UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE
At the end of the first quarter of the present century, twenty of the
forty-eight States had Woman Suffrage, and Administrator Dru decided to
give it to the Nation. In those twenty States, as far as he had
observed, there had been no change for the better in the general laws,
nor did the officials seem to have higher standards of efficiency than
in those States that still denied to women the right to vote, but he
noticed that there were more special laws bearing on the moral and
social side of life, and that police regulation was better. Upon the
whole, Dru thought the result warranted universal franchise without
distinction of race, color or sex.
He believed that, up to the present time, a general franchise had been
a mistake and that there should have been restrictions and
qualifications, but education had become so general, and the condition
of the people had advanced to such an extent, that it was now warranted.
It had long seemed to Dru absurd that the ignorant, and, as a rule,
more immoral male, should have such an advantage over the educated,
refined and intelligent female. Where laws discriminated at all, it was
almost always against rather than in favor of women; and this was true
to a much greater extent in Europe and elsewhere than in the United
States. Dru had a profound sympathy for the effort women were making to
get upon an equality with men in the race for life: and he believed that
with the franchise would come equal opportunity and equal pay for the
same work.
America, he hoped, might again lead in the uplift of the sex, and the
example would be a distinct gain to women in those less forward
countries where they were still largely considered as inferior to and
somewhat as chattels to man.
Then, too, Dru had an infinite pity for the dependent and submerged
life of the generality of women. Man could ask woman to mate, but women
were denied this privilege, and, even when mated, oftentimes a life of
never ending drudgery followed.
Dru believed that if women could ever become economically independent of
man, it would, to a large degree, mitigate the social evil.
They would then no longer be compelled to marry, or be a charge upon
unwilling relatives or, as in desperation they sometimes did, lead
abandoned lives.