There is one special point on which men seem to me rather insincere toward
women. When they speak to women, the objection made to their voting is
usually that they are too angelic. But when men talk to each other, the
general assumption is, that women should not vote because they have not
brains enough--or, as old Theophilus Parsons wrote a century ago, have not
"a sufficient acquired discretion."
It is an important difference. Because, if women are too angelic to vote,
they can only be fitted for it by becoming more wicked, which is not
desirable. On the other hand, if there is no objection but the want of
brains, then our public schools are equalizing that matter fast enough.
Still, there are plenty of people who have never got beyond this objection.
Listen to the first discussion that you encounter among men on this
subject, wherever they may congregate. Does it turn upon the question of
saintliness, or of brains? Let us see.
I travelled the other day upon the Boston and Providence Railroad with a
party of mechanics, mostly English and Scotch. They were discussing this
very question, and, with the true English habit, thought it was all a
matter of property. Without it a woman certainly should not vote, they
said; but they all favored, to my surprise, the enfranchisement of women of
property. "As a general rule," said the chief speaker, "a woman that's got
property has got sense enough to vote."
There it was! These foreigners, who had found their own manhood by coming
to a land which not only the Pilgrim Fathers but the Pilgrim Mothers had
settled, and subdued, and freed for them, were still ready to disfranchise
most of the daughters of those mothers, on the ground that they had not
"sense enough to vote." I thanked them for their blunt truthfulness, so
much better than the flattery of most of the native-born.
My other instance shall be a conversation overheard in a railway station
near Boston, between two intelligent citizens, who had lately listened to
Anna Dickinson. "The best of it was," said one, "to see our minister
introduce her." "Wonder what the Orthodox churches would have said to that
ten years ago?" said the other. "Never mind," was the answer. "Things have
changed. What I think is, it's all in the bringing up. If women were
brought up just as men are, they'd have just as much brains." (Brains
again!) "That's what Beecher says. Boys are brought up to do business, and
take care of themselves: that's where it is. Girls are brought up to dress
and get married. Start 'em alike! That's what Beecher says. Start 'em
alike, and see if girls haven't got just as much brains."
"Still harping on my daughter," and on the condition of her brains! It is
on this that the whole question turns, in the opinion of many men. Ask ten
men their objections to woman suffrage. One will plead that women are
angels. Another fears discord in families. Another points out that women
cannot fight,--he himself being very likely a non-combatant. Another quotes
St. Paul for this purpose,--not being, perhaps, in the habit of consulting
that authority on any other point. But with the others, very likely,
everything will turn on the question of brains. They believe, or think they
believe, that women have not sense enough to vote. They may not say so to
women, but they habitually say it to men. If you wish to meet the common
point of view of masculine voters, you must find it here.
It is fortunate that it is so. Of all points, this is the easiest to
settle; for every intelligent woman, even if she be opposed to woman
suffrage, helps to settle it. Every good lecture by a woman, every good
book written by one, every successful business enterprise carried on, helps
to decide the question. Every class of girls that graduates from every good
school helps to pile up the argument on this point. And the vast army of
women, constituting nine out of ten of the teachers in our American
schools, may appeal as logically to their pupils, and settle the argument
based on brains. "If we had sense enough to educate you," they may say to
each graduating class of boys, "we have sense enough to vote beside you."
"The ladies actively working to secure the cooperation of their sex
in caucuses and citizens' conventions are not actuated by love of
notoriety, and are not, therefore, to be classed with the absolute
woman suffragists."--Boston Daily Transcript, Sept. 1, 1879.