in this bill be-
tween the sexes becomes at once invid-
ious, retrogressive and hurtful. Ameri-
can civilization has worked revolution
in the relations of the sexes in business
and public life that no legislation or stat
utory enactment can turn back. Any
vocation that is honest and honorable to
men is also and equally honest and hon
orable to women, and any that is dishon-
orable to woman is equally so to man.
EDMUND G. Ross.