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And therefore I put it first, if not greatest, of the uses of the developed woman that she will foster the development of men.

But she will also foster the development of the home and the human family, and make that institution truly beautiful in its nature and great in its effect. That such results will ultimately flow from this political reform, is proved by the outcries which oppose it: "You are bringing dissension into our homes!" "You are striking a blow at the family, which is the cornerstone of society!" - hysterical outcries from persons whose families are already tottering. Certain it is that many of these cornerstones of society are tottering. And why are they tottering? Because there dwell in them triviality and vacuity, which prepare the way of the devil. Who can think that intellectual divergence, disagreement upon a great public question, could disrupt a family worth holding together? On the contrary, nothing save a community of great interests, with agreement and disagreement inevitable, can revive a fading romance. When we have made matrimony synonymous with a high and equal comradeship, we shall have done the one thing that we can do to rescue those families which are the tottering cornerstones of society.

A greater service of the developed woman, however, will be her service in motherhood. For we are in extreme need of mothers who have that wisdom which comes from wide interest, and wide activity, and wide experience of the world, and from no other source under the sun. To hear the sacred duty of motherhood advanced as a reason why woman should not become publicspirited and active and effective, you would think we had no greater duty to our race and nation than to rear in innocence a generation of grown-up babies. Keep your mothers in a state of invalid remoteness from genuine life, and who is to arm the young with efficient virtue? Are their mothers only to suckle them, and then for their education pass them over to some one who knows life? To educate a child is to lead him out into the world of his experience; it is not to propel him with ignorant admonitions from the door. A million lives wrecked at the off-go can bear witness to the failure of that method. I think that the

best thing you could add to the mothers of posterity is a little of the rough sagacity and humor of public affairs.

Such are the great reasons for making the sexes equal in politics; such have been the reasons ever since the question was first broached in the age of Pericles. It is not merely a demand for justice upon the part of citizens unrecognized. It is not a plan to prevent corrupt practices in politics, or instill into the people's representatives any virtue other than the virtue of representing the whole people. It is an act demanded by the ideal principle to the proof of which our government is devoted. It is the solution, indicated by that principle, of one of the chief problems of our industrial civilization. And it is a heroic step that we can take with nature in the evolution of a great and symmetrical race.

47. SOME OF THE REASONS AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE.1

It has been said that the question of the rights and employment of women should be treated without regard to sex. It should rather be said that those who consider it regardless of sex do not consider it at all. It will not do to exclude from the problem the chief factor in it, and deal with women only as if they were smaller and weaker men. Yet these have been the tactics of the agitators for female suffrage, and to them they mainly owe what success they have had. Hence their extreme sensitiveness whenever the subject is approached on its most essential side. If it could be treated like other subjects, and discussed fully and freely, the cause of the self-styled reformers would have been hopeless from the first. It is happy for them that the relations of women to society cannot be so discussed without giving just offense. Their most important considerations can be touched but slightly; and even then offense will be taken.

Whatever liberty the best civilization may accord to women, they must always be subject to restrictions unknown to the other

1 By Francis Parkman. Pamphlet issued by the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women. This polemic was first published some time between 1876 and 1880.

sex, and they can never dispense with the protecting influences which society throws about them. A man, in lonely places, has nothing to lose but life and property; and he has nerve and muscles to defend them. He is free to go whither he pleases, and run what risks he pleases. Without a radical change in human nature, of which the world has never given the faintest sign, women cannot be equally emancipated. It is not a question of custom, habit, or public opinion; but of an all-pervading force, always formidable in the vast number of men in whom it is not controlled by higher forces. A woman is subject, also, to many other restrictions, more or less stringent, necessary to the maintenance of self-respect and the respect of others, and yet placing her at a disadvantage, as compared to men, in the active work of the world. All this is mere truism, but the plainest truism may be ignored in the interest of a theory or a cause."

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Again, everybody knows that the physical and mental constitution of woman is more delicate than in the other sex; and, we may add, the relations between mind and body are more intimate and subtile. It is true that they are abundantly so in men; but their harder organism is neither so sensitive to disturbing influences nor subject to so many of them.

It is these and other inherent conditions, joined to the engrossing nature of a woman's special functions, that have determined through all time her relative position. What we have just said— and we might have said much more is meant as a reminder that her greatest limitations are not of human origin. Men did not make them, and they cannot unmake them. Through them, God and Nature have ordained that those subject to them shall not be forced to join in the harsh conflicts of the world militant. It is folly to ignore them, or try to counteract them by political and social quackery. They set at naught legislatures and peoples.

Here we may notice an idea which seems to prevail among the woman suffragists, that they have argued away the causes which have always determined the substantial relations of the sexes. This notion arises mainly from the fact that they have had the debate very much to themselves. Their case is that of the self-made philosopher who attacked the theory of gravitation,

and, because nobody took the trouble to answer him, boasted that he had demolished it, and called it an error of the past.

The frequent low state of health among American women is a fact as undeniable as it is deplorable.

In this condition of things, what do certain women demand for the good of their sex? To add to the excitements that are wasting them other and greater excitements, and to cares too much for their strength other and greater cares. Because they cannot do their own work, to require them to add to it the work of men, and launch them into the turmoil where the most robust sometimes fail. It is much as if a man in a state of nervous exhaustion were told by his physician to enter at once for a foot race or a boxing match.

To hold the man responsible and yet deprive him of power is neither just nor rational. The man is the natural head of the family, and is responsible for its maintenance and order. Hence he ought to control the social and business agencies which are essential to the successful discharge of the trust imposed upon him. If he is deprived of any part of this control, he should be freed also in the same measure from the responsibilities attached to it.

Woman suffrage must have one of two effects. If, as many of its advocates complain, women are subservient to men, and do nothing but what they desire, then woman suffrage will have no other result than to increase the power of the other sex; if, on the other hand, women vote as they see fit, without regarding their husbands, then unhappy marriages will be multiplied and divorces redoubled. We cannot afford to add to the elements of domestic unhappiness.

One of the chief dangers of popular government is that of inconsiderate and rash legislation. In impatience to be rid of one evil, ulterior consequences are apt to be forgotten. In the haste to redress one wrong, a door may be opened to many. This danger would be increased immeasurably if the most impulsive and excitable half of humanity had an equal voice in the making of laws, and in the administration of them. Abstract right would then be made to prevail after a fashion somewhat startling. A lady of intelligence and admirable intentions, an ardent partisan

on principles of pure humanitarianism, confessed that, in the last presidential election, Florida had given a majority for the Democrats; but insisted that it was right to count it for Hayes, because other States had been counted wrongfully for Tilden. It was impossible to make her comprehend that government conducted on such principles would end in anarchy. In politics, the virtues of women would sometimes be as dangerous as their faults.

If the better class of women flatter themselves that they can control the others, they are doomed to disappointment. They will be outvoted in their own kitchens, without reckoning the agglomerations of poverty, ignorance, and vice, that form a startling proportion of our city populations. It is here that the male vote alone threatens our system with its darkest perils. The female vote would enormously increase the evil, for it is often more numerous, always more impulsive and less subject to reason, and almost devoid of the sense of responsibility. Here the bad politician would find his richest resources. He could not reach the better class of female voters, but the rest would be ready to his hand. Three fourths of them, when not urged by some pressing need or contagious passion, would be moved, not by principles, but by personal predilections.

It is not woman's virtues that would be prominent or influential in the political arena. They would shun it by an invincible repulsion; and the opposite qualities would be drawn into it. The Washington lobby has given us some means of judging what we may expect from the woman "inside politics." If politics are to be purified by artfulness, effrontery, insensibility, a pushing selfassertion, and a glib tongue, then we may look for regeneration; for the typical female politician will be richly endowed with all these gifts.

Thus accoutered for the conflict, she may fairly hope to have the better of her masculine antagonist. A woman has the inalienable right of attacking without being attacked in turn. She may strike, but must not be struck, either literally or figuratively. Most women refrain from abusing their privilege of noncombatants; but there are those in whom the sense of impunity breeds the cowardly courage of the virago.

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