Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1897-01-15


utilized, and then, if never before from the be
ginning of creation, was there need of iemi
nine conservatism in the counsels of man.
Its opponents tell us that women don't wan
the franchise. Perhaps some of them don't
but that is no final argument that it would no
be beneficial for them to have it. So would
some of our grandmothers and aunties as leav,
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 usefu
mode of travelling, but simply that they were
not used to travelling that way.
Again they say it wouldn't be convenient TO-
women to attend the polls should it be rainy
day, or they couldn't endure the exposure o
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
iority 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 week. If il
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, notwith-
standing it was about the close of the cam
paign.
AS another instance, the wife of our IN
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 il 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 egotisui,
ignorance, and superstition may require cen-
turies to be overthrown. So we find that liul,
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 has made rapid adj
vancement in entering the ordinary and extra
ordinary walks of life as we'll. The wells, the
screens, the blanching 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 yell
lowstone Park, Wyoming.
Let our mission here tonight be to pave the
way, if not to cut asunder an unknown quantity
of these same shackles. Let the clink of their
falling be heard from Worden's sheep-cote on
the south to Darches nursery on the north !;
from the coa;-pitts of Linn, on the east, TO the
husk- frnged borders of Cofey on the west; or,
if you please, with Governor Leedy's pernis-
sion, from No-Man' Land to the Nebraska
line.
History will concede Kansas as being The in
itiative 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 i'll 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 marred, Of late,
with the faces of men. Again she spoke OH
the temperance problem when the mothers,
the wives, the sisters and daughters pettioncd
her to assist in removing from the public eye
the denloralizing cup In eighteen hundred and
ninety, when the state was overrun with a
horde of place hunters, money inongers, cou-
Il;