As a mere matter of policy, to say nothing of justice, how much wiser it would be to assume that men are ready and willing to change unjust laws and customs whenever the better way is made clear and then to ask to have all evils that laws can remedy removed. Whenever this course has been practiced it has always been successful and therefore should first be tried. For any men who would give up the law-making power to women in order to remedy existing evils, would surely be those most ready to enact the needful laws themselves.
The woman suffrage party is so extensively organized, with such energetic and persistent leaders and such ably conducted papers and tracts, that those of our sex who are opposed to this measure begin to feel disturbed and anxious lest it should finally be consummated. Instead of meeting this danger by ridicule and obloquy I would suggest that practical methods be instituted in which conservative men and women can unite, and which the most radical will approve and aid.
There are many ways in which great influence can be exerted without any regular organization or
establishing newspapers or circulating tracts as is now so vigorously carried on by those favoring woman suffrage. One method might be enlisting editors of newspapers and magazines to promote the circulation of this little volume and also to insert extracts of some of the most effective portions in their columns. Another might be to present this work to the clergymen and seek their influence and counsel in promoting its aims.[198:A]
[198:A] A small periodical, published in Baltimore, Md., entitled the True Woman, ably edited by Mrs. Charlotte E. McKay, is valuable as a cheap and excellent tract with the same aim.
Still another might be, efforts to promote the establishment of such a University for Women as the one here indicated, commencing with seeking endowments for the Health and Domestic departments in connection with some flourishing literary institution, for the purpose of restoring women teachers to health, and also for training pupils to become health-keepers in families, schools, and communities.
The importance of this last measure will appear in the following extract from a public address of a regularly educated American physician:
It is much to be deplored that we have no chair devoted to Hygiene in any of our medical colleges. During four courses of Lectures, that I attended, one of them in Paris, I never heard a single lecture upon the Laws of Health; and when on one occasion I asked one of our Professors if he would not devote one or more of his course to this subject, he replied, that he ought to, but feared he would not find time; and then jokingly remarked, that we would find it more to our interests to learn how to cure people than to keep them well; that we would get gratitude and money for healing the sick, but neither the one nor the other for preserving the health of the people, however well we might do it.