Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
....Surely it is time that some one on this platform should say
something for this half of humanity, which we really must confess
after all is an important half. Ought we not admit that men have
wrongs to complain of? Are they not constantly declaring
themselves our slaves? Is it not a well known fact, conceded even
here, that women shine in all the tints of the rainbow while men
must wear only costumes of dull brown and somber black? Nor is
this because men do not like bright colors, for never a belle in
all the sheen of satin and glimmer of pearls looks half so
happily proud as does a man when he has on a uniform, or struts
in a political procession with a white hat on his head, a red
ribbon in his buttonhole and a little cane in his hand.
Then, too, have not men, poor fellows, had to do all the talking
since the world began? Have we not heretofore been the silent
sex? Even to-day a thousand men speak from pulpit and platform
where one woman uplifts her voice.
But let us pass to other and more important rights which have
been denied to man in the past. The first right that any man
ought to be allowed--a right paramount to all others--is the
right to a wife. But look how even in this matter he has been
hardly dealt with. Has he had just standards set before him as to
what a wife should be? No, but he has been led to believe that
the weak woman, the dependent woman, is the one to be desired....
Look again at the unhappy mess into which man all by himself has
brought politics and public affairs. Is it not too bad to leave
him longer alone in his misery? Like the naughty boy who has
broken and destroyed his toys, who needs mamma to help him mend
them, and perhaps also to administer to him such wholesome
discipline as Solomon himself has advised--so does man need woman
to come to his rescue. Look what politics is now. Who to-day can
tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? Even a
Mugwump is becoming a doubtful being....
Do not these wrongs which men suffer appeal to our tenderest
sympathies? Is it not evident that the poor fellows can't go on
alone much longer, that it is high time we should take the boys
in hand and show them what a correct government really is?
There is another question which deserves our gravest
consideration. Man sinks or rises with woman; if she is degraded
he is tempted to vice; if she is oppressed he is brutalized. What
is the industrial condition of women to-day?...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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