Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/909

Rh contributes greatly to their order, decorum, and decency. Why should not the polls, also, be civilized by her presence?

Does not the morality of our politics demonstrate a great want of the two qualities so characteristic of woman, heart and conscience? The female element which works such miracles of reform in the rude manners of men, in all the departments of life where she has the freedom to go, is nowhere more needed than in our politics, or at the polls.

We have endeavored to show that the constitutional prohibition of female suffrage is not only a violation of natural right, but equally at war with the fundamental principles of the government. Let us now look at the practical results of this organic wrong. After having taken away from woman the means of protecting her person and property, by the peaceable, but powerful ballot, how have we discharged the self-imposed duty of legislating for her? By every principle of honor, or even of common honesty, we are bound to see that her interests do not suffer in our hands. That, if we depart at all from the principle of strict equality, it should be in her favor. Let as see what are the facts.

When a woman marries she becomes almost annihilated in the eyes of the law, except as a subject of punishment. She loses the right to receive and control the wages of her own labor. If she be an administratrix, or executrix, she is counted as dead, and another must be appointed. If she have children, they may be taken from her against her will, and placed in the care of any one, no matter how unfit, whom the father may select. He may even give them away by will. "The personal property of the wife, such as money, goods, cattle, and other chattels, which she had in possession at the time of her marriage, in her own right, and not in the right of another, vest immediately in the husband, and he can dispose of them as he pleases. On his death, they go to his representatives, like the residue of his property. So, if any such goods or chattels come to her possession in her own right, after the marriage, they, in like manner, immediately vest in the husband." "Such property of the wife, as bonds, notes, arrears of rent, legacies, which are termed choses in action, do not vest in the husband by mere operation of marriage. To entitle him to them, he must first reduce them into possession, by recovering the money, or altering the security, as by making them payable to himself. If the husband appoint an attorney to receive a debt or claim due the wife, and the attorney received it, or if he mortgaged the claim or debt, or assign it for a valuable consideration, or recover judgment by suit, in his own name, or if he release it, in all these cases the right of the wife, upon the decease of the husband, is gone."

The real estate of the wife, such as houses and lands, is in nearly the same state of subjection to the husband's will. He is entitled to all the rents and profits while they both live, and the husband can hold the estate during his life, even though the wife be dead. A woman may thus be stripped of every available cent she ever had in the world, and even see it squandered in ministering to the low appetite or passions of a drunken debauchee of a husband. And when, by economy and toil, she may have acquired the means of present subsistence, this, too, may be lawfully taken from her, and applied to the same base purpose. Even her Family Bible, the last gift of a dying mother, her only remaining comfort, can be lawfully taken and sold by the husband, to buy the means of intoxication. This very thing has been done. Can any one believe that laws, so wickedly one-sided as these, were ever honestly designed for the equal benefit of woman with man? Yet wives are said to have quite a sufficient representation in the government, through their husbands, to secure them protection.

But the cruel inequality of the laws relating to woman as wife are quite outdone by those relating to her as widow. It is these stricken and sorrowful victims, the law seems especially to have selected as its prey. Upon the death of the husband, the law takes possession of the whole of the estate. The smallest items of property must be turned out for valuation, to be handled by strangers. The clothes that the deceased had worn, the chair in which he sat, the bed on which he died, all these sacred memorials of the dead, must undergo the cold scrutiny of officers of the law. The widow is counted but as an alien, and an incumbrance on the estate, the bulk of which is designed for other hands. She is to have doled out to her, like a pauper, by paltry sixes, the furniture of her own kitchen. "One table, six chairs, six knives and forks, six plates, six tea-cups and saucers, one sugar-dish, one milk-pail, one tea-pot, and twelve spoons!" All this[Pg 876] munificent provision for, perhaps, a family of only a dozen-persons. Think of it, ye widows, and learn to be