The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1890-07-18

| for her to exercise that function-how
do you account for the fact that what.
ever forward step yea have let her take,
she has justified it?
Not only in my mind is there no ar
gument against woman suffrage, but
every argument for it In the first place,
every extension OF intelligent
suffrage strengthens the body
polite. must believe this, or
give up the principle of republican gov
eminent, which is the strongest and Sc
curest form of government / know
some shudder a little at universal suf-
frage, but it is ten thousand times more
| dangerous to suppress and exclude q
part of the people. The gases which are
harmless IL vented, may work ruin IL
you confine them. There can in the
long run be little danger when all are
equally responsible. Suffrage is itself
an immense education; its absence a
degeneracy. The broader the basis Of
your State, the safer. In the next place,
the influence of woman has refined
whatever circle it has been admitted
into under conditions of its own self-re-
spect History. homely experience, COM
mon observation, all confirm this. Wom-
an suffrage would not debase women and
politics. 1t would elevate both. 1t would
add to the body polite the positive ele-
ments of feminine wholesomeness and
natural antagonism to vice and violence.
a new interest for the securities of
home and peace, sobriety and order,
would be evoked. Woman herself would
be benefited, as intelligent emancipa-
ton of every sort and to whatever de-
gree always benefits its object
lean not help feeling that back of all
this matter OF casting vote, lies still
deeper question Of social integrity.
There is at stake not the unrest of few
women, leaders OF the movement, but
the welfare-the moral and intellectual
status-of the great body of women who
are in the mass of life, who toll in shops,
and whose character and fate are subject
to the molding of their circumstances.
Any thing that attaches to them badge
or fetter of inferiority. dependence, or
weakness, just so far binders their ulti.
mate moral and intellectual self-sover-
eighty. When woman is under full
equality of rights and of social respon-
sibility, thence will date the era of
times seems to be the despair of social
science.
The topic is boundless. have touch
ed only on familiar and practical as
poets, which come quickest home to the
sense of justice. To sum them up, it is
right that women, equally burdened,
should have equal voice IN the adjust
ment of the burden. 1t is despotic and
undemocratic to deny the equal right.
Nothing is easier than to arrange for
it's exercise without injurious disturb
ance to social life or political stability.
Women would not be drawn from their
duties, or their time oyer-occupied, any
more than now in the case of men-and
we all know how little, how next to
ninety-nine in every thousand of them.
No dangerous, but better, element
would come into influence. 1 have no
more doubt of the ultimate voting of
women than I have Of the progress OF
the human soul, or than / have that,
when that time comes, more enlight-
ened age will look back on our dis
this respect as a relic of barbarism, a
slowly-melting glacier of bourbonism
and prejudice. want to be on record
as having melted out early. or rather as
having never been frozen in.