Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/192

 this argument is, that women, as a whole, will not form the same judgment as they would themselves. Voting intelligently to them would mean voting as they vote. Orthodoxy is their doxy. Egotism, pure and simple, is the bottom fact of most of the opposition to the political emancipation of women—egotism, when it is not prejudice. If it were possible to demonstrate beyond all shadow of a doubt that the majority of the new voters would vote for either of the two dominant political parties, that party would enfranchise women at the earliest possible moment.

It is frequently suggested by anti-suffragists that those countries where women vote can well afford to take the risk involved, because they have no difficult questions to solve such as lie within the province of the statesmen who govern a vast Empire like this. It is shown that the population of Australia is not so large as that of the County of London, that the combined populations of all the countries where women vote is not as large as the total population of Great Britain and Ireland, and it is inferred from this fact that these countries are of complete insignificance. It is forgotten that the Western States of America are much bigger than Great Britain, that they and our own Colonies hold the future in their hands, and may be States