Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887Various
History
Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887
Various
Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Preconceived opinions, minds made up, men not so easily beguiled
to the pure good, you say? Woman quite as apt to make mistakes out
of Paradise as in? That only returns us to the primal need and
opportunity. Get the man to listen to you before his mind is made
up--before his manhood is made up; while it is in the making. That
is just the power and place that belong to you, and you must seize
and fill. It is your natural right; God gave it to you. "The seed
of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."
We can not do all in one day, and in such a day of the world as
this. We plant trees for posterity where forests have been laid
waste and the beautiful work of life is to be done over again; we
can not expect to see our fruit in souls and in the nation at less
cost of faith and time. Take care, then, of the little children:
the men children, to make men of them; the women children--oh,
yes, even above all--to make ready for future mothering--to snatch
from the evil that works over against pure womanliness. Until you
have done this let men fend for themselves in rough outsides a
little longer; except, perhaps, as wise, able women whom the
trying transition time calls forth may find fit way and place for
effort and protest--there is always room for that, and noble work
has been and is being done; but do not rear a new generation of
women to expect and desire charges and responsibilities reversive
of their own life-law, through whose perfect fulfillment alone may
the future clean place be made for all to work in.
Is there excess of female population? Can not all expect the
direct rule of a home? Is not this exactly, perhaps, just now,
for the more universal remedial mothering that in this age is the
thing immediately needed? Let her who has no child seek where she
can help the burdened mother of many; how she can best reach with
influence, and wisdom, and cherishing, the greatest number--or
most efficiently a few--of these dear, helpless, terrible little
souls, who are to make, in a few years, a new social condition; a
better and higher, happier and safer, or a lower, worse, bitterer,
more desperately complicated and distressful one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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