Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/442

 ature and the unhealthy cigarette; and what is equally important, honest enforcement of such laws and ordinances.

One class can not, will not, legislate better for all classes than they can do for themselves. So men alone can not legislate better for women and men than can the two for both. Women need the ballot to protect themselves and all that they hold dear.

The hearing was closed by Miss Shaw, who said in ending her remarks::

Dire results have been predicted at every step of radical progress. When women first enjoyed higher education the cry went out that the home would be destroyed. It was said that if all the women were educated, all would become bluestockings, and if all women became bluestockings all would write books, and if all women wrote books what would become of the homes, who would rear the children? But the schools were opened and women entered them, and it has been discovered that the intelligent woman makes a wiser mother, a better homemaker and a much more desirable companion, friend and wife than a woman who is illiterate, whose intellectual horizon is narrowed.

In many of the States where the statutes were based on the old English common law, the husband absorbed the wife's property as he absorbed her personal rights. Then came the demand for property rights for wives, but the cry went up they will desert their homes. Then it was found there were thousands of women who could have no home if they were not permitted to pursue avocations in the outside world. And then it was said that the moral life of women would be degraded by public contact. Yet the statistics show that in those occupations in which women are able to earn a livelihood in an honorable and respectable manner they have raised the standard of morality rather than lowered it.

The results have not been those which were predicted. The homes have not been broken up; for human hearts are and always will be the same, and so long as God has established in this world a greater force than all other forces combined—which we call the divine gravity of love—just so long human hearts will continue to be drawn together, homes will be founded, families will be reared; and never so good a home, never so good a family, as those founded in justice and educated upon right principles. Consequently the industrial emancipation of women has been of benefit to the home, to women and to men.

The claim is made that we are building a barrier between men and women; that we are antagonistic because men are men and we are women. This is not true. We believe there never was a time when men and women were such good friends as now, when they esteemed each other as they do now. We have coeducation in our schools; boys and girls work side by side and study and recite together. When coeducation was first tried men thought they would easily carry off the honors; but soon they learned their mistake.