Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/175

 the white women of this country and the black men of the United States in the days of the Civil War.

Of course, it is not suggested for a moment that the parallel is perfect. It is sound only in this one particular, viz., that those who have never known freedom must not be expected to know the value of freedom. The worst feature of black slavery was not the physical cruelty, but the soul-hurt of it. A slave is not a slave when he hates his chains and seeks to cast them aside; but he is a slave indeed when he loves his slavery and declines to be free when freedom is offered him. The argument that, because some women do not want the vote all women should be denied it, is both foolish and unfair. It is unfair to the women who want the vote; but it is much more cruel to the women who do not want the vote. The women who want the vote, which is the symbol to them of eternal things, are, by their aspirations, saved from the spiritual decay that comes to souls that sleep; but, for their own sakes, the women who do not want the vote ought to be compelled to have it, with all that it implies, in order that they may learn through its possession and its use a deeper self-respect than many of them have hitherto developed.

If the argument that men and women ought not to have what they do not want is a sound