The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1894-08-10
OUR SUFFRAGE DEBATE.
A WELL KNOWN KANSAS WRITER
CONTRIBUTES SOME INTERESTING
SUGGESTIONS TO THE ANTI"
SIDE OF THE QUESTION.

When people ask me, as they some-
times do, IL Kansas wemen desire to
vote, can only answer that do not
know. For just as know some men
who say that we should have the
privilege if we really want it, and
others who think more deeply and
question the wisdom of the desire, 1
am acqu ainted with some women who
are ready to demand the ballot at any
hazard, and others who insist that
equal suffrage is not only undesirable,
but wholly alien to the womanly
ideal.
And strangely enough in the circles
know-yet very logical sequence
it is the women in sheltered homes
with little children about their knees,
women, too, who are often scarcely
able to solve the family problems day
by day, who clamor for this new re.
sponsibility; and it is the women who
have faced the world and gained their
doubtful victories step by struggling
step, who want no further rights than
they are obliged to exert in the labor
that is laid upon them to do.
The house-mother, as usual thing,
let me give her full credit-wants to
vote in order to Danish the evils that
threaten the work of the home. But
the woman who has stood side by side
with men in the midst of these things,
sees more clearly into the nature of
franchise and its relation to the def
mite force of womanhood. And in the
fear that is born from knowledge she
is apt to believe that in the exercise OF
suffrage she would jeopardize the
gifts already in her power for very
inadequate requital.
For the question is not so much a
matter of natural ability, or convinc-
ing comparison, of plausible results or
even apparent right. Despite their
riotous growth these elements are
only subsidiary to the fundamental
facts that determine a woman's rule
and work. Women have measured
themselves with men in a thousand
different ways, and proved beyond a
doubt their equal height, and any
rightful consideration must thrust
aside these threadbare modes of argu-
ment and strike to the heart of the
endless discussion. If we can once
determine through the labyrinth OF
diverse opinion the metes and bounds
of a woman's distinctive place and
power, the question of her desire, and
her right to vote must find its proper
level; and because the poets hold the
secret of every phrase and spring OF
life no other human power can aid us
so quickly and well.
The poets are,
The only truth tellers now left to God,
The only speakers of essential truth,
Opposed TO relative, comparative.
And temporal truths, the only holdersby
His Sun-sklrts.
And since they have known nothing
upon earth so divine as womanhood
the problems of the woman nature
have inspired their noblest thought.
The great interpreters make no mis-
takes. They write the things which
they have seen, and the things which
are, and which shall be hereafter, and
their conclusions must he final on the
deep moral grounds that underlie all
great and noble action.
AS the fountain head of all wisdom
and truth the Bible must give us our
leading note, and King Solomon re.
veals to us not only the ideal Hebrew
woman, but the matchless model Col
all peoples and all times. No element
of feminine strength and beauty and
freedom is omitted. She is diligent in
business,-take the root-meaning OF
the word, busy-ness-fervent in
spirit. serving the Lord. Her house
hold is clothed in scarlet and she
stretcheth her hands to the needy;
ShO AOANS anu PAohe1
vineyards and delivers girdles to the
merchants she proves her innate
power the most completely in the fact
that her children rise up and call her
blessed, and the husband who prais-
eth her and safely trusts in her, is
known in the gates.
Such character as this is all fol
love and spiritual authority as folded
in the mother-missiOn with all its
sweet and steadfast toll, and the great
Greek poets have the same concept
ion. Andromache, Penelope and
Alcestis as well az the later presenta-
tions only throw additional light upon
the same.idea. Dante in his marvel
GUS poem to his dead lady, pictures
the womanly nature at its noblest and
best as the interpreter of most difficult
truths from height to further height.
Chaucer gives us his Legend of Good