But all women are not mothers; all women have not home duties; so we shall never lack for enough to look after our interests at the ballot-box and in legislative halls. There are thousands of unmarried women, childless wives and widows, and it would always be easy to find enough to represent us without taking one mother with a baby in her arms. All women may vote without neglecting any duty, for the mere act of voting would take but little time; not more than shopping or making calls. Instead of woman being excluded from the elective franchise because she is a mother, that is the strongest reason that can be urged in favor of granting her that right. If she is responsible to society and to God for the moral and physical welfare of her son; if she is to bring him up as the future wise legislator, lawyer and jurist; if she is to keep him pure and prepare him to appear before the bar of the Most High,—then she should have unlimited control over his actions and the circumstances that surround him. She should have every facility for guarding his interests and for suppressing and removing all temptations and dangers that beset his path. If God has committed to her so sacred a charge He has, along with it, given the power and the right of protecting it from evil and for accomplishing the work He has given her to do; and no false modesty, no dread of ridicule, no fear of contamination will excuse her for shrinking from its discharge. Woman needs the elective franchise to destroy the prevalent idea of female inferiority. She needs it to make her the equal of her own sons, that they may not in a few years assume the power to rule over her, and make laws for her observance without her consent. The fact that she is the mother of mankind—‘the living providence under God who gives to every human being its mental, moral and physical organization, who stamps upon every human heart her seal for good or for evil’—is reason why she should occupy no inferior position in the world. In the words of Mrs. Stanton, ‘That woman who has no higher object of thought than the cooking a good dinner, compounding a good pudding, mending old clothes, or hemming dish-towels—or, to be a little more refined, whose thoughts centre on nothing more important than an elegant dress, beautiful embroidery, parties, dances, and genteel gossip concerning the domestic affairs of the Smiths and Browns—can never give to the world a Bacon or a Newton, a Milton or a Howard, a Buonaparte or a Washington.’ If we would have great men, we must first have great women. If we would have great statesmen and great philanthropists, we must have mothers whose thoughts soar above the trifling objects which now engage the attention of the mass of women, and who are capable of impressing those thoughts upon the minds of their offspring.