Page:Objections to Woman Suffrage Answered.djvu/2

2 the same terms as men. Every governor has announced in his annual message that Woman Suffrage is a success. Successive governors, the judges of the Supreme Court, the members of Congress, the presiding elder of the M. E. Church the newspapers of both parties, all agree that Woman Suffrage works well and gives satisfaction in three States, viz.: Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah.

12. It would put the control of the State and nation into the hands of the foreign element.

In every State there are more women who can read and write than all the illiterate men and women combined. In every State there are more American women than all the foreign men and women combined. In every State the votes of women will double intelligent majority, and diminish the influence of the ignorant minority one-half. In the Southern States taken together, there are more white women than all the colored men and women combined. So that the white majorities when women vote, will be larger than the total number of white male voters, if all women and colored men were excluded. There are in Massachusetts 574,390 women over twenty years of age who can read and write; those only can becomesbecome [sic] voters under the State constitution; 401,365 of these are Americans; 173,025 of foreign birth. (See U.S. Census of 1885.)

13. It would put our cities under Roman Catholic control.

There are in all our large cities, even in New York, more Protestant women than Roman Catholic women; more American women than foreign women. There are in Boston 117,950 over twenty years old, who an read and write; 67,934 of these are Americans; 50,016 are of foreign birth (See U.S. Census of 1885.)

14. It would diminish respect for women.

Voting is power. Power always commands respect. To be weak is to be miserable. How many men are tolerated in society only because they are rich and powerful! Woman armed with the ballot will be stronger and more respected than ever before.

15. It is contrary to the Bible.

Not so. In the beginning, we are told, God made man in his own image male and female, and gave them dominion; not man dominion over woman. Among the Jews, God's chosen people, Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, a married woman, was judge, and led their armies to victory. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, but all are one. Women as well as men are commanded to "call no man master." Nowhere is it

said in the Bible to women, "Thou shalt not vote."

16. Women have not physical strength to enforce laws; therefore they should not help make them.

One-half our male voters have not physical strength to enforce laws, yet they help make them. Most lawyers, judges, physicians, ministers, merchants, editors, authors, legislators and congressmen, and all men over forty-five years old, are exempt from military service on the ground of physical incapacity. (See statistics of the late war.) Voting is the authoritative expression of an opinion. It requires intelligence, conscience, and patriotism, not muscle. All the physical force of society is subject to call to enforce law, but cannot create law. Moral force, such as women possess, is as necessary as physical force to national well-being.

17. If women vote they must fight.

Women are the mothers of men. Lucy Stone says: "Some woman perils her life for her country every time a soldier is born. Day and night she does picket duty by his cradle. For years she is his quartermaster, and gathers his rations. And then, when he becomes a man and a voter, shall he say to his mother, 'If you want to vote you must first kill somebody?' It is a coward's argument!"

18. It will make domestic discord when women vote contrary to their husbands.

In cases where husbands and wives vote together it will be an additional source of sympathy and bond of union. In cases where they vote differently they will agree to differ, as they now do in religious matters. A man will not respect his wife the less because she has an opinion of her own and is free to express it.

19. It will only double the vote—women will vote as their husbands do.

Then the family will cast two votes instead of one. But the quality of the voters changes the quality of politics. A political party of men and women will not be the same as a party of men alone. Women on an average are more peaceable, refined, temperate, chaste, economical, humane, and law-abiding than men. These qualities will influence the character of the Government. The united votes of men and women will give the fullest, fairest, and most accurate expression of public opinion. The most civilized class of men now spend their leisure in the society of educated women. They go with women to lectures, church meetings, concerts and parties. They do not go to the primary meetings because the women are excluded. Let the women go, and the men will go too. Instead of neither we shall have both as voters.

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