Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/812

776 when I look into these matters I find that families all through the community are divided on the subject of religion. I have known scores and scores of families in which there were Baptists and persons of other denominations, and they found no trouble in getting along. You will always find where husband and wife can not agree, they will peaceably differ. There is no danger of their ever disturbing the family relations by that.

We are still holding, it seems, the old barbaric notion of the inferiority of woman. Every higher class preaches, preaches, preaches—about the inferiority of everything and everybody below it. All the world believes that the nation in which the man is born is the highest nation in the world. Why, we believe that we Americans are the biggest people in the world, the Englishman believes the English people to be the highest in the world. There is not the least doubt in the mind of a Frenchman that he was God Almighty's first favorite, and so on, nation by nation. So it is with classes. So, also, it seems to be with man. All the men in the world join hands together and agree that whatever may be the classification as between man and man, all men are infinitely superior to woman. Now I hold that in some things woman is inferior to man, and in some things greatly superior to man, and that in the general average she is fully his equal. A woman is God's chief engineer in the home. She ought to have a clear eye and a deep heart and a wide understanding. You can't make a woman too broad, too strong, too high, too deep in all generous enthusiasm for the purposes of the family, for it takes strong women to bring up strong men and strong women. In regard to this matter I wonder that people should attempt to separate so much by guess. Hear people say, "What will be the effect?" As if this thing was not already demonstrated—as if history was not already a picture of what the result will be. Will you be good enough to tell me which woman you think to-day is the superior? There is the problem: the Asiatic woman is the woman we hear tell about; just look at her—a do-nothing, a know-nothing woman! The European woman is the woman that has been cultured. Which is the superior to-day? which commands most respect?

Delicacy in woman is sentiment, not appearance, not enamel, not languishing airs. But it is asked, why make this disturbance? Why not let a woman, if it is desired that she should be a student, inquire of her husband? Suppose she hasn't got one. Young gentlemen that are so fond of talking about the matter say, let the women stay at home and take care of their families. Let me ask you if you will agree to give every woman a family that hasn't got one? If you will not, then hold your tongue. But even taking the question in the way they put it, how would these young men like their fathers to say, "Tom, Bill, you are both Republicans. You have gone away from my notions; I am a good, stanch, old-fashioned Democrat; and my advice to you, boys, is that you stay at home and read, and think these matters over, and I will go and vote for you,"—how would the boys like that? Everybody is willing to be above everybody else, and this thing of one man assuming that he is the superior of another, and asking that other to knuckle down to him, is not popular. You don't like it. And women don't like it any better than you do—and they ought not to like it, either. Women can have all the benefit of holding an opinion, but they shall not have the power of expressing it. They go through all the labor