It is often said that when women vote their votes will make no difference
in the count, became they will merely duplicate the votes of their husbands
and brothers. Then these same objectors go on and predict all sorts of evil
things for which women will vote quite apart from their husbands and
brothers. Moreover, the evils thus predicted are apt to be diametrically
opposite. Thus Goldwin Smith predicts that women will be governed by
priests, and then goes on to predict that women will vote to abolish
marriage; not seeing that these two predictions destroy each other.
On the other hand, I think that the advocates of woman suffrage often err
by claiming too much,--as that all women will vote for peace, for total
abstinence, against slavery, and the rest. It seems better to rest the
argument on general principles, and not to seek to prophesy too closely.
The only thing which I feel safe in predicting is that woman suffrage will
be used, as it should be, for the protection of woman. Self-respect and
self-protection,--these are, as has been already said, the two great things
for which woman needs the ballot.
It is not in the nature of things, I take it, that a class politically
subject can obtain justice from the governing class. Not the least of the
benefits gained by political equality for the colored people of the South
is that the laws now generally make no difference of color in penalties for
crime. In slavery times there were dozens of crimes which were punished
more severely by the statute if committed by a slave or a free negro than
if done by a white. I feel very sure that under the reign of impartial
suffrage we should see fewer such announcements as this, which I cut from a
late New York "Evening Express:"--
"Last night Capt. Lowery, of the Twenty-seventh Precinct, made a
descent upon the dance-house in the basement of 96 Greenwich Street,
and arrested fifty-two men and eight women. The entire batch was
brought before Justice Flammer, at the Tombs Police Court, this
morning. Louise Maud, the proprietoress, was held in five hundred
dollars bail to answer at the Court of General Sessions. _The
fifty-two men were fined three dollars each, all but twelve paying
at once; and the eight women were fined ten dollars each, and sent
to the Island for one month._"
The italics are my own. When we reflect that this dance-house, whatever it
was, was unquestionably sustained for the gratification of men, rather than
of women; when we consider that every one of these fifty-two men came
there, in all probability, by his own free will, and to spend money, not to
earn it; and that probably a majority of the women were driven there by
necessity or betrayal, or force or despair,--it would seem that even an
equal punishment would have been cruel injustice to the women. But when we
observe how trifling a penalty was three dollars each to these men, whose
money was likely to go for riotous living in some form, and forty of whom
had the amount of the fine in their pockets; and how hopelessly large an
amount was ten dollars each to women who did not, probably, own even the
clothes they wore, and who were to be sent to prison for a month in
addition,--we see a kind of injustice which would stand a fair chance of
being righted, I suspect, if women came into power. Not that they would
punish their own sex less severely; probably they would not: but they would
put men more on a level as to the penalty.
It may be said that no such justice is to be expected from women; because
women in what is called "society" condemn women for mere imprudence, and
excuse men for guilt. But it must be remembered that in "society" guilt is
rarely a matter of open proof and conviction, in case of men: it is usually
a matter of surmise; and it is easy for either love or ambition to set the
surmise aside, and to assume that the worst reprobate is "only a little
wild." In fact, as Margaret Fuller pointed out years ago, how little
conception has a virtuous woman as to what a dissipated young man really
is! But let that same woman be a Portia, in the judgment-seat, or even a
legislator or a voter, and let her have the unmistakable and actual
offender before her, and I do not believe that she will excuse him for a
paltry fine, and give the less guilty woman a penalty more than quadruple.
Women will also be sure to bring special sympathy and intelligent attention
to the wrongs of children. Who can read without shame and indignation this
report from "The New York Herald"?