Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/235

Rh queens, of popes and bishops, and man's headship in the State, the Church, and the Home will be heard of no more forever.

All men of intelligence appreciate the power of holding the ballot in their own hands; of having a voice in the laws under which they live; of enjoying the liberty of self-government. Those who have known the satisfaction of wielding political influence would not willingly accept the degradation of disfranchisement. Yet men can not understand why women should feel aggrieved at being deprived of this same protection, dignity and power. This is the Gibraltar of our difficulties to-day. We can not make men see that women feel the humiliation of their petty distinctions of sex precisely as the black man feels those of color. It is no palliation of our wrongs to say that we are not socially ostracized as he is, so long as we are politically ostracized as he is not. That all orders of foreigners also rank politically above the most intelligent, highly-educated women—native-born Americans—is indeed the most bitter drop in the cup of our grief which we are compelled to swallow.

Again, the degradation of woman in the world of work is another result of her disfranchisement. Some deny that, and say the laboring classes of men have the ballot yet they are still helpless victims of capitalists. They have the power and hold the weapon of defense but have not yet learned how to use it. The bayonet, the sword, the gun, are of no value to the soldier until he knows how to wield them. Yet without the weapons of defense what could individuals and nations do in time of war for their own protection? The first step in learning to use a gun or a ballot is to possess one.

Man has the prestige of centuries in his favor, with the force to maintain it, and he has possession of the throne, which is nine-tenths of the law. He has statutes and Scriptures and the universal usages of society all on his side. What have women? The settled dissatisfaction of half the race, the unorganized protests of the few, and the open resistance of still fewer. But we have truth and justice on our side and the natural love of freedom and, step by step, we shall undermine the present, form of civilization and inaugurate the mightiest revolution the world has ever witnessed. But its far-reaching consequences themselves increase the obstacles in the way of success, for the selfish interests of all classes are against us. The rulers in the State are not willing to share their power with a class over whom as equals they could never obtain absolute control, whose votes they could not manipulate to maintain the present conditions of injustice and oppression.

Again, the rulers in the church are hostile to liberty for a sex supposed for wise purposes to have been subordinated to man by divine decree. The equality of woman as a factor in religious organizations would compel an entire change in church canons, discipline, authority, and many doctrines of the Christian faith. As a matter of self-preservation, the church has no interest in the emancipation of woman, as its very existence depends on her blind faith.