understand hers are perfectly satisfied in calling her "stupid."
I can assure these objectors to progress that when woman no longer has occasion to fret under disabilities, which are hers in common with criminals and lunatics, her tasks will be far more cheerfully performed. Her long hours of toilsome drudgery will be brightened by the feeling that she is more than a broom or incubator; equally with men a power in the State—no longer to be treated as a born inferior by every male imp over twelve years of age. She will reflect upon the various qualifications of the candidates, with her great powers of observation and deduction. She will remember who may have proved themselves deficient in truth and ability, and she will record her vote against such candidates—for woman performs all her work conscientiously—and will not fail when raised to a dignified position. Faculties, which in many are now little more than latent in her, as in the larger number of men, will rapidly develop to the progression of all human kind.
Others say, voting will render woman unwomanly. What unreasonable talk! I tell such men they make women "unwomanly" when they put more children in their houses than can be wholesomely or nobly reared. That most perniciously to all concerned renders woman unwomanly, and injures her in every way as mother and citizen. But a woman will never become unwomanly through exerting her intellect in erecting institutions or fashioning laws, which are to either save or ruin her children. And this is, in honest fact what franchise means to our sex—nothing other than increasing our power and thought for the future welfare of our dear ones.
