Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/108

 abiding, industrious and public-spirited to be overcome by that of the ignorant, vicious, purchasable, lazy and indifferent. The ranks of the latter are largely reinforced by the "stay-at-homes," who are a permanent menace to good government. . . . Thinking people agree that some qualification should be exacted from all voters. The absurdity of the intelligent, tax paying but disfranchised woman being governed by the vote of the illiterate, shiftless loafer or pauper would be laughable were it not so serious. An educational qualification should be a paramount requisite.

Mr. Blankenburg gave statistics of the illiterates in the United States and said: "An educational qualification, wisely considered, would within a few years entirely obliterate the whole mass of this species of undesirable voters. The right of suffrage can not and should not be taken from those who at present legally enjoy it. All women of legal age with the proposed educational requirements should be enfranchised without delay but laws should be enacted demanding that all citizens, men and women alike, presenting themselves to cast their ballot after 1910 must be able to read and write. If the women suffragists will base their claim to vote upon the broad ground of good government and not demand suffrage for the ignorant woman because it is exercised by the ignorant man, they will make ten friends where they now have one."

The audience had the northern and the southern point of view on Educated Suffrage. Mrs. Gilman, who spoke on whether it would serve the best interests of the laboring classes, was alone in objecting to it. "Will exclusion from the suffrage educate and improve the illiterate masses more quickly than the use of it?" she asked. "We shall educate them sooner if we dread their votes and this is our work in common." A great deal of sentiment was developed in favor of an educational requirement 'for the suffrage and an informal rising vote showed only five opposed, but most of the officers were absent. This vote was due largely to the southern delegates and to the arguments which had been made for its necessity in this section of the country. The policy of the association had always been and continued to be to ask and work only for the removal of the sex qualification.

One of the most popular speakers was Mrs. Elizabeth M. Gilmer, known far and wide as 'Dorothy Dix," whose home was