Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/103

 BY CONSTANCE SMEDLEY

T is universally acknowledged that marriage and motherhood are the woman's crown. From every point of view the married woman is considered a more mature, developed, and responsible being than the spinster; she is, moreover, the most precious possession of the nation, bearing and rearing, as she does, its children. A mother's instinct is held to be unerring; her sympathies are supposed to be wider and more humanised; her altruism is proverbial.

As a citizen all men would place her value higher than the unmarried woman who exists to support herself, however cultured and useful to the community the latter's intelligence may be. They know that her experience of life is necessarily deeper, and her judgment sounder; they know also the services which a good wife and mother renders to her nation are of the most supreme importance.

And yet here comes the extraordinary inconsistency. There are many men who support the plea of the working woman for her civic rights on the basis that she is a ratepayer, who yet absolutely 99