Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1897-01-08

utilized and then, if never before from the be-
ginning of creation, was there need of femi-
nine conservatism in the counsels of man.
It's opponents tell us that women do Mt want
the franchise. Perhaps some of them don't,
but that is no final argument that it would not
be beneficial for them to have it. So would
some of our grandmothers and aunties as leave
stepped aboard an airship or an internal ma
chine as a railroad car, but that was no dem
onstrative argument that it was not a useful
mode of travelling, but simply that they we're
not used to travelling that way.
Again they say it wouldn't be convenient for
women to attend the polls, should it be rainy
day. or they couldn't endure the exposure of
all exciting campaign.
Well, in these days of rubber overshoes,
creepers, waterproofs, umbrellas, awnings,
porches, boot-scrapers, covered vehicles and
rapid transit methods of travelling, in the ma
jority of cases woman would likely manage
some way to cast her ballot. Anyhow, rather
than miss her opinion in so important matter,
the polls might be kept open for a week. If it
we're of the nature of donation of some kind,
the weather question would soon be engineered
out of the way.
AS to the hardships of the campaign most
of us can testify to having heard Mrs. Annie
Diggs on the rostrum, and her physical strength
seemed all that anyone could enjoy, notwth-
standing it was about the close of the cam
paign.
AS another instance, the wife of our un-
swerving leader, Mrs. Bryan accompanied her
husband not only to the Chicago convention,
but all through his eventful campaign tour; but
cautiously crossing the lines to the camp of our
friends the enemy, we believe if Mrs McKin-
ley were here to speak for herself she would
testify to having also accompanied her husband
all through his famous preamblings from the
back parlor to the front porch
A custom surrounded by chain of egotism,
ignorance, and superstition may require CEN
turtles to be overthrown. So we find that link
by link the chain that has bound feminine ac-
tivity is gradually loosening its grasp. No
longer are the efforts of woman confined to the
candle mould the spinning wheel and the ON
nipotent thinble, needle and thread. Within
the last few decades she las made rapid adj
vancement in entering the ordinary and extra
ordinary walks of life as WE'LL The wells, the
screens, the banching barriers, the shackles
that have held feminine intellect in bondage,
are scattered all along the way from the dwarf
ing confines of the Ottoman harem at Constan-
tinople, to the free and welcoming air of Vel
lowstone Park, Wyoming.
Let our mission here tonight be to pave the
way, if not to cut asunder All unknown quantity
of these same shackes. Let the clink of their
falling be heard from Worden's sheep-cote on
the south to parche's nursery on the north
from the coai-ptts of Linn, on the east, 10 the
husk -frnged borders of Coffey on the west; or,
If you please, with Governor Leedy's permits
sion, from No-Man's Land to the Nebraska
line.
History will concede Kansas as being :he in
itative in progress, the cradle OF REFORM as her
public acts will testify. Fearless and aggress-
i've she stands, without peer.
First of all comes her slavery record, when
she scorned to protect the traffic in human souls
Then her war record, when her valiant SONS
fastened to the front to maintain the supremacy
and preserve the purity of the stars and stripes,
which, shame be to the perpetrators, and their
accessories as we'll, is being married, of late,
with the faces of men. Again she spoke on
the temperance problem, when the mothers,
the wives, the sisters and daughters petitioned
her to assist in removing from the PUBLIC eye
the demoraizing cup. In eighteen hundred aud
ninety, when the state was overrun with
horde of place hunters, money-mongers, cou-
pon-clippers and sleek-tongued politicians, again