Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost AdvocatesJohnson, Helen Kendrick
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Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates
Johnson, Helen Kendrick
Women -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
I copy from the "Salt Lake Herald" a few sentences taken from an interview
with Mrs. Cannon, State Senator elect. When asked if she was a strong
believer in woman suffrage, she answered: "Of course I am. It will help
women, and it will purify politics. Women are better than men. Slaves are
always better than their masters." "Do you refer to polygamy?" was asked.
"Indeed I do not," she answered. "I believe in polygamy. My father and
mother were Mormons, and I am a Mormon.... A plural wife isn't half as
much of a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives, she has
three weeks of freedom every single month.... Of course it is all at an
end now, but I think the women of Utah think, with me, that we were better
off in polygamy.... Sixty per cent. of the voters of this State are women.
We control the State.... What am I going to do with my children while I am
making the laws for the State? The same thing I have done with them when I
have been practicing medicine. They have been left to themselves a good
deal.... Some day there will be a law compelling people to have no more
than a certain amount of children, and the mothers of the land can live as
they ought to live." This is the character and opinion presented by the
highest State official that woman suffrage has as yet given to the United
States. Comment upon it seems unnecessary, so far as it would be needed to
express the disgust of the majority of American women at such sentiments
and such a situation. But has any Suffrage speaker or meeting denounced
them, or deprecated the result of the election? I have heard of none. The
National Suffrage Convention, which was held in Iowa, in January, 1897,
had the newly-elected Populist women as guests of honor, and held a
jubilation over the two new Suffrage States--Utah and Idaho. Idaho has
elected a Populist woman or two. The vote in that State in favor of the
gold standard and that against woman suffrage tally within forty-two
votes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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