“10. The senator here claims that men are ‘vain, ambitious and aspiring, caring more to be voted for than to vote,’ and he fears that women will show the same weakness if permitted to vote. It is to be hoped, for the credit of womanhood, that if a woman ever takes his seat she will not disgrace herself by the utterance of such senseless twaddle in opposition to any measure as characterized his effort on the proposed amendment!
“13. ‘Because there must be a dividing line, somewhere, between those who may vote and who may not,’ etc. Then why not let the educated, intelligent, sober and moral of both sexes vote, and shut out the ignorant, drunken and immoral? Why let men vote and make laws, no matter how low and vile they may be, simply because they are men while those who are subject to the man-made laws are denied the right to vote, simply because they are women? The line so drawn is unnatural, unjust, and productive of great wrong to all parties. The line as now drawn shuts out only Indians, idiots, and women.
“14. Here our senator throws all the responsibility upon the ‘All-wise Author of our natures,’ and claims that He has made laws to prevent woman entering the ‘moonshine and monsoon of politics,’ forgetting that God called Deborah to the political field and made her a judge in Israel, and that for all time there have been queens and rulers among women, evidently with God’s approval. The All-Father gave woman an intelligent mind and capacity for governing, and then left her free to exercise her gifts as she saw fit; and if there be times when by sickness or other circumstance she may be prevented from the discharge of political duties, so also there are times and circumstances when men are kept from the polls and from office, and if this be reason why the former should not be enfranchised then it is also reason why the latter should be disfranchised.
“15. ‘Because the wife has a voice and a vote already, and her husband is her agent to carry that vote to the ballot-box.’ How is it about the thousands of women who have no husbands to do such errands for them? How does this proxy-voting work when the wife differs with the husband on the question to be voted on? Does he waive his own preference and deposit the vote in accordance with her wishes? If he does not, then does he represent her? The only just course is to let her deposit her own vote; then both will be represented. Now, they are not. Man deposits his vote regardless of his wife’s interests and wishes.
“17. ‘Because there cannot be two equal heads in the same family.’ ‘Where the wife is anybody, the husband must be a nobody.’ ‘If the wife has sense enough to vote, the husband is dwarfed.’ So, according to our senator, the wife should be a weak-minded, senseless thing deprived of all right of opinion, so that the husband may rise to the dignity of a voter. Is not this sound logic? Did the superior brain of man ever before conceive of so strong an argument why woman should not vote? Two heads are better than one, Mr. Senator, and there may be two equal heads in the same family, at the same time, and neither of them be ‘dwarfed’ or belittled by the superiority of the other. If such is not the condition of your family, your wife is a subject for sympathy.
“18. ‘Because politics would pervert and destroy woman’s nature, the religious element,’ etc. God implanted in woman’s nature a love of home and a love of her offspring, and also an instinctive knowledge of what is proper and what improper for her to do; and it needs no laws of man’s making to incite the one or compel the other. Give her her rights and her own good sense will teach her how to use them. Does the ballot change man’s nature for the worse? Why then woman’s?
“Pp. 11, 12, 19, 20 and 21. These concluding reasons show a dreadful imaginative picture of the condition of things that would exist in the family should women be permitted to go to the polls and exercise the rights secured to them by the laws of their country. ‘Strife, contention, jealousy, hatred, slander, rivalry, intemperance, licentiousness, temper, retaliation, suicide, suspicion, discord, divorce,’ all these are to come to our good senator’s family when his wife has a right to vote. He anticipates it all and is doing all he can to avert the dire calamity. But while he is to be commiserated, he must remember that all families are not alike, and where he sees only dire disaster other men see the dawning of a better day and are ready to ‘turn the crank’ that shall hasten it on. Other men do not fear and tremble; but calmly await the time when they can take their wives on their arms and, side by side, go to the polls and drop in the little paper that declares them equal in rights and privileges. In these families there will be no war, for such men are proud to own their wives their equals and do not feel that they themselves are dwarfed thereby. As the ballot elevates and ennobles man, so they believe it will be with woman, and they cannot understand how rendering justice to her is going to convert her into the coarse, vile, quarrelsome thing our senator predicts, or how acknowledging her the equal of her husband is going to ‘dwarf’ men and convert them into ruffians and nobodies.
“A. B.”
ON HOUSEKEEPING—WOMAN’S BURDENS.
The following essay on this subject was read by Mrs. Bloomer before a local society or club in Council Bluffs: