Following the Equator: A Journey Around the WorldTwain, Mark
General
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Twain, Mark
Equator -- Description and travel; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 -- Travel; Voyages around the world
In New Zealand women have the right to vote for members of the
legislature, but they cannot be members themselves. The law extending
the suffrage to them went into effect in 1893. The population of
Christchurch (census of 1891) was 31,454. The first election under the
law was held in November of that year. Number of men who voted, 6,313;
number of women who voted, 5,989. These figures ought to convince us
that women are not as indifferent about politics as some people would
have us believe. In New Zealand as a whole, the estimated adult female
population was 139,915; of these 109,461 qualified and registered their
names on the rolls 78.23 per cent. of the whole. Of these, 90,290 went
to the polls and voted—85.18 per cent. Do men ever turn out better than
that—in America or elsewhere? Here is a remark to the other sex's
credit, too—I take it from the official report:
“A feature of the election was the orderliness and sobriety of the
people. Women were in no way molested.”
At home, a standing argument against woman suffrage has always been that
women could not go to the polls without being insulted. The arguments
against woman suffrage have always taken the easy form of prophecy. The
prophets have been prophesying ever since the woman's rights movement
began in 1848—and in forty-seven years they have never scored a hit.
Men ought to begin to feel a sort of respect for their mothers and wives
and sisters by this time. The women deserve a change of attitude like
that, for they have wrought well. In forty-seven years they have swept
an imposingly large number of unfair laws from the statute books of
America. In that brief time these serfs have set themselves free—
essentially. Men could not have done so much for themselves in that time
without bloodshed—at least they never have; and that is argument that
they didn't know how. The women have accomplished a peaceful revolution,
and a very beneficent one; and yet that has not convinced the average man
that they are intelligent, and have courage and energy and perseverance
and fortitude. It takes much to convince the average man of anything;
and perhaps nothing can ever make him realize that he is the average
woman's inferior—yet in several important details the evidence seems to
show that that is what he is. Man has ruled the human race from the
beginning—but he should remember that up to the middle of the present
century it was a dull world, and ignorant and stupid; but it is not such
a dull world now, and is growing less and less dull all the time. This
is woman's opportunity—she has had none before. I wonder where man will
be in another forty-seven years?
In the New Zealand law occurs this: “The word person wherever it occurs
throughout the Act includes woman.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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