1. "Every woman is married, loved, and provided for. 2. "Every man stays at home every evening. 3. "Every woman has small children. 4. "All women, when they have once secured political rights, will plunge into politics and neglect their households." "What is the exact state of affairs in these matters? 1. "A great many women are not married; many are widows who must educate their children and seek a means of livelihood. Thousands have no other home than the one they create for themselves, and they must often support relatives in addition to themselves. Many of the married women are neither loved, provided for, nor protected. 2. "Many men are at home so seldom in the evening that their wives could quietly concern themselves with political matters without being missed at all. And such men, seconded by bachelors, clamor most about the 'dissolution of the family' through politics. 3. "The children do not remain small indefinitely; they grow up and hence leave the mother. It may be true that the mother, instead of participating in political affairs, prefers to sew flannel shirts for the heathen, or prefers to read novels, but one ought at least to permit her the freedom of making the choice. 4. "The right to vote will not change the nature of woman. If she wished to leave the home as her sphere of activity, she would have found other opportunities long ago." Further fears are the following: 1. _The majority of women do not wish the right to vote at all._ To this we must answer that we cannot yet come to a conclusion concerning the wish of the majority in this respect. The petitions for woman's suffrage always have a greater number of signatures than any other petitions to Congress. 2. _Women will use the right to vote only to a limited extent._ The statistics in Wyoming and Colorado prove the contrary. 3. _Only women "of ill repute" will vote._ Thus far this has been nowhere the case. The men guard against attracting these elements. Moreover, the right to vote is not restricted to the men "of good repute" either, etc., etc. The American women can obtain the political franchise by two methods: 1. At the hands of every individual legislature (which would occasion 52 separate legislative acts,--48 states and 4 territories). 2. Through the adoption of a sixteenth amendment to the national Constitution by Congress.[6] Let us consider the first method. The franchise qualifications in the United States are generally the following: male sex, twenty-one years of age, American citizenship (through birth, or by naturalization after five years' residence).