The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1914-06-26
SHALL WOMEN voTEf


down. In that respect it is like Ban
uuo's ghost. 1t is always making itself
seen and heard and felt.
Some years ago when Tom Reed
was a member of congress, he sub
mitted a minority report on the sub
ject OF woman suffrage. 1t was as
far back as 1884, now thirty years
ago.
Among other things, he said this:
almost every vocation is open to
woman. She is proving her useful.
ness in spheres which the nature
worshiped by the conservative of %
years ago absolutely forbade her to
enter. Notwithstanding all these
changes, the family circle remains un-
broken, the man child gets as well
educated as before, and the amelio-
rating influence of woman has become
only the more marked. Thirty years
ago hardly any political assemblage
of the people was graced by the pre-
sence of women. Had it needed law
to enable them to be present, what an
argument could have been made
against 1t! How easily it could have
been shown that the coarseness, the
dubious expressions, the general vul-
garity of the scene, could have had
no other effect than to break down
the purity of word and thought which
women have and which conservative
and radical are alike sedulous to pre-
serve. And yet the actual presence OF
women at political meetings has not
debased them, but has raised the
other sex. Coarseness has not become
diffused through both sexes but has
fled from both. To put the whole mat
ter in short phrase: The associa-
ton of the sexes in the family circle.
in society, and in business having
proved improving to both, there is
neither history, reason, nor sense to
justify the assertion that association
in politics will lower the one or de-
moralize the other.
Hence we would do better to ap-
proach the question without trepida-
ton. We can better leave the
sphere" of the women to the future
than confine it in the chains of the
past. Words change nothing. Preiu.
dices are none the less prejudices be.
cause we vaguely call them nature
and prate about what nature has for
hidden when we only mean that the
thing we are opposing has not been
hitherto done. Mature" forbade q
steamship to cross the Atlantic the
very moment it was crossing, and yet
it arrived just the same. What the
majority call nature" has stood in
the way Of every progress of the past
and present, and will stand in the
way of all future progress. 1t has also
things. 1t is only another name for
conservatism. With conservatism the
minority have no quarrel. 1t is es-
sential to the stability of mankind, of
government, and of social life. To
every new proposal it rightfully calls
a halt, demanding countersign, wheth-
er it be friend or foe. The enfranchise.
ment of women must pass the ordeal
like everything else. 1t must give good
reason for its demand to be or take
its place among the half-forgotten
fantasies which have challenged the
support of mankind and have not
stood the test of argument and dis
cussion.
"The claims that suffrage is not a
right. but a privilege to be guarded
by those who have it, and to be by
them doled out to those who shall
become worthy. That every extension
of suffrage has been granted in some
Iorm OF Otner by those already hold
ing 1t is probably true. In some coun-
tries, however, it has extended upon
the simple basis of expediency, and
IN others in obedience to claim of
right. If suffrage be right, if it be
true that no man has claim to
govern any other man except to the
extent that the other man has right
to govern him, then there can be do
discussion of the question of woman
suffrage. No reason on earth can be
given by those who claim suffrage as
a right of mankind which does not
make it a right of womanhood also.
If the suffrage is to be given man to
protect him in his life, liberty, and
property, the same reasons urge that
it be given to woman, for she has the
same life, liberty, and property to