Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
They tell us that women can bring better things to pass by
indirect influence. Try to persuade any man that he will have
more weight, more influence, if he gives up his vote, allies
himself with no party and relies on influence to achieve his
ends! By all means let us use to its utmost whatever influence we
have, but in all justice do not ask us to be content with this.
Facts show that a large body of earnest, responsible women do
want the ballot, a body large enough to deserve very respectful
hearing from our law-makers, but there certainly are many women
who do not yet want to vote. We think they ought to want it; that
women have no more right than men to accept and enjoy the
protection and privileges of civilized government and shirk its
duties and responsibilities. They say they do not thus shirk,
that woman's sphere lies in a different place, and we answer:
"This is true but only part of the truth." ... Municipal
government belongs far more to woman's sphere than to man's, if
we must choose between the two; it is home-making and
housekeeping writ large, but just as the best home is that where
father and mother together rule, so shall we have the better
city, the better State, when men and women together counsel,
together rule. No mother fulfills her whole mother duty in the
sight of God who is not willing to do her service, to take her
share of direct responsibility for the good of the whole. She can
not fully care for her own without some care for all the children
of the community. Her own, however guarded, are menaced so long
as the least of these is exposed to pestilence or is robbed of
his birthright of fresh air and sunshine.
The hard struggle and toil of our honored pioneers was for
Woman's Rights. We of the coming day must take up the cry of
Woman's Duty. We live in the new age; new obligations are laid
upon us. We must labor until no woman in the land shall be
content to say, "I am not willing to pay the price I owe for the
comfort and safety of my life"; until every woman shall be
ashamed not to demand equal duties and equal responsibilities for
the common weal; until none can be found of whom it can with
truth be said, "They do not want to vote."
Miss Gregg discussed The Real Enemy, and, while endorsing all that had
been said, asserted that "this enemy is among our own sex." "It is not
the anti-suffragist," she said, "she is our unwilling ally, for when
there is danger that we might fall asleep she arouses us by buzzing
about our ears with her misrepresentations. It is not the indifferent
suffragist, she can be galvanized into life. Our real enemy is the
dead or dormant suffragist," and then she preached a stirring sermon
on the necessity for hard, incessant, faithful work by all who were
enlisted heart and soul in this cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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