Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/506

 stone of our republic. Up to the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the application of this great truth has been made to but one-half the citizens.

The women of the United States are now the only disfranchised class, and sex is the one remaining disqualification. A man may be idle, corrupt, vicious, utterly without a single quality necessary for purity and stability of government, but through the exercise of the suffrage he is a vital factor. A woman may be educated, industrious, moral and law-abiding, possessed of every quality needed in a pure and stable government, but, deprived of that influence which is exerted through the ballot, she is not a factor in affairs of State. Who will claim that our government is purer, wiser, stronger and more lasting by the rigid exclusion of what men themselves term "the better half" of the people?—

Every argument which enfranchises a man, enfranchises a woman. There is no escape from this logic except to declare sex the just basis of suffrage. But this position can not be maintained in view of the fact that women already have full suffrage in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, municipal suffrage in Kansas, school suffrage in twenty-five States, a vote on tax levies in Louisiana, on bond issues in Iowa, and on minor questions in various other States. They have every franchise except the Parliamentary in England, Scotland and Ireland, the full ballot in New Zealand and South and West Australia, and some form of suffrage in every English colony. In a large number of the monarchical countries certain classes of women vote. On this fundamental question of individual sovereignty surely the United States should be a leader and not a follower. The trend of the times is clearly toward equal suffrage. It will add to the credit and future strength of any party to put itself in line with the best modern and progressive thought on this question.

In the division of the world's labor an equal share falls to woman. As property holder and wage-earner her material stake in the government is equal to that of man. As wife, as mother, as individual, her moral stake is certainly as great as his. The perpetuity of the republic depends upon the careful performance of the duties of both. One is just as necessary as the other to the growth and prosperity of the country. All of these propositions are self-evident, but they are wholly foreign to the question 4at issue. The right of the individual to a vote is not founded upon the value of his stake in government, upon his moral character, his business ability or his physical strength, but simply and solely upon that guarantee of personal representation which is the essence of a true republic, a true democracy.

The literal definition of these two terms is, "a State in which the sovereign power resides in the whole body of the people and is exercised by representatives elected by them." By the Declaration of Independence, by the rules of equity, by the laws of justice, women equally with men are entitled to exercise this sovereign power, through the franchise, the only legal means provided. But what-