The herald., 1896-03-29
THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT

BILE, he is becoming fossilized. The writer
concludes that as the mills of divorce are
SO rapidly OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES the
wheat from the chaff it is due principally
to the visits of Miss Anthony
and Miss Shaw to this city. How
over, we question the assertion. Some
men claim that if women we're enfran-
chised, then and there the disturbing ele.
ment in the home would arise. This is fall
lacious. If the home has been one of har-
mony, each regarding the domain of the
other. over which neither has the right to
trespass, each distinct in their individu-
atty with rights and privileges, neither can
in justice to the other abridge; if there has
been perfect confidence in all the relations
of life; ii all subjects have been intelli-
gently and impartially discussed, the mere
entrance of woman into the arena of poiiti-
cal thought, and where called political &C.
ton, political discord cannot and will not
enter. 1t is in those homes where man
has set himself the autocrat, dictated to
the queen GU of that home and she I'M
questioning to do his building, no matter
how repellent to her sensitive nature or
CALLING to her proud spirit-in such a home
where mans law is supreme, if, by the
wave thought of progress, or the knowl-
edge dawns upon the woman, that she is an
individual, an important factor in the
worlds progress, that she has the
same right to all tho privileges of a
human being and citizen, aspiration,
life and character, distinct from
mans, if she revoIts, discord will enter
and divorce result, not by any advocate of
the rights due to woman, but by the very
force of equity and justice coming as the
avenger of her wrongs. This objector, to
clinch his argument take it for granted
that the writer is a man from the tenor of
the article; we should blush for woman
hood if it were woman--refers to the
school election in Connecticut last fall.
''Where women are entitled to vote" for
school elections, he states there was con-
siderable excitement and large registra-
ton. but the voting was spiritless." 1t is
manifest if there was interest evinced by
the women and q large registration that
they fully intended voting; fraud, intimi-
dalton, inclemency of the weather, or COM
set. were some if not all of them the cause
of the 'dismal failure" In q manufacture
ing town he mentions only seventeen
voted, where the employers were largely
women. An election for school boards
does not mean a holiday for those toilers,
They must be promptly at their work lat
that season the polls just opened) or else
be docked, which means a half-hour's
wages in some factories. or more; the
polls closed by the time their days toll is
over. yet seventeen risked time and money.
Every argument is weak, and falls fiat and
can be accounted for by a moments
thought. "Women," our wiseacre says,
''are not capable OF accomplishing anything
men can do" Why, then, one hue and
cry that she is competing with men in
every trade and profession, taking high
rank in every realm of intellectual thought,
surrounding all difficulties? "She cannot
fight or win battles" Put her in the field
if necessity compels and she is as valiant
as man ever dared be; but we do not be-
lieve in war. Woman has learned that she
has been held as an instrument of repro
duction whereby armies could be repien-
ished. No! but woman can say war shall
cease and refuse to have her sons slaugh.
tered at the caprice of any power. He
quotes, "her virtues make men ashamed
of their vice." Men! immoral men,
ashamed of their vice? Never! they will
enter the sanctity of their own
may have the entree unbIushingly, though
they may come reeking in thoughts and
vice from any habitude; they are simply
content if the world is blind; it is the open
fragrant vice they cry out against. What
think you OF. this? the very acme of egot-
inspiring things that tend to refine, but not
to degrade and vulgarize, and all will be
forgiven" Forgiven! forsooth, have we
fallen SO far from deity than we should
bend the knee to Baal? Not Americ 3
womanhood, at least. And this, 1.-The
woman who refused to take the place for
which she was destined by nature, richly
merits not only the contempt of her better
conditioned sisters, but of mans as well.'
Well, their contempt can never reach tine
sublimity of ours for men, and women, if
they wish to be classed with them, of the
calibre of the writer of that article.
MAY +. BENSEN.