Certainly in many cases these are about the only matters to which some of our corporate bodies devote their attention, and surely, surely feminine nincompoopery could go no further than this!
There is a town in Kansas, called Oskaloosa, of which the Mayor and other members of the Corporation are all women. Their first term of office has been so triumphantly progressive that they have been enthusiastically re-elected, and within twelve months the place has made such wonderful strides in the trifling matters of social morality, sanitation, and prosperity, that it is the wonder of surrounding towns.
After so signal a proof of feminine capacity, it argues great paucity of brains for anyone to insinuate that a clever, capable woman is less able to form a sensible opinion as to the relative merits of candidates for office than a man who perhaps spends half his days in loafing about public houses or race courses, and half his nights in dens of infamy. A truly moral judgment we need expect from such truly moral voters!
I meet an individual in the street. His legitimate avocation is that of bird-catching. He has been doing good business, and has spent part of his precarious earnings in sundry “two-pennorths” of gin, and in a paper of vile tobacco. He positively reeks of low life, and pollutes the atmosphere as he staggers through the streets. An unfortunate dog crosses his path. He gives it a vicious kick, and sends it howling and limping to a neighbouring cabmen’s shelter for sympathy. The dog’s howls remind him of the miserable wife and children at home who are destined to feel the weight of his kicks and blows, and a demoniac, exulting grin of conscious masculine superiority spreads over his face, while he unconsciously increases his speed, in order the sooner to be at the game he loves above all others.
Am I to believe that this thing is better able to judge of the merits of a candidate for electoral honours than I am simply because it is a MAN?
Am I to assume that this reptile is legally and morally better fitted to take a place among our legislators than I, solely because it is a MAN?
Perish the thought! Man’s arrogance and woman’s cowardice have reigned long enough, and it behoves my countrywomen to assert their rights and privileges without further delay.
Never mind what the men say. They cannot say more than they have said. Never mind what the weak-minded women say. Their opinions are not worth heeding.
We are beginning to understand all we have been deprived of. We have clear ideas as to what we want. We are perfectly aware that we have an uphill fight, and plenty of senseless opposition to encounter. But we also know that “Patience overcometh all things.”
Woman has up to now proved that she is superabundantly gifted with a spurious, undesirable sort of patience. It has hitherto been of the passive and take-things-as-a-matter-of-course kind. All that wants altering. Patience still, if you like. But it must be active, and coupled with such steady determination as shall ensure the realisation of all our hopes, and make political and social equality of the sexes a realisation of the near future.