Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-09-25
Iwoman's Power.

IWoman's Power.
Women are not supposed to take an
active part in the outlining of govern
mental policy. Some of the voting wise
60 so far as to assert that the study of
political economy is too involved for
womau's comprehension, and were she
permitted to take place in the political
arena she would blindly grope and only
blunder into the right. If by this is
meant that woman cannot understand
the tricks of politics and circumvent
willy politicians, If to her demagoguery is
the synonym of debasement and expedi-
ency, the slogan of the truculent, then
are these solons most complimentary and
woman is in the utterance set upon
pedestal where she can well afford to re-
main.
1t is not true that women cannot be
made to understand sound policy. neither
is it true that in q majority of cases, had
she the right Of suffrage, she would De
governed by sentiment rather than right
reason. Were intelligent understanding
of law, state, national and international,
made the basis for granting this right
woman would not be alone in an exclu-
sion from the polls.
Men are wont 10 say that women as
rule array themselves on the side of
sumptuary laws. While the majority of
women may not be able to define "sump-
tuaryb In the classification of law, it is
true that the larger part are found on the
side of good morals and protesting against
such liberty as by no strained construc-
ton is rightly termed license.
Women will learn IN time what men
themselves are slow to learn, that law
does not make individual morality. 1t
may restrain crime, but the heart-out
of which are life's issues-is not affected
by legal enactments. There are laws
enough on the statute books to create
moral Utopia, but tenantless 1t would be
because the world does not desire it.
The desire 10 be right is a better curb
than restraining law, and once that de-
sire is strong enough the necessity Tor
legal restraints is removed.
In the training schools of the race
woman finds ample scope to exercise her
God-given power, and as she passes
through life, until the day her still hands
lie folded, there is work enough. Hers
Is the privilege to help on to perfect self
law making, by love, by counsel aud by
pure life; to ally herself to her kind in
legal warfare that goes on in every hu-
man soul, and to fasten upon each war
rior that armor which shall enable him
or her TO resist a tripartite alliance
against which all must do battle.
While il is true that fanatics father
mighty revolutions, ii is also true that
zeaIots are not safe counselors, and
grave question arises whether the efforts
that are now being made to prevent the
sale of pernicious literature are any
more wise than the making of imprac-
ticable laws for the suppression of vice.
If there must be a censorship of the
press 1t would seem wiser to let the work
be done silently before the poison is set
free, and not, as has been recently
shown, increase the sale of immoral lit
erature and art by giving to them wide
spread publicity. Yet press censorship
and republicanism cannot clasp hands.
No one woman can afford to look upon
an immodest picture or TO read an in
decent book. If artists or authors
prostitute their genius for money they
merit the opprobrium and ostracism be-
longing to such debasement. And no
better censorship is needed than that
women positively refuse to buy, read or
discuss all books, and to turn their
faces from all works of art that exhibit
such purpose in their creators.
children to love purity and to be dis
gusted by its opposite than all suppress
sion movements mbined. Young women
can do more to elevate the moral tone of
society than all sumptuary laws of mans
deyising. And women in any sphere
can, in womanly fashion, counterfeit
more evil than all legal penalties can
avert. Let evil books and all that
tends TO break down the
barriers that hedge in the nobler
nature be studiously avoided.
Let women fail TO understand double
entendre and frown upon the ribald song
and Jest and the highly favored recital,
then men, always anxious to appear well
In the eyes Of women, Will find check
where now is license, and will at least
learn to feign virtue though they have 1t
not. So long, however, as women hold
aloft the wine cup. so long as women
discuss in pa-lors books and plays they
could not read aloud, so long as they are
unmindfull of much that is inseparable
from true modesty, enthusiasts may eff
feet the passage of laws and seek their
enforcement without materially advance
ing the cause of morality.
Itsnot so much the right to voice in
legislation that women should most
crave, but a capacity 10 understand the
amount of power already theirs and a
clear perception of how best to use It. This
far have many progressed, they have
reached point where they recognize the
power that dwslls in homes, and America
has cause to bless the mothers OF this ua-
ton for whatever nobility her sons pos
sess. Every parent should be the censor
Cor the family, and as the right of the
parent TO select food for the body of the
child 10 unquestioned, so also is it his or
her right to say upon what the intellect
ual nature of their offspring shall feed.
Once wise censorship is universal in the
homes of this land the sons ana daugh-
tiers that go out from them will scarcely
need TO confront the problems that are
taxing the skill of the philanthropists in
this generation.
Chat in Fashion
If one were seeking a position in which
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