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SOT IT"THE
SHOULD WOMEN VOTE?
A Texan Supports the Negative.
Editor Sunn;,' South: Should women
vote? That is an interrogation point
with whiskers on it that has pricked
the public flesh for years, and is con
tinually br aking out with renewed
zeal and accompanying irritation. Wo
man is man’s equal in more respects
than one. She is purer, more tender
and readier upon the most occasions.
She is his equal mentally, his superior
morally and perhaps only his inferior
physically. Then, why should woman
not exercise the most inalienable rights
of suit rage as are enjoyed by male
bipeds?
You can pick out the names of a
thousand women who reflect lustre
upon their sex. Their achievements
have been wonderful, and their suc
cess is pointed to as a criterion—an evi
dence of woman’s capacity. The world
honors them for what they have ac
complished, and - straightway some
aquiline fearured specimen of alleged
femininity imagines that it is woman’s
province To lead. She must become
the steam calliope at the head of the
procession, while man must be trans
formed into the little yaller dog whose
place it is to trot under the band
wagon.
And one such unwomanly woman
undoes all the good accomplished by
ten of her enlightened sisters. Man’s
idea of woman, handed down for gen
erations, is that she was provided for
a companion and helpmeet. Her sphere
is the home—no place is home without
mother or wife. Home is woman’s
kingdom, and within its blessed circle
she is a reigning queen at whose feet
all subjects render holy homage and
devotion. But outside of the sphere
for which she was created to bless and
adorn, our queen is shorn of much of
her royal dignity, and becomes a totally
different personage.
We can all admire a Joan of Arc and
adore the lovable characters constantly
forging to the front in woman’s legiti
mate sphere. But in the name of all
human kindness, where is there a man
who would go off into ecstatic rhapso
dies over an opportunity to gather
unto his manly breast the palpitating
and high-strung form of a Mrs. Mary
Lease? I could enjoy just as much
enthusiasm in caressing any other old
ro ister that could get up a crow
Woman’s femininity is her chief
charm, and her purity overshadows all
with a halo more bright and beautiful
than that of the Xorthern lights.
Can a woman elbow her way into polit
ical life and at the same time maintain
her femininity? Can she mix and
mingle with the political rabble, com
ing in contact with the m ( st depraved
as well as the exalted, without sinister
whispers calculated to blast her after
life?
One breath of suspicion and her all
is gone. Are there many of the fair
daughters of our beautiful Southland
pining to undertake the experiment?
I believe not. While there are strong-
minded masculine disposed women who
are continually urging this matter,
they represent an infinitesmal per
cent, of public sentiment in the South.
Xo one knows woman’s place better
than a true woman. I was born and
bred in the South, and I thank God for
it. Southern customs are indelibly en
grafted upon my heart; and while I
see some evidence of progress of the
woman suffrage idea in the West, it is
peculiarly gratifying that the tender
and refined women of the South evince
no disposition to hanker after the
heresy.
I do not believe in woman suffrage,
and Mrs. McEachin agrees with me—
and she is not “rooster pecked” either.
But should she at any time manifest
alarming symptoms of a fall from
grace, she will be one of the worst
shooked little women in Texas. For
(and I tell you this confidentially) I
would draw off the pants—emblem of
authority—hang them on her bed post
and tell her to go forth upon the high
ways and byways and by the sweat of
her brow earn a livelihood for me and
the four little McEachins left clinging
to the folds of my ample Mother Hub
bard. I would try to be a mother to
those unfortunate children, but I will
be eternally hornsnoggled if I would
attempt both the father and mother
act. Would you blame me ? I tlnnK
not. Respectfully,
Hec. A. McEachin.
Austin, Texas.
SHOULD WOMEN VOTE?
there will be no necessity for such
laws. We ask for the punishment of
the seducer and the protection of our
daughters by law until they are old
enough to protect themselves, and it is
not granted. They “ fear it will hurt
the men.” We ask for reformatories,
industrial institutions and inebriate
asvlums, for the protection of the home
and the salvation of the children. We
A Georgia Woman for the Affirma
tive.
Editor Sunny South:
The woman question is the all ab
sorbing theme of discussion, with
women at least, in these closing days
of the nineteenth century; its solution
will bring peace and comfort to all,
since certainty is always more pleas
ing than uncertainty in family aflairs.
The men of the South are in a state of
disquietude, which reminds an old
woman of war times and the conscrip
tion period. We sympathized with
them then, and are trying to do so
now in these latter days of their
affliction.
The negro slaves were slipping from
their grasp: they firmly believed they
owned them, body, mind and soul.
Just in the same way they regard
the women of to-day, because women
have been held in subordination to
men so long, and in the government
j have been unjustly classed with luna-
i tics, idiots and criminals.
