We are now able to prevent typhoid fever, the individual being made
immune by a treatment administered before he has been exposed to the
disease. Total abstinence resembles this preventive; no total abstainer
is in danger of alcoholism.
But we also have a preventive for yellow fever, namely, the destroying
of the breeding place of the mosquito which carries the germ of the
disease. Prohibition resembles this preventive. The saloon was found
to be the breeding place of alcoholism and prohibition strikes at the
source of the danger. These two, total abstinence and prohibition,
will eliminate the drink evil as typhoid and yellow fever have been
eliminated.
The fourth amendment adopted in recent years extended equal suffrage
to women. Like the three to which I have referred, it was a long time
coming and came at last by joint action of the two great parties.
A majority of both parties in both Senate and House voted for the
submission of this amendment and it required both Democratic and
Republican states to ratify it. The opposition which the amendment met
in the South was not due to lack of confidence in women, for nowhere in
the world is woman more highly estimated or more fully trusted. Such
local opposition as there was was due to the race question. Now that
woman can express herself at the polls, her influence will be felt as
much in the South as in other sections; it will throughout the United
States seal the doom of the liquor traffic. The women will stand guard
at the grave of John Barleycorn and make sure that he will never know a
resurrection morn.
Drawing their inspiration from the Bible, even to a greater extent than
the men do, the women will hasten the triumph of every righteous cause.
They will throw their influence on the side of every moral reform. The
adoption of the single standard of morals will be made possible by
woman's advent into politics. Her ballot will make it easier to lift man
to her level in the matter of chastity and to distribute more equitably
than man has done, the punishments imposed for acts of immorality.
Woman has come into power in politics at a time when she can aid in the
promotion of world peace by compelling the establishment of machinery
which will substitute reason for force in the settlement of
international disputes. Her first great triumph at the polls may be the
fulfilling of the prophecy, spoken more than two thousand years ago,
that swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and that nations shall
learn war no more. She will be repaid for all her patience and her
waiting if now, by her ballot, she can make it unnecessary for another
mother's son to be offered upon the altar of Mars. That this nation is
in a better position than ever before to lead the world in every good
cause is due to the gifts that have come with American citizenship, only
three of which I have had time to mention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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