Page:"The Nonsense of It," a printed pamphlet arguing for woman suffrage.djvu/1



"It would never do for women to vote, it would lead to such divisions in families." But political divisions do not, after all, make men quarrel half so much as religious divisions; and if you allow wives to do their own thinking in religion, why not in politics? Besides, nothing makes a man so coaxing and persuasive as when he tries to induce his neighbor to vote "our ticket." Husbands who are boors all the rest of the year would become patterns of politeness for a month before election day,—if the wives only had a vote!

"The polls are not decent places for women, at present." Then she is certainly needed there to make them decent. Literature was not decent, nor the dinner table, till she was admitted to them, on equal terms. But already, throughout most parts of the country, the ballot-box is as quiet a place to go to as the Post-office; and where it is not so, the presence of one woman would be worth a dozen policemen.

"Politics are necessarily corrupting." Then why not advise good men, as well as good women, to quit voting?

"I should not wish to hear my wife speak in town meeting." I should think not, unless she spoke more to the point than the average of men. Perhaps she would; no telling till she tries. And you are willing to pay a high price occasionally to hear somebody's else wife sing in public—and if it is proper for a woman to sing nonsense before an audience, why not to speak sense?

"Woman is sufficiently represented already, through her influence on men." How is it then that the whole legislation of Christendom, in regard to her, was "a disgrace to any heathen nation," till the Woman's Rights Conventions began to call attention to it, ten years ago?