A REPUBLIC
“is a state or form of government in
which the supreme power is vested in
i the people.”
The 14th amendment to our consti
tution declares : “All persons born or
naturalized in the United States ore
citizens of the United States,’ and the
15th amendment says : “The right of
citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States, or by any State on ac
count of race, color, or previous condi
tion of servitude. Congress shall have
power to enforce this act by appro
priate legslation.”
When I read these amendments, my
wonder grows that any one should deny
that women are entitled to vote, if they
irant to, just like men. There seems to
be do doubt (in my mind) that Susan
B. Anthony, who once cast a vote for
president and congressmen, in Roches
ter, X. Y., was most unjustly treated.
She was denied the right of irial by
jury and sentenced by Judge Hunt to
imprisonment or to pay a flr-e of $500.
The unjust judge knew he had done
wrong, since the sen ence was not exe
cuted, and Miss Anthony never paid
the fine. Lunatics and idiots are often
deceived and cajoled ro bring them into
subjection, and the indignity of such
foolishness in Miss Anthony’s case was
contemptable, “to draw it mildly.”
THE MOTHER-AGE.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a life
long worker for the enfranchisement
of woman says: “All along from the
beginning until the 16th Century, when
Luther eliminated the femenine ele
ment wholly from the Protestant reli
gion, and brought the full p-wer of the
church to enforce woman’s complete
subjection, we find traces of the “Matri-
archate.” Woman was an independent
creature compared to her position now.
During the mother age the fact that
a child derived its .status as a free man
or a slave from its mother, was estab
lished, and remains in force to this
day. To the mother man is indebted
for the establishment of the home. In
man’s make-up, parental affection is
remarkably weak; in woman’s nature,
the maternal instinct is strong and un
wavering. This unselfish instinct is
her vulnerable point; for the comfort
and well being of her children, women
have yielded to the selfish encroach
ments of aggressive man, until she has
almost lost her foothold on the solid
earth.
Her individuality and identity are
in danger of being swallowed up if she
is to be regarded as only “an annex to
man.”
“Eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty,” and the “unwomanly woman”
as the suffragist is called by some, has
made it and will continue to make it
her business to arouse the sleepers to
their danger, and call on them to pro
tect the home and themselves from the
lower nature of man.
The harsh laws for women were not
ameliorated, nor was there a proposal
to ameliorate them until the woman
suffragists agitated the subject and
demanded a change.
For this they are sneered and jeered
at by men, whose strong points are
not discernable, and whose great weak
ness is potent to all beholders.
THE RIGHT OF PETITIOX
is the sole political right, which all
women enjoy in common. But women
are weary of asking men to do the just
and righteous thing, and indignant be
cause their requests are denied, as they
generally are. * They are dissatisfied
and discouraged and they see very
plainly that nothing but the pursua-
sive power of the ballot will give them
their heart’s desire.
We have asked that the liquor traffic
shall be abolished and a cigarette law
passed in Georgia to save our boys
from the demon of strong drink and a
lunatic’s cell. We are regarded with
derisive pity and half concealed scorn,
and some of our legislators tell us to
take care of the boys in our homes and
do not get them.
The position of a beggar is not an
enviable one, but it has been woman’s
position so long that if she aspires to
anything higher she is said to have
“unsexed” herself. ...
Women possess great capabilities for
governing. I suppose there are but
lew men who will deny that women
are excellent disciplinarians, since
most of them have, at some period of
their lives, formed an intimate
acquaintance with their mother’s
slipper. Southern men of the ancient
regime will remember the Yankee
school marm who presided over the
educational department of the South
when they were young.
The Southern woman has blossomed
out in that direction largely since
“niggers and the ole plantations” van
ished.
From many modern instances of
plucky, capable women, I have selected
one, a Virginia woman, to prove that
the gray matter in a woman’s brain is
as good as that in man's.
This lady has now entered the post
graduate course at John’s Hopkins
University at Washington; will attend
the advanced lectures in mathematics,
and will pursue graduate course in
astronomy and physics. She will be a
candidate for The degree of doctor pf
phylosophy, but, as she is a woman will
not receive the customary $500. This
woman is only thirty years old: gradu
ated from the high school at fifteen,
then from normal school and became
a teacher at eighteen. She is a pro
ficient mathematician and has a con
tract for calculating the ephemeris of
the sun. She invented a Washington-
Greenwich table wh'ch is now in use
in the Nautical Almanac office, and
had a place which paid her $1200 a
vear. She was so womanly that she
married and is the mother of three
small children, but she holds on to
her office and srill earns her $1200 a
year, and, her husband does not object,
but is in thorough accord with her in
dependent, thrifty ways. While she is
nursing her three-months-old baby,
she amuses herself by calculating the
orbits of the comets discovered by
Prof. Xewcomb and by Prof. Bernard,
of the Lick observatory. For a mem
ber of one of the F.F. Y.’s that is doing
fairly well.
Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender, who is
the law partner of her husband, was
nominated by the prohibitionists of
Xebraska for the office of supreme
judge, and received 4,500 votes. Of
course the men did the voting out
there.
The wife of the brainy Congressman,
William J. Bryan, of XebraskI, prac
tices law with her husband, and he is
loudest in his praise of her pluck and
energy in completing the study of law,
and being admitted to the bar in two
years after she began to study. She
nursed her baby and kept house all the
time.
Truly, it is refreshing to find, occa
sionally, men of large souls who are
not afraid to allow their wives the op
portunity of being something better
than dolls, dunces and household
drudges, It is unbecoming for gen
tlemen to do “the dog in the manger”
act and then call it a “protection.”
It has been reserved to the Georgia
legislature of 1893 to close the doors of
the Georgia Xormal College to two-
thirds of the teachers of Georgia be
cause they were women; and for the
pastor of the First Baptist church in
the Capital city to hurl his anathamas
at women who vote, and call them “in
fidels.” This man should have lived
in the time of Xero and Plutarch; the
latter said: “A wife should have no
friends but those of her husband, and,
as the gods are the first of friends, she
should have no gods but those her hus
band adores.”
THE RIGHTS OF JEWISH WOMEN.
Prof. Roswell D. Hitchcock, in his
analysis of the Bible, says the Hebrew
women were allowed to go unveiled,
might converse in public and appear
in court, give counsel in emergency
and in public matters, raise an army
and be judge and queen. Just the
other day, an Atlanta daily paper in
formed us that Miss Rachael Frank, of
California, is to be a Jewish Rabbi,
when she finishes her theological
course in the Hebrew college at Cin
cinnati. The most celebrated Jewish
divines endorse and encourage her, and
declare the Jews need women in their
pulpits.
WOMAN SUFFRAGISTS AXD MATRIMONY.
Dr. Dabney and Dr. Hawthorne have
declared that woman suffragists are the
most implicable foes to marriage.
The lamented Lucy Stone was mar
ried and was a devoted wife and
mother. When she died she was
mourned, regretted and eulogized by
crowds of the best people of Boston,
and by every grateful woman in the
world.
The secretary of the Georgia
Woman’s Suffrage Association will be
married to a Georgia man on the 5th
of December. He is in thorough ac-
her on her equal rights
cord with
ideas.
UNREASONABLE HUSBANDS.
A very good woman, who is a wife
and a mother, said to me: “I would
vote if I had the chance, for I firmly
believe I have the right, and I see no
other way to pot down the liquor
traffic and social impurity, and protect
our boys and girls. I honestly believe,
however, that it is the one thing which
would cause my husband to seek a
divorce, so I do not say much about it.”
The able and educated (?) Mr.Wheeler
from Walker county who did not want
the bill which debarred the women
teachers from the benefits of the State
Xormal College reconsidered, has
placed himself on record in these
forcible words : “Mr. Speaker, I hope
the house won’t reconsider that bill,
for I’m opposed to it, and in order to
‘get shed’ of l he matter, I call the pre
vious question.” If I was the good
woman, mentioned above, I should
want to “get shed” of a husband who
was so foolish and illiberal.
WOMEN DO NOT ASPIRE TO LEAD,
but they will insist on perfect equality
everywhere for the sexes. Every one
familiar with Bible history will re
member that Deborah, the prophetess,
judge and warrior, besought Barak to
lead the host of Israel to battle. She
did not care to leave her house, even if
it was only a palm tree, and strove to
open Barak’s eyes to his plain duty in
the matter. Just so the women of to
day are calling on men to do the work
they have undertaken. Will the
learned Doctors of Divinity tell us if
Deborah was an “unwomanly woman”
or Barak^an unmanly man ? Is a man
unsexed when be sews, sweeps the
house, minds the baby and a thousand
and one things which man considers
woman’s legitimate work ?
THE NUMBER OF SUFFRAGISTS IN THE
UNITED STATES.
There are 13,000 enrolled; paid up
members of the Xational W. S. Asso
ciation. Wisconsin’s association is
not counted, as it is not auxiliary to
the national. This number does not
begin to show the full strength of the
movement, for the larger number are
silent because they are afraid to ex
press their sentiments, and use every
effort in their power to keep down
fuss and have peace in the family.
The Georgia Suffrage Association
has a membership in five counties in
the State. In Atlanta there are a large
number of women who are in thorough
sympathy, but have never joined. A
few more sermons from Dr. Hawthorne,
Dr. Candler and others of their class,
a few more samples of unjust discrimi
nations on the part of our law makers
and church papers, and the same
spirit which animated our patriot
fathers and prompted them to pour
the tea into Boston harbor and to fight
the Revolutionary war to a finish, will
cause their daughters to declare that
“Taxation without representation is
tyranny.” “Governments derive their
just power from the consent of the
governed.” “Political powers inhere
in the people,” and we are the people
With Wyoming and Colorado to the
front, the complete enfranchisement of
Xew Zealand’s women; with the defeat
of the Gladstone ministry in a female
suffrage amendment to the local gov
ernment bill, by a vote of 147 for to 126
against, we have abundant reason to be
thankful and encouraged. In the Xova
Scotia Legislature, equal suffrage was
defeated by only three votes. Tn Arkan
sas, it is said, the woman’s ballot, “ by
signature,” has closed the saloons in
three-fourths of the counties. Alabama,
Misssissippi and South Carolina law
makers have considered the “ advisabil
ity^ of giving the ballot to women.
Kentucky’s women were allowed school
suffrage since 1645, and within the last
year they have been allowed to own
their own property and make a will.
In 23 States, women have school suf
frage, and in nearly as many municipal
suffrage. All these signs force us to
conclude that it is our duty to bid South
ern men prepare for equal rights to
every citizen; it is useless to fight the
inevitable.
Wyoming - and Colorado bid us go
forward and fear not. For the conso
lation of the poor men, I will quote the
words of Mrs. L. W. Smith, Superinten
dent of schools in certain parts of Wy
oming To vote does not require so
much time that it interferes with
household duties or other business.”
■“ e U®*^jP rar y» Presiding elder of
the Methodist Episcopal church of
Colorado and Wyoming,
said: The very best ladies of the
territory vote, and as they generally
vote on the right side of all questions,
the lies told to their detriment origin-
men of the “baser sort,”
with defeated demagogues and disap-
pointed sstnkers, and the meanest kind
politicians, who hate the majority
ot the women because of their pure
lives and independent ballots.”
B^ e Her W *H C * ? arve y» of the First
SHX?* C , hurch of Laramee, bears
similar testimony. He was converted
after he moved to Wyoming.
Every congressman but one, and all
sufn>, 0 J er ? 0rS ’ testif y to the good re-
lting from women voting, and
recommend the other States to avail
PoSi Ve V° h f Privilege 2 scones
Pnw5Imi« Thep Vi not an almshouse
in Wyoming and but few jails.
Those who oppose woman’s suff
must content themselves to be th5 ^ e
rades of the Liquor Dealers’ a - no,Tl *
tion who have declared war S*'
the movement. This Association
declared that *hen women are a w* 3
to vote their business will be P
and this “innovation and here
cxes J, as
at
preachers call it, must be oppSli
every point.
The agitation of the Woman’s
tion and the Civil War Trou^
light the fact that women can ^ l, f °
supporting, and it was a blessin 1T
womankind. Until woman’s wo !
any sort has a money value W I°‘
who stay at home will be snubbed 2
the masculine element and taunt l
with their dependence. nted
Fifty years ago only thirteen oop„
pations were open to women-
there are 342, and soon there win
no limit: every door will open wide?
the women, as a body, will contin,
persistently to knock. There arefo
thousand women in colleges, and the
are 30,554,370 women in the Fni^
States. When this grand army iff
mothers, wives, daughters and ‘
niluo, uau^inaj> ctllU Sl^er
start out to straighten the crookedanl
misplaced things, this old world will
hum. 1
It is often declared that “politicsare
so corrupting, and women will become
contaminated if they dabble in it”
They have lived many years with men
who enjoyed “dabbling” in politics
which is intimately connected with the
liquor traffic, and liquor drinking i s
one of the chief enjoyments. If they
have not become contaminated yet
there is no danger. If, in itself, poli
tics is contaminating, then, neither
man or woman should be allowed to
have anything to do with it. and the
preachers should turn their efforts on
the voters to reform them and make
them fit for a better world before it is
too late.
The plea is that women will be
slandered, her good name ruined. This
is only another scare crow set up to
frighten women from the preserves of
men.
As long as corner groceries, drug
stores, blind tigers and saloons are the
loafing places of the voters of the land,
the slanderers and detractors of good
women will succeed iD getting in their
perfect work, for
“Man to man. so oft unjust.
Is always so to woman.”
(Mrs.) M. L. McLendon.
Atlanta, December, 1893.
CATARRH TWENTY YEARS.
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