Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/105

 answer them on the spur of the moment to the delight of her audience. 'If women voted," was one of them, "would they not have to sit on juries?" "Many women would be glad of a chance to sit on anything," she answered with a smile. 'There are women who stand up and wash six days in the week at 75 cents a day who would like to take a vacation and sit on a jury at $1.50. Some women would like to sit on a jury at the trial of the sharks that live by corrupting boys and girls. It would be easier for a woman to sit on a jury and send to the penitentiary the men who are trying to ruin her boy than to be always watching the boy." Another question was: "Have not men a better right to the suffrage because they have to support the family?" She answered: "It is fallacy to say that the men support the women. The men by their industry provide the raw material and the women by their industry turn it into clothing and nourishment. When my father sent home a barrel of flour my mother did not lead us eight youngsters up to that barrel of raw flour at mealtime and say, "Children, here is your dinner." When he bought a bolt of cloth she did not take that bolt of cloth and wind it around us and say, 'Children, here are the clothes your father has sent you.' The woman has always done her full share of supporting the family. In the South under the old régime she bore more than an equal part of the care, for the planter could hire an overseer for the plantation work but the wife could not hire one for the work of the house."

Notwithstanding the utmost care and tact on the part of those who had the convention in charge the "color question" kept cropping out. Finally Dr. Shaw said: "Here is a query that has been dropped in the box again and again and now I am asked if I am afraid to answer it: 'Will not woman suffrage make the black woman the political equal of the white woman and does not political equality mean social equality?' If it does then the men by keeping both white and black women disfranchised have already established social equality!' The question was not asked again.

One of the able addresses during the convention was that of Mrs. Hala Hammond Butt, president of the Mississippi Suffrage Association, entitled, Restricted Suffrage from a Southern Point