_Having considered the teachings of the Scripture and of Nature, let
us listen to the Voice of Common Sense_.
Under this head we hesitate not to declare that the hope of woman lies
in the recognition of the laws of God, and the laws of her own higher
nature.
Look at the facts. Who demand the ballot for woman? They are not the
lovers of God, nor are they the believers in Christ, as a class. There
may be exceptions, but the majority prefer an infidel's cheer to the
favor of God and the love of the Christian community. It is because of
this tendency that the majority of those who contend for the ballot
for woman cut loose from the legislation of Heaven, from the
enjoyments of home, and drift to infidelity and ruin.
Our wives and mothers do not ask the ballot. Our young ladies do not
care even to hear the question discussed. They believe that whatever
hinders woman from being the helpmeet of man does her injury. It is
claimed that woman needs the ballot to secure equal laws. This claim
is urged, because, it is said, women are required to obey laws which
they had no share in making. It is a mistaken notion. Woman has had
a share in the legislation of the country. Her influence pervades
society. Let her be true to temperance, and intemperance is
restrained. Let her be true to freedom, and the pulsations of her
heart find their way through the entire framework of society. Let her
be true to her own glorious nature, and this attempt to unsex and
discrown her will meet with the swift and terrible condemnation it
deserves.
Another has said, "The Amazons have often been met with the statement,
that a large majority of the women do not wish to vote, and would
not if they could. The truth of this statement is not denied. The
advocates of the ballot confess that many noble women affect a womanly
horror of being thought strong-minded," and to offset this tendency
they declare it to be the "imperative duty of women to claim the
suffrage." "Does this mean that women are to be coerced in this
matter? that our mothers, wives, and sisters are to be punished for
staying away from the polls? We have never supposed it the imperative
duty of every man to vote. And we know that many of the most
intelligent and upright do not vote. Such is the inexpressible
nastiness of our elections, especially in the larger cities, that men
of the cleanest morals think it right to keep away from them. The
foulest portions of the men go first, stay longest, and stand thickest
at the places of voting. How then will it be when the foulest portion
of the women get packed into the same crowd, and drive modesty away by
the foulness of their speech and presence? When the aggregate filth of
both sexes shall have met together at the polling stations, as it will
be sure to do, we hardly think any chaste or modest home-loving woman
will go near this stench unless compelled to do so."
It is because this scheme lifts the gate to the increasing wave
of corruption and pollution, that we are surprised that so-called
statesmen give their countenance to it. Give to woman the ballot, and
this country is hopelessly given up to Romanism. The priest loses the
man, but he keeps the woman. Give to the priests the control of the
votes of the thousands of servants in the great cities, and there is
an end to legislation in behalf of the Sabbath, the Bible, and the
school system, temperance, or morality.
The right to vote implies the right to rule, to legislate, to go to
Congress, and to take the Presidential chair. On this point hear Miss
Muloch. "Who that ever listened for two hours to the verbose confused
inanities of a ladies' committee, would immediately go and give his
vote for a Female House of Congress, or of Commons? or who, on
the receipt of a lady's letter of business,--I speak of the
average,--would henceforth desire to have our courts of justice
stocked with matronly lawyers, or thronged by
"'Sweet girl graduates, with their golden hair?'"
Well has Gail Hamilton said, "How will the possession of the ballot
affect in any way the vexed question of work and wages? One orator
says, 'Shall Senators tell me in their places that I have no need of
the ballot, when forty thousand women in the city of New York alone
are earning their daily bread at starving prices with the needle?' But
what will the ballot do for those forty thousand women when they get
it? It will not give them husbands, nor make their thriftless husbands
provident, nor their invalid husbands healthy. They cannot vote
themselves out of their dark, unwholesome sewing-rooms into
counting-rooms and insurance offices, nor have they generally the
qualifications which these places require. _The ballot will not enable
them to do anything for which their constitution or their education
has not fitted them, and I do not know of any law now which prevents
them from doing anything for which they are fitted, except the holding
of government offices._ ... What can the ballot do towards equalizing
wages, where work is already equalized without affecting wages, as is
not unfrequently the case? There are shops of the same sort, on the
same street, with male clerks in one and female clerks in another,
where the former work fewer hours and receive higher wages than the
latter.... Moreover, the question of female clerkship is not
yet settled. There are conscientious, intelligent, and obliging
shopkeepers, who say that female clerks are not satisfactory. Their
strength is not equal to the draughts made upon it. They are not able
to stand so long as clerks are required to stand. They have not the
patience, the civility, the tact that male clerks have.... All the
voting in the world can never add a cubit to a woman's stature."
Woman is not naturally a law-maker. Even in our homes she desires
the head of the house to lay down the law. Never shall I forget the
influence exerted by the utterance in a convention of Sabbath school
teachers. A paper was read, complaining that in a certain Sabbath
school there was a lady superintendent, because no man could be found
to take the place. In conclusion, the writer said, "We need a man in
our town. We have things that wear pantaloons, but we need a man, to
give direction to the school, and to attract the nobler and better
portion of community." It was an honest declaration, and voiced a
truth. Every town, every Sabbath school, every home, needs a man.
Women of talent have tried to figure in politics and in the pulpit,
but a sorry figure they have made of it.
Think of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton in the train of George Francis
Train, perambulating the country in favor of the ballot in Kansas.
These are the leaders; but let it not be forgotten that they
sided against the ballot for the negro in hopes of getting it for
themselves, and proved their utter worthlessness and untrustworthiness
by trailing the banner committed to their keeping in the slime of a
convention which went for the repudiation of the national debt, the
defeat of the party of progress, and for the overthrow of republican
liberty. Had woman possessed the ballot, and had the course pursued by
the leaders of this movement exercised an influence over the majority,
this wonderful victory over the rebellious spirits of the land had
not been achieved; but, in its stead, the stars and bars would have
resumed their sway, and the stars and stripes, which now kiss the
breeze, and greet the rising hopes of uncounted millions, would have
been furled in gloom and night.
It is claimed that the ballot will secure for woman social respect.
The claim is not well founded. Those who seek it lose social respect,
because they step out of the path marked out for them by Providence
and by Nature. Woman, in her sphere, is man's good angel and helpmeet;
out of it, she is man's bitterest foe and heaviest curse.
There is an instinctive respect for woman in her proper sphere, which
is of itself a power superior to any merely conventional position that
a woman can build up for herself by her own hands, even through the
aid of the ballot.
How natural to see woman waited on by man! Sir Walter Raleigh was
praised because he cast his cloak into the mud to save the foot of his
Queen from being soiled. As noble acts have been performed by many
men, times without number. The uprising of gentlemen in the cars when
a tired woman enters with a child; the disposition to lighten her
cares and sweeten her joys, is everywhere considered manly.
Education is essential for her. She is the educator of the home, for
she is its soul. If one must be ignorant, let it be the man, and not
the woman. Many of our most intelligent men have had cultured mothers.
Very few sons ever grew to be learned whose mothers cared not for
books. This fact is appreciated, and leads us naturally to conclude
that if woman lacks social respect it is her own fault. If a woman
prefers superficiality to thoroughness; music, drawing, and dress, to
a knowledge of housework, an acquaintance with literature, and the
endowments of common sense, simply because brainless men are disposed
to seek out the effeminate and the frail in preference to the rugged
and the well-endowed, then she must suffer the consequences. If a
young lady, compelled to toil for support, will prefer the factory or
the store, with its hot air and depressing associations, to work in
the home, because she hopes in the store or factory to secure the
hand and heart of a husband sooner than elsewhere, she must suffer
accordingly. But if woman will unite in securing a reform in this
direction,--if the pure and the virtuous will say, Such a life as is
offered me in the family is in harmony with my future well-being, and
I will scorn the allurements elsewhere held out, and fit myself, by
study, for companionship with the noble of the land, she will succeed.
If woman will respect herself, she will be respected.
It is not by clamoring for rights that have been conferred upon
others; it is not by restless discontent, by partisan appeals, by
stepping out of her God-given sphere, and by attempting to destroy the
network of holy influences by which he ever has surrounded her; it is
not by ridiculing marriage and casting scorn on motherhood, that she
is to obtain the blessings she courts, but by tranquilly laboring
under this heaven-imposed law of obedience. Woman's weakness is
transmuted into strength when she opens her nature to the influences
of love, and when she consecrates herself to the happiness of others.
Then it is she obtains a moral and spiritual power to which man
is glad to do homage. Ambition, pride, wilfulness, or any earthly
passion, will distort her being. She struggles all in vain against
a divine appointment. It is from the soul of meekness that the true
strength of womanhood is derived; and it is because it has its root in
such a soil that it has a growth so majestic, showering its blessing
and fruits upon the world.
It was the sun and the wind that in the fable strove for the mastery;
and the strife was for the traveller's cloak. The quiet moon had
nought to do with such fierce rivalry of the burning or the blast;
but as in her tranquil orbit she journeys round the world, she gently
sways the tides of the ocean. Woman's influence resembles that exerted
by the queen of night. In the conflicts of life she has little to do;
but her influence is felt from the cradle to the grave, and the sphere
of it is the whole region of humanity. Woman's worst enemy is he who
would cruelly lift her out of her sphere, and would try to reverse the
laws of God and of nature in her behalf. They deceive woman who cause
her to believe that she will find independence when she abandons the
position assigned her by her Creator, and reaches one against which
her nature, the interests of society, and the laws of God contend.
Woman has her sphere and her work, and she is only happy when she
finds pleasure in lovingly, patiently, and faithfully performing the
duties and enacting the relations that belong to her as woman. She is
not the natural head of society. Man, rough, stern, cold, and almost
nerveless, is made to be the head of human society; and woman, quick,
sensitive, pliant (as her name indicates), gentle, loving, is the
heart of the world. As the heart, she has power. She rules through
love, and finds the work set for her to do in the doors opening before
her loving nature. She rules through love, and becomes a blessing
greater than we can ever acknowledge, because it is greater than we
can measure. Let woman take heart. She is not in captivity. The law of
service is on her, as it is on man. Much of her service consists in
suffering; much of man's consists in toil. Before both there are
fields of endeavor, white with beckoning harvests. In literature, in
reforms, in ministering to the wants and woes of humanity, in making
home more and more like heaven, woman has an open door set before her,
which no man will desire to close. Let her enter it and work. There
is a law of companionship far deeper than that of uniformity and
equality, or similarity--the law which reconciles similitude and
dissimilitude, the harmony of contrast, in which what is wanting on
the one side finds its complement on the other; for,--
"Heart with heart and mind with mind,
When the main fibres are entwined,
Through Nature's skill,
May even by contraries be joined
More closely still."
Such was the exquisite companionship of the sexes as they were
represented by our first parents, and such, however they may be
momentarily disturbed, they will remain, as the ideal for all the
generations of men and women. Let woman repose her trust in man, and
then, lifting up her heart, she may sing,--
"Though God's high things are not all ours,
'Tis ours to look above;
All is not ours to have and hold,
But all is ours to love."