Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/301

Rh has ever instituted a just reform until it became practically expedient to do so—through forcible demand or hope of gain.

Now, the Democratic party gave the suffrage to the laboring men because it knew this would add to the voting strength of the Democratic party—and in this it was correct. The Republican party gave the negroes the suffrage because it knew the negro vote would be Republican, and would give the Republican party hope to control the South, though "justice" was the platform cry in each case, yet abstract justice did not enter into either case.

The cause of woman suffrage depends, at present, wholly on inherent abstract justice. No party has anything to gain from it so neither party will voluntarily hand it to them. If women will become interested, and will, as a body—not, of course, every woman—but if the general mass will make either party feel that practically the solid woman vote will, because of inherent circumstances, go to that party—women will get the suffrage at once. If the great body of women will become so interested as to know their rights and demand them in no uncertain terms, making both parties feel that they will not submit longer to this injustice, but that every home in the land will feel their decided revolt, each party will hasten to be the first to earn the woman gratitude by advocating the woman vote. An aroused popular opinion is all controlling everywhere.

Women are the mothers and instructors of men, and if the general opinion among women was earnestly for the right to vote there would in two or three generations be a body of men voters taught to believe in the justice of woman suffrage.

The existing political powers will not offer the voting franchise to women till they see some selfish gain in it. Women must, and only women can, make them see that gain—the hope of new recruits or the fear of moral revolt.

The women of the land offer neither that hope nor that fear. They are indifferent. Portland is a city of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants and not once was the church, in which the National Association met, filled. Women of national and worldwide reputation were there; eloquent women were there; but apparently there were not five hundred women in Portland who took any interest in this interesting subject and this interesting convention.

Notwithstanding the greater freedom of women today, women, as a whole, are still dependents, still under masculine domination, still idlers or drudges. They do not, as a whole, care anything about the suffrage question; so I remain obstinate in my belief that the work of these leaders in a just and righteous cause should be among the women.

All things come to a vast and united body of the people which knows what it wants and insistently demands it. Women must, as a class, demand the suffrage; women as a class must be economically and mentally free. These, in my belief, are the prerequisites.

My own address before the National Woman's Suffrage Association was an endeavor to show that when women do vote, it will be only so many added votes to be used, as now, in the various parties by the real masters of the nation, the professional politicians, to register their will; and this will is registered by a majority vote, and this majority is got honestly, if it can be, but by fraud, purchase and theft, if necessary and possible.

Thus a half of the nation, often the real majority of the nation, have their pockets picked (as in the case of the protective tariff) and their opinions tyrannized over by a mere margin of majority—often corruptly secured. And I said it made little difference in principle whether monopolies were established or opinions obliterated by the edict of a majority or the edict of a czar. Of course, there is always a chance under the ballot system to change the majority, and the ballot saves the use of the bullet in creating a revolution. But the rule by majority is a clumsy and unphilosophical method. The true solution will be to so educate the masses that economic freedom and equality of opportunity (which never have existed) may be reached by withdrawing from the state every function it now has, except to keep peace and order. Leaving all commerce, all industry and all social institutions to be arranged by the free individuals of society, by voluntary co-operation. To this individuals will be urged by the strongest of all natural forces, self-interest, which in such a state of freedom and of non-interference will make each one see that his own best interest, his own best protection is to join in the protection of his neighbor and the recognition of his neighbor's rights.

Nor is this "government" by golden rule, mere idealism. When all the engines of power, coercion, taxation, political grafting and political control over property are abolished and there remains no possibility of state interference or compulsion against the peaceable man who recognizes the equal rights of all other men of peaceable freedom, then there will be true equal opportunity for all, in use of the land and in use of all the institutions of commerce and of society; and the dullest must perceive that to be secure in his own rights he must respect the rights of others. To share in the