As arguments have thus far proved unavailing, may not appeals to your feelings, to your moral sense, find the response so long withheld by your reason? Allow me, honorable gentlemen, to paint you a picture and bring within the compass of your vision at once the comparative position of two classes of citizens: The central object is a ballot box guarded by three inspectors of foreign birth. On the right is a multitude of coarse, ignorant beings, designated in our constitutions as male citizens—many of them fresh from the steerage of incoming steamers. There, too, are natives of the same type from the slums of our cities. Policemen are respectfully guiding them all to the ballot box. Those who can not stand, because of their frequent potations, are carefully supported on either side, each in turn depositing his vote, for what purpose he neither knows nor cares, except to get the promised bribe.
On the left stand a group of intelligent, moral, highly-cultivated women, whose ancestors for generations have fought the battles of liberty and have made this country all it is to-day. These come from the schools and colleges as teachers and professors; from the press and pulpit as writers and preachers; from the courts and hospitals as lawyers and physicians; and from happy and respectable homes as honored mothers, wives and sisters. Knowing the needs of humanity subjectively in all the higher walks of life, and objectively in the world of work, in the charities, in the asylums and prisons, in the sanitary condition of our streets and public buildings, they are peculiarly fitted to write, speak and vote intelligently on all these questions of such vital, far-reaching consequence to the welfare of society. But the inspectors refuse their votes because they' are not designated in the Constitution as "male" citizens, and the policemen drive them away.
Sad and humiliated they retire to their respective abodes, followed by the jeers of those in authority. Imagine the feelings of these dignified women, returning to their daily round of duties, compelled to leave their interests, public and private, in the State and the home, to these ignorant masses. The most grievous result of war to the conquered is wearing a foreign yoke, yet this is the position of the daughters of the Puritans. . .
What a dark page the present political position of women will be for the future historian! In reading of the republics of Greece and Rome and the grand utterances of their philosophers in pæans to liberty, we wonder that under such governments there should have been a class of citizens held in slavery. Our descendants will be still more surprised to know that our disfranchised citizens, our pariahs, our slaves, belonged to the most highly educated, moral, virtuous class in the nation, women of wealth and position who paid millions of taxes every year into the State and national treasuries; women who had given thousands to build colleges and churches and to encourage the sciences and arts. From the dawn of creation to, this hour history affords no other instance of so large a class of such a character subordinated politically to the ignorant masses.
