Should Women be Admitted to Full Citizenship? "Woman's suffrage inculcates ' the individ uality of woman as related to her husband '; it emphasizes the dualism, as against the unity of husband and wife, and assumes that their interests are so diverse that two votes are necessary to represent them. The spec tacle of husband and wife on the way to the polls, carrying antagonistic votes, suggests anything but domestic harmony." That this view of the matter is the mere effervesence of sentimentality may be seen in the very next paragraph. "The wondrous undefined fascination of the lady who is a lady is of great price, but like the aroma of the flower is easily de spoiled. 'A rift within the lute By and by may make its music mute.'" I am aware that the strongest argument made against giving to women the elective franchise is based upon sentimentality. This sentiment is a natural growth, just as the love of a parent for a child. It has had centuries of fostering care in the heart of man. The habit of considering women in this light alone has become second nature. But it is not to be considered as presenting a question as hard of solution as the change of the Ethiopian's skin. A study of the history of the Old and New Worlds will, in places, very forcibly remind us that sentiment has been washed from its mooring places many times by the great waves of change, which forever beat upon the shore of Time, leaving only the memory of what was. The change in sentiment in regard to women has reached full-orbed dimensions. In the exercise of the elective franchise, as admitted by the reverend gentleman above named, women would gain in individualism. And if this rounding out of her individualism, by the removal of a disability as cruel as unjust, did dispel any part of the " aroma" of her once " flower-like existence," then the loss of this sweet sentiment would naturally assist in a metempsychosis greatly to be de sired, because of its benefit to society in ex
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alting woman to her rightful position beside man. Does the Rev. Mr. Williams wish us to assume that he has been antagonistic to all the efforts which women have made in the past fifty years for equal social and political recognition? If so, argument with him would be worse than useless. You might as well argue with a blind man over the subject of color. If women have bet tered their condition by this effort for equality with men during the present cen tury, then this same process of " dualism" has been going on and widening the gulf between husband and wife, and at the same time it is admitted much good has resulted to the social standing of women. Why, it is comparatively a few years ago when the doors of our colleges were closed in their faces. The learned professors raised their hands in holy horror at the suggestion that women should be received into the sanctified precincts of learning only established by the gods for those of Apollo-like form. One very learned and beloved president of a state university in the West, rather than submit to the disgrace of presiding over a number of curly-headed young women in common with the " boys," and being apprehensive of (your pardon, Mr. Williams) "A rift within the lute By and by to make its music mute,'* resigned his place at the hea'd of this in stitution, which owed much of its rising popularity to him, and went sorrowfully off to a foreign land to die of a broken heart. And yet to-day this institution stands ahead of all others in the land in point of popularity, and the equal of any upon its merits. About one in five of its students are women, and their choice of work does not differ very materially from that of the men, except in the professional departments, where women are not found in the same proportion. The work done by the women of this
