Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
In the Monday afternoon symposium the stock objections to woman
suffrage were considered by Miss Lexow, Miss Laura Gregg (Kans.), Mrs.
William C. Gannett (N. Y.), Mrs. Kelley and Miss Maude E. Miner, a
probation officer in New York. Miss Miner said in answering the
objection to "the immoral vote": "Is the fact that immoral women would
have the vote a real objection? I do not believe that it is. In the
first place such women are a very small proportion of the whole. Fifty
to one hundred a night are brought into the night court but we see the
same faces over and over again. There are perhaps 5,000 such women in
New York City in a population of four million but there is less reason
against enfranchising the woman than for disfranchising some of the
men, as there are at least 4,000 men who are living wholly or in part
on these women's earnings.... I do not believe that all women who have
fallen would use their votes for evil. I have dealt with 250 of them
and I am often surprised to see how much sense of honor some of them
have and how intelligent they are. At present they are the slaves of
the saloon-keepers, and the Raines law hotels and the saloons are at
the root of the evil. We ought to do more to protect them from such a
life.... It seems to be women's work to deal with such problems and to
secure legislation along these lines and we can only do this by having
the ballot. With it we can do much more in the way of breaking up the
power of the saloon in politics, which is at the bottom of all."
Dr. Shaw was quickly on her feet to say that Miss Miner had touched
upon the vital spot in the whole suffrage movement; that the liquor
interests were at the bottom of the opposition to it and that in the
States where it had been defeated they were responsible. Mrs. Kelley
spoke for The Woman at the Bottom of the Heap, who had even greater
need of the ballot than her more fortunate sisters. Mrs. Gannett, wife
of the Unitarian minister, William C. Gannett of Rochester, N. Y.,
both loving friends of Miss Anthony, considered the assertion that
"women do not want to vote," saying in part:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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