Women's suffrage

“ Under pavilions, or in adjoining rooms, or in the very shadow of the ballot-box, women presided at well-filled tables, serving refreshments to the voters, and handing to those who would take them, tickets bearing the words: "For Constitutional Amendment Relating to Right of Suffrage," while the national colors floated alike over governing and governed; alike over women working and pleading for their rights as citizens, and men who were selling woman's birth-right for a glass of beer or a vote. ”

“ One is the growing determination and strength of women, and the other the sympathy of the electors. The largest majority ceases to suffice for and protect a Government which has lost its hold on the country, and nothing is now more dangerous to the popularity of the Government than its treatment of the Women's Suffrage cause. ”

“ Until women come to see this too, and to give their united influence to this latter faith, political power in their hands would destroy even that measure of liberty which free-thinkers of both sexes have painfully established by the sacrifices of many generations. Yet I should vote for woman suffrage all the same, because it is woman's right. ”

“ Here then is an open door to equal suffrage. Once let the women of any State take their equal part in this great national election and their complete equality is assured. Without change of State or Federal Constitution, without ratification by the individual voters, a simple majority of both houses of any Legislature at any time in any State can confer upon women citizens this magnificent privilege, which will carry with it a certainty of speedy future concessions of all minor rights and privileges. ”

“ Sir, there are some ladies—and I do not intend to term them anything but ladies—who are zealously engaged in this cause, and they have flooded this hall with petitions, and have called their women's rights conventions all over the land. I assail not their motives, but I deny that they represent the women of the United States. I say that if woman suffrage obtains, the worst class of the women of the country will rush to the polls and the best class will remain away by a large majority. ”

“ It would take volumes to give at length the work of all the women now interested in the enfranchisement of women and in the temperance field. There was a time in our history when the question of women's suffrage, unless it threatened the immediate community in which we lived, was a matter to which the majority of us in America, whether men or women, were, if not indifferent, still somewhat neutral. ”

“ All this, the thoughtful friends of suffrage will gladly admit.
But does this concession belittle the importance of woman's political rights? Exactly not! A part in the government becomes important to any class in proportion as they become large stockholders in common affairs and as they become aware of their own interests and their own powers. The ballot is of little value to an unawakened, unaspiring people; their masters will look after matters. But American women are not unawakened or unaspiring. