husband, son—yet listen to the cry of thousands of women less favored than yourselves, whose natural protectors, as we style them, the licensed dram-shop transforms into abusive tyrants, from whom they must be protected, or who, being deprived of husband and father, cry aloud of the injustice inflicted upon them in their dependent condition by laws framed in unrighteousness. Listen, we say, to their cry, and will you not desire, yea will you not demand the right to give your voice on all these questions in the only way in which you can effectually do so—the use of the ballot? Why, it would seem that every earnest, philanthropic woman would desire to do so, even were she obliged to go to the polls in their present condition instead of the reformed and purified state that will inevitably result from the enfranchisement of women.
The women of Kansas who, next to the Pilgrim mothers of America, have endured more privations and taken a more active part in public affaire than any other women of America, should of all others have a voice in controlling the affairs of State and framing the laws by which they shall be governed. Say some opposers, "the good and true women would not vote, but only the ignorant and vicious." What a monstrous libel upon the intelligence and public spirit of the women of Kansas! and just so certainly as women obtain the ballot, as far as the intelligent and virtuous outnumber the ignorant and abandoned, will the vote of women swell the majority for just and righteous measures—for the moral and upright man—the man who has never imbrued his hands in blood—who has never robbed woman of her virtue—whose senses are never drowned in the intoxicating bowl. Why! this is the great moral question of the day! It is not that the prominent opposers of this measure fear that it will drag women down; it is because they fear, and justly, that women will lift suffrage so far into the realm of purity and morality that they can never be able even to offer themselves as caudidates for office. Then will the destinies of our country be no more decided at druuken orgics, amid scenes that our opponents say it would degrade us to witness, but all questions of public weal will be decided in the hearts and at the firesides of pure-hearted men and women, surrounded by those whose destinies are dearer than life, and that decision shall be enforced when men and women shall together go up to the temple of justice to deposit their ballots.
Whatever, then, may be the opinion of fair ladies who dwell in ceiled houses in our older Eastern States and cities, who like lilies, neither toil nor spin, whose fair hands would gather close their silken apparel at the thought of touching the homelier garments of many a heroine of Kansas—whatever they may say in reference to this question, we, the women of the Spartan State, declare, we want to vote.
By order of the Executive Committee.
| Mrs. Hon. E. G. Ross, | Mrs, Griffith, | |
| Mrs. Ex Gov. Robinson, | Mrs. R. S. Tenney, | |
| Mrs. Judge Thacher, | Mrs. Rev. W. A. Starrett, | |
| Mrs. Judge Miller, | Mrs. Rev. R. Cordley, | |
| Mrs, Judge Burnett, | Mrs. Rev. G. S. Dearborn, | |
| Mrs. Judge Hendry, | Mus. Rev. J. S. Brown, | |
| Mrs. H. M. Simpson, | Mrs. Rev. George Meyer, | |
| Mrs. Robt Morrow, | Mrs. J. H. Lane, | |
| Mrs, Major Piatt, | Mrs. James Horton, | |
| Mrs. Mason Whitney, | Mrs, F. W. Sparr, | |
| Mrs. S. Denman, | Mrs, Jane B. Archibald, | |
| Mrs. Henderson, | Mrs. Cong, | |
| Mrs. J. O. Adam, | Mrs. Welsh, | |
| Mrs. Mary Whitcomb, | Mrs. Marsh, | |
| Mrs. Thermutius Sutherland, |
