Josiah Allen on the Woman Question

by Marietta Holley

Well, almost to once he begun to Samantha about wimmen's votin', runnin' the idee down to the very lowest notch it could go on the masculine stillyards. You see my forthcomin' great work agin Wimmen Rights has excited the male Jonesvillians dretfully, and emboldened 'em, till they act as fierce and bold as lions when they're talkin' to females.

They realize that when that immortal work is lanched onto the waitin' world the cause of Woman's Suffrage will collapse like the bladders we used to blow up in childhood, jest as sharp and sudden and jest as windy. They know that them that uphold such uroneous beliefs won't be nothin' nor nobody then, and so they begin beforehand to act more hauty and uppish towards Suffragists, and browbeat 'em. And he poked fun at the cause and slurred at it, and sneered at it till I didn't know but Samantha would take lumbago from his remarks, but she didn't seem to.

She had got her mornin's work all did up slick, her gingham apron hung up behind the kitchen door, and she'd resoomed her white one trimmed with tattin'. And she sot knittin' on a pair of blue woosted socks for me, her linement as smooth and onrumpled as her hair, which wuz combed smooth round her forward. And she kep' on with her knittin', only once in a while she would look up at him over her specs in the queer way she has at times, but still kep' lookin' cam, and sayin' nothin'.

And her camness and her silence seemed to spur him on and make him bolder and more aggressiver. He thought she wuz afraid on him, but I knowed she wuzn't.

At last he flung out the remark to her that if wimmen could vote it would be the bad wimmen who would flock to the poles; Samantha wuz jest turnin' the heel in my sock and after she made the turn she said that that wuzn't so, and she brought up statisticks and throwed at him (still a knittin' and seamin' two and two) provin' that it is the educated conscientious wimmen who want to help the good men of the country to make the laws to try to make the world a safer place for their children, a better, cleaner place for every one, and she threw some statements at him from States that had Woman's Suffrage for years and years to prove her insertion, but the statisticks, the figgers and the proofs piled about him onheeded, for he had got hot and excited by this time and it seemed as if Samantha's very camness madded him, and her knittin', and her seamin' two and two, and her countin' "one—two," to herself once in a while.

And sez he agin in a overbearin' skairful voice, intended to intimidate females, "I tell you it is the bad wimmen who will rush to the poles, and I can prove what I say." Sez he, "The meaner anybody is the more and the oftener they want to vote; my father is one of the best of men and you can't hardly git him to stir his stumps 'lection day. And my wife's father is the meanest man in the country and he will vote from mornin' till night for either party and sell his vote where he can git the highest figger—(he don't live happy with his wife, and he went on) and so will her Uncle Josh sell his vote to anybody for a glass of whiskey, and most all the men on her side will sell their vote and make money by it. And I know more'n a dozen men right round here who do the same thing. I don't spoze you wimmen read much of any, but if you did you'd see how common graft and fraud is in politics, all the way from Jonesville to Washington. So you see," sez he, "I can prove right out what I said that it is the bad wimmen who would vote."

Samantha counted "two and two" to herself, and then said in a mild axent, "Why would a bad woman's vote be worse than a bad man's?" The Vice President see in a minute into what a deep hole his excitement and voylent desire to prove his argument had led him, and he acted sheepish as a sheep.

But anon he revived and ketched holt of the first argument he could lay his hand on, to prop up his side of the question. It wuz a argument he had read about, he didn't believe it himself, but ketched at it in his hurry.

Sez he, "We expect more from wimmen than we do from men; they're naterally better than men and we want to keep 'em so, keep 'em out of the dirt of public affairs."