The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-07-19

matter of social and political expediency.
The fact that few women feel IS II they
would like to vote, because in their 1udg-
ment they could make our laws more in
stinct with correct principles, ID no more
reason for the enactment of woman SUI
frage. with its implied social and political
consequences, than the general conviction
of the emancipated negro that he would
enjoy freedom great deal more il he was
presented with 40 acres and mule was a
reason for that extravagant endowment
The people deemed it inexpedient to thus
endow the negro at our expense; and for
the same reason of inexpediency the peo-
pie are not disposed to thrust suffrage
upon million to please widow woman
or two who holds AK receipt and wants
the ballot her husband dropped when he
died.
In Washington there are no laws Except
voting and holding office) which enforce
or recognize civil disabilities upon wife
which are not imposed or recognized as
existing to the husband. Without the AID
of the ballot, woman in America has oeen
emancipated from all restrictions OF prop
erty, privilege to trade or contract mat
is. women have today without the ballot ali
the civil and social rights that it is assumed
are generally secured and maintained only
through the ballot, so that woman taxed
or untaxed is to all practical purposes as
effectively represented as II she had the
ballot. Women in politics would hardly
rise above the average masculine
sentiment, with this disadvantage
that the indoor life of women makes
them not more humane, not more tender,
but more emotional and sentimental
than men; and more narrow, provincial
and unreasonable. The Southern woman
accepted her husbands code concerning
slavery; concerning rebellion, because
women as rule faithfully reflect their men.
From this influence of indoor life and Gull
ture women do not escape in politics only
when they become desexed; that is,she be-
comes an absolutely masculine woman in
temper, manners, speech and thought.
We cannot afford to have women become
desexed even in order to have them be-
come efficient in political office; and if
they remained womanly they would be SUI
perfluous.
The woman vote, good or bad, would
only duplicate the masculine vote, good or
bad; and otherwise would be silent save
when sentimental cranks organized them
into salvation army to horn and bugle
legislatures into emotional acts of absurd,
pernicious and impracticable legislation.
The strongest setback that woman suf-
frage has received has been from certain
evangelists, like Miss Willard, who insist
on weighing it down with prohibition
and kindred cheap and flatulent foreign
issues. No thoughtful man of affairs
would welcome woman suffrage in power
under such leaders as Miss Willard, ready
to use the ballot to stab personal liberty
in order to slay every sin with prohibit
ton statute; that is, to make every erring
man good and every foolish woman wise
by an act of legislation.
There are feminine-minded men and
despotic cranks enough now trying to
make a burlesque CT the ballot box and
Connecticut blue law of our statute book
without endowing woman with the ballot.
The candid, intelligent, thoughtful men
and women who do not think woman suf-
frage expedient, are ready to concede that
woman is ''the equal of man but not the
same; different but not superior; superior
in certain respects, inferior in others. hav-
ing a special sphere of her own, and a COM
mon sphere with him."