Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/252

236 to foresee that the granting of the right of suffrage to the women of America will, in the beginning at least, strengthen that political party which will strive to limit social freedom by means of a moral police, and to increase the power of the clergy by religious compulsion. What this party did not hitherto succeed in doing it may perhaps do with the help of the American women, who, on the average, still are more dependent on the representatives of religion than American men; it will certainly succeed if the increase of votes received by the accession to its ranks of those women will not be counterbalanced. And who can and must counterbalance this increase in votes? None other than the German women! (General applause.) We might have the best of opportunities to let the German men become very uncomfortably aware of what they did, when they limited our "sphere" to the kitchen and nursery. Should we but decline to make use of a right which they had wished to withhold from us, we could expose our German brothers defenselessly to the tyranny of temperance fanatics. But no. Let us not revenge ourselves because men were blind enough to disqualify us at their own expense. Let us least of all revenge ourselves by foregoing our own rights. I see the time coming when those of our "Masters" who in the most rudely insulting manner referred us to the "sphere" dictated by themselves will beg us to leave that "sphere" and accompany them to the polls, in order that they may continue to drink their