| State Of New York, Executive Chamber, | |
| Albany. May 8, 1877. |
To the Senate:
I return without approval Senate bill No. 61, entitled "An act to authorize the election of women to school offices."
This bill goes too far or not far enough, It provides that women may'
hold any or all of the offices connected with the department of education, that is to say, a woman may be elected superintendent of public instruction, women may be appointed school commissioners, members of boards of education and trustees of school districts. In some of these positions it will become their duty to make contracts, purchase materials, build and repair school-houses, and to supervise and effect all the transactions of school business, involving an annual expenditure of over twelve million dollars in this State. There can be no greater reason that women should occupy these positions than the less responsible ones of supervisors, town clerks, justices of the peace, commissioners of highways, overseers of the poor, and numerous others. If women are physically and mentally fitted for one class of these stations, they are equally so for the others.
But at this period in the history of the world such enactments as the present hardly comport with the wisdom and dignity of legislation. The God of nature has appointed different fields of labor, duty and usefulness for the sexes. Hus decrees cannot be changed by human legislation. In the education of our children the mother stands far above all superintendents, commissioners, trustees and school teachers. Her influence in the family, in social intercourse and enterprises, outweighs all the mere machinery of benevolence and education. To lower her from the high and holy place given her by nature, is to degrade her power and to injure rather than benefit the cause of education itself. In all enlightened and Christian nations the experience and observations of ages have illustrated and defined the relative duties of the sexes in promoting the best interests of society. Few, if any, of the intelligent and right-minded among women desire or would be willing to accept the change which such a law would inaugurate.
The bill is moreover a clear infraction of the spirit if not the letter of the constitution. Under that instrument women have no right to vote, and it cannot be supposed that it is the intention of the constitution that persons not entitled to the right of suffrage should be eligible to some of the most important offices in the State.
L. Robinson.On May 24, 25, 1877, the National and State conventions were again held in New York, at Steinway Hall. Both conventions passed resolutions denouncing Governor Robinson's action in his veto. The following address was issued by the State association:
The women of the State of New York, in convention assembled, do most earnestly protest against the injustice with which they are treated by the State, where in point of numbers they are in excess of the men:
First—They are denied the right of choosing their own rulers, but are compelled to submit to the choice of a minority consisting of its male residents, fully one-third of