For at least two generations suffragists have been spending a huge amount of energy and money in spreading their doctrine. Contributions, mainly drawn from a few rich women, have enabled them to send professional speakers into every district of the state, to distribute tons of "literature," to supply the press with a constant stream of "news" written from their point of view, and in general to advertise their claims in the most lavish way. A propaganda so subsidized would have been successful decades ago if sound principles and common sense were on its side. But to their consternation the suffragists found that the vast majority of Massachusetts women turned a deaf ear to their plausible appeals, and that their strongest opponents were those of their own sex. Suffragists continued to talk about what "we women" want. But men presently began to see that these women had no right to pretend to represent their sex. Even their own claims as to the number of women supporting them showed that they represented only between 5% and 10% of the women of Massachusetts. At least 90% of the women--either by open opposition, or by a marked indifference to the subject--showed that they did not believe in woman suffrage. It became obvious that no general statement could be more emphatically true than that Massachusetts women did not want to vote. When this truth was insistently pressed upon the suffragists, they were apt to call the indifferent women "unenlightened." This was felt to be an insult rather than an explanation. The average Massachusetts man does not think his mother, wife, and sister "unenlightened"--certainly not on the suffrage question. She has heard and read the suffrage notions again and again. He knows that if she felt that man was her oppressor, or that the welfare of herself or her family would be increased by her enfranchisement, she would say so. She is a sensible, observant woman, who knows what she wants, does not hesitate to ask for it, and usually gets it. But she was not asking for the ballot. It did not take her long to see through the suffrage fallacy that "only those women would need to vote who want to." She realized that the vote would mean an obligation as well as a privilege, and that she could not honorably accept the privilege without undertaking the obligation. Her life being already crowded with duties that only she could discharge, she would not add to them one that her husband, brother, or son can discharge at least as well.