Life and writings of Amelia Bloomer

by D. C. Bloomer

Men will behave as well I verily believe at the polls as at other public assemblies, if they will permit woman to go with them there; and if they have behaved badly heretofore, which from their continual asseverations we must believe to be the case, it is because woman has not always been there with them.

The idea advanced that woman would become debased by participating in so important and sacred a duty as the selection of those who are to be placed in power, and to whom are to be committed the interests and happiness of the whole people, comes with a bad grace from men, who are ever claiming for her superior natural virtues. They should remember that God made her woman, that He gave her equal dominion with man over the world and all that is therein, and endowed her with high moral faculties, keen perceptions of right, and a love of virtue and justice, and it is not easy to change her nature. Her delicacy and sensitiveness will take care of themselves, in any exposure, and she will be as safe at the polls as at political and other conventions, at state and county and church fairs, at railroad and Fourth of July celebrations, and the various other crowds in which she mingles freely with men. That virtue is little worth which cannot bear itself unharmed through a crowd, or awe and frown down impudence whenever it meets with it. The true woman will be woman still in whatever situation you place her; and man will become elevated just so far as he mingles in her society in the various relations of life.

In fact this argument that it would be unsafe for woman to go to the polls is one that man, at least, should be ashamed to bring forward, inasmuch as it impeaches his own gallantry and instinctive regard for woman. But, if it be true that it would really be unsafe for us to go to the polls with our husbands and fathers, all danger could be avoided by our having separate places for voting apart from theirs.

But here I am answered that it is not men whom we have to fear so much as the bad of our own sex, who will rush to the polls while the good women will stay away. To this I have to say that I have never yet met a woman that I was afraid of, or from whom I feared contamination. In the theatre and concert and festival halls, the Fourth of July gatherings, in the cars, on the fair grounds, and any day upon the street or in the stores we meet and pass by the coarse, the frail, the fallen of our sex. They have the same right to God’s pure air and sunshine as we, and we could not deprive them of it if we would and would not if we could. I see not how these are going to harm us any more at the polls than at all these other places.

The good women will vote as soon as the exercise of the right is granted them, and they will outnumber the bad more than a hundred to one. Instead then of the pure woman being contaminated, the vile woman will be awed and silenced in her presence, and led by her example into the right paths. Even those called low and vile have hearts that can be touched, and they will gladly seize the aid which the ballot and good women will bestow to raise themselves from the degraded condition into which bad men, bad laws and bad customs have plunged them.

This objection, then, which assumes such proportions in the minds of many, looks very small when viewed in the light of truth and Christian charity. I think no man would consider it good reason for depriving him of rights because a bad man also enjoyed the same rights.

This arguing that all women would go to the bad if allowed to vote because some women are bad now when none of them vote is the most absurd logic ever conceived in the brain of man, and if those who use it could see their silly reasoning in the light that sensible men and women see it there would be less of it. If the ballot makes people bad, if it is corrupting in its tendencies and destructive of virtue and goodness, then the sooner men are deprived of it the better.

All men, good and bad, black and white, corrupt, debased, treacherous, criminal, may vote and make our laws, and we hear no word against it; but if one woman does or says aught that does not square with men’s ideas of what she should do and say, then she should not have the right of self-government, and all women everywhere must on that account be disfranchised and kept in subjection!

Such reasoning might have answered once, but the intelligence of the present day rejects it, and women will not long be compelled to submit to its insults.

But, again, one says votes would be unnecessarily multiplied, that women would vote just as the men do, therefore the man’s vote will answer for both. Sound logic, truly! But let us apply this rule to men. Votes are unnecessarily multiplied now by so many men voting; a few could do it all, as well as to take the mass of men from their business and their families to vote. My husband votes the republican ticket, and many other men vote just as he does; then why not let my husband’s vote suffice for all who think as he does, and send the rest about their business? What need of so many men voting when all vote just alike?