Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/162

 terest in educational questions and those of moral reform, securing the passage of beneficial laws and the proper enforcement of them, elevating men, and doing so without injury to women.

Senator James B. Eustis (La.) inquired whether, if the right of suffrage were conferred, women ought to be required to serve on juries. To this Senator Dolph replied: "I can answer that very readily. It does not necessarily follow that because a woman is permitted to vote and thus have a voice in making the laws by which she is to be governed and by which her property rights are to be determined, she must perform such duty as service upon a jury. But I will inform the Senator that in Washington Territory she does serve upon juries, and with great satisfaction to the judges of the courts and to all parties who desire to see an honest and efficient administration of law." The following colloquy then ensued:

I was aware of the fact that women are required to serve on juries in Washington Territory because they are allowed to vote. I understand that under all State laws those duties are considered correlative. Now, I ask the Senator whether he thinks it is a decent spectacle to take a mother away from her nursing infant and lock her up all night to sit on a jury?

I intended to say before I reached this point of being interrogated that I not only do not believe that there is a single argument against woman suffrage which is tenable, but also that there is not a single one which is really worthy of any serious consideration. The Senator from Louisiana is a lawyer, and he knows very well that a mother with a nursing infant, that fact being made known to the court, would be excused. He knows himself, and he has seen it done a hundred times, that for trivial excuses compared to that, men have been excused from service on a jury.

I will ask the Senator whether he knows that under the laws of Washington Territory this is a legal excuse from serving on a jury?

I am not prepared to state that it is; but there is no question in the world but that any Judge, this fact being made known, would excuse a woman from attendance upon a jury. No special authority would be required. I will state further that I have not learned that there has been any serious objection on the part of any woman summoned for jury service in that Territory to performing that duty. I have not learned that it has worked to the disadvantage of any family, but I do know that the judges of the courts have taken especial pains to commend the women who have been called to serve upon juries for the manner in which they have discharged their duty.

I wish to say further that there is no connection whatever between