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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
“ The scientific temperance course of instruction is now a part of the common school course in all our states save seven, Tennessee ranking the least hopeful of the seven in all movements of reform and advancement. Strenuous efforts were made during the last legislative session to introduce our scientific temperance educational bill, but it, as well as all the bills for promotion of social purity and other reforms, were deemed good jokes, and afforded occasion for great hilarity among our wise and honorable lawmakers.”
My own experience among our legislative Solons, both state and national, has brought me to the conclusion that among all the feminine opponents of woman’s ballot there is but one woman who claims my sincere sympathy, and she is the affectionate spouse of the politician who said: “No, John, I don’t want any woman suffrage.” “ You don’t? Why not?” “Well, John, just because if I had it I should always feel like voting for you, and I don’t think I could conscientiously do it.”
I know a worker who once upon a time, when she was a trifle more verdant than she is today, carried a petition for better temperance legislation, signed by fifteen thousand women of her state, to a friend in the Senate, and asked him to present it. He declined. “ Why, Mr B,” said she, “ I thought you believed in temperance.” “ Oh, so Ido.” “ Well, don’t you think this is a good bill?” “Yes—just between us.” “Well, then, why don’t you present it?” “Why, my dear friend, you know I am a politician. I don’t expect to stop here. I am heading for Congress. Now, suppose I present this bill and champion it, some of my friends would not stand by me when that race comes off.” “ But we women will stand by you, every one, and here are fifteen thousand of us.” Here he broke into a loud laugh. “ My dear madam, did you say that ironically? It’s capital if you did.” “Ironically! Indeed I didn’t; what do you mean?” “Oh, well, then, you’re more innocent than I had supposed. My friend, how much do you suppose your fifteen thousand women would weigh in an election scale against two German votes ?” Suppose these fifteen thousand women, wanting this voting well done, could have done it themselves, and so neutralized fifteen thousand German votes, would that gentleman have declined to present, plead, and vote for that bill? I trow not.
In the columns of the average newspaper, or the fulminations of the average orator, one can scarcely go amiss for censorious remarks regarding the “wild and fanatical female who is shrieking for the suffrage, for—she knows not what, expecting to be benefited— she knows not how.” These gentlemen are either stubbornly or wilfully blind, or they have penetrated a very short distance into the tangled morass of woman’s legal and political situation. Ask any widow in this state, whose wayward boy is daily and hourly being lured down to destruction, if she thinks her ballot would be of any benefit to her or her boy in an anti-saloon fight. Ask the tax-paying widow who sung and prayed and talked and worked and paid all through our late prohibition amendment campaign what she saw when she went to the polls on election day. She will tell you that she saw scores of male paupers, whom her quota of tax helped to feed and clothe and shelter, driven from the poorhouse to put in their ballots for the defeat of the amendment; but if she had attempted to cast a ballot it would have been tossed scornfully aside, and she would have been subject to punishment for illegal voting. Ask her, if, in the light of that experience, she thinks she “ shrieks for—she knows not what.”
During our legislative session—I mean during the brethren’s legislative session of 1888—a bill was introduced “ for the better protection of the property of married women.” It was referred to a committee, recommended by that committee for rejection, and our honorable Solons promptly followed that advice.
Ask the drunkard’s wife, who toils day and night for the support of her children, whose hard earnings may be taken any day, even to the table at which they eat and the bed from under them, to pay her husband’s saloon bills—ask that woman, when she pleads for a voice in making the law or choosing the lawmakers, if she is clamoring for—“ she knows not what.” Go to the poor, barren tenement of the working girl, whose young life is dragged out in ceaseless drudgery, who toils month after