Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/152

 Senator from New Hampshire, proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, conferring the right to vote upon the women of the United States, is one of paramount importance, as it involves great questions far-reaching in their tendency, which seriously affect the very pillars of our social fabric, which involve the peace and harmony of society, the unity of the family, and much of the future success of our Government.

I believe that the Creator intended that the sphere of the males and females of our race should be different, and that their duties and obligations, while they differ materially, are equally important and equally honorable, and that each sex is equally well qualified by natural endowments for the discharge of the important duties which pertain to each, and that each sex is equally competent to discharge those duties.

We find an abundance of evidence, both in the works of nature and in the Divine revelation, to establish the fact that the family properly regulated is the foundation and pillar of society, and is the most important of any other human institution. In the Divine economy it is provided that the man shall be the head of the family, and shall take upon himself the solemn obligation of providing for and protecting the family.

Man, by reason of his physical strength, and his other endowments and faculties, is qualified for the discharge of those duties that require strength and ability to combat with the sterner realities and difficulties of life. It is not only his duty to provide for and protect the family, but as a member of the community it is also his duty to discharge the laborious and responsible obligations which the family owe to the State, and which obligations must be discharged by the head of the family, until the male members have grown up to manhood and are able to aid in the discharge of those obligations, when it becomes their duty each in turn to take charge of and rear a family, for which he is responsible.

Among other duties which the head of the family owes to the State is military duty in time of war, which he, when able-bodied, is able to discharge and which the female members of the family are unable to discharge.

He is also under obligation to discharge jury duty, and by himself or his representatives to perform his part of the labor necessary to construct and keep in order roads, bridges, streets and all grades of public highways. And in this progressive age upon the male sex is devolved the duty of constructing and operating our railroads, and the engines and other rolling stock with which they are operated; of building, equipping and launching shipping and other water craft of every character necessary for the transportation of passengers and freight upon our rivers, our lakes, and upon the high seas.