In a hotly contested municipal election, the other day, an active political
manager was telling me his tactics. "We have to send carriages for some of
the voters," he said. "First-class carriages! If we undertake to wait on
'em, we must do it in good shape, and not leave the best carriages to be
hired by the other party."
I am not much given to predicting just what will happen when women vote;
but I confidently assert that they will be taken to the polls, if they
wish, in first-class carriages. If the best horses are to be harnessed, and
the best cushions selected, and every panel of the coach rubbed till you
can see your face in it, merely to accommodate some elderly man who lives
two blocks away, and could walk to the polls very easily, then how much
more will these luxuries be placed at the service of every woman, young or
old, whose presence at the polls is made doubtful by mud, or snow, or the
prospect of a shower.
But the carriage is only the beginning of the polite attentions that will
soon appear. When we see the transformation undergone by every ferryboat
and every railway station, so soon as it comes to be frequented by women,
who can doubt that voting-places will experience the same change? They will
soon have--at least in the "ladies' department"--elegance instead of
discomfort, beauty for ashes, plenty of rocking-chairs, and no need of
spittoons. Very possibly they may have all the modern conveniences and
inconveniences,--furnace registers, teakettles, Washington pies, and a
young lady to give checks for bundles. Who knows what elaborate comforts,
what queenly luxuries, may be offered to women at voting-places, when the
time has finally arrived to sue for their votes?
The common impression has always been quite different from this. People
look at the coarseness and dirt now visible at so many voting-places, and
say, "Would you expose women to all that?" But these places are not dirtier
than a railway smoking-car; and there is no more coarseness than in any
ferryboat which is, for whatever reason, used by men only. You do not look
into those places, and say with indignation, "Never, if I can help it,
shall my wife or my beloved great-grandmother travel by steamboat or by
rail!" You know that with these exemplary relatives will enter order and
quiet, carpets and curtains, brooms and dusters. Why should it be otherwise
with ward rooms and town halls?
There is not an atom more of intrinsic difficulty in providing a decorous
ladies' room for a voting-place, than for a post-office or a railway
station; and it is as simple a thing to vote a ticket as to buy one. This
being thus easily practicable, all men will desire to provide it. And the
example of the first-class carriages shows that the parties will vie with
each other in these pleasing arrangements. They will be driven to it,
whether they wish it or not. The party which has most consistently and
resolutely kept woman away from the ballot-box will be the very party
compelled, for the sake of self-preservation, to make her "rights"
agreeable to her when once she gets them. A few stupid or noisy men may
indeed try to make the polls unattractive to her, the very first time; but
the result of this little experiment will be so disastrous that the
offenders will be sternly suppressed by their own party leaders, before
another election day comes. It will soon become clear, that of all possible
ways of losing votes the surest lies in treating women rudely.
Lucy Stone tells a story of a good man in Kansas who, having done all he
could to prevent women from being allowed to vote on school questions, was
finally comforted, when that measure passed, by the thought that he should
at least secure his wife's vote for a pet schoolhouse of his own. Election
day came, and the newly enfranchised matron showed the most culpable
indifference to her privileges. She made breakfast as usual, went about her
housework, and did on that perilous day precisely the things that her
anxious husband had always predicted that women never would do under such
circumstances. His hints and advice found no response; and nothing short of
the best pair of horses and the best wagon finally sufficed to take the
farmer's wife to the polls. I am not the least afraid that women will find
voting a rude or disagreeable arrangement. There is more danger of their
being treated too well, and being too much attacked and allured by these
cheap cajoleries. But women are pretty shrewd, and can probably be trusted
to go to the polls, even in first-class carriages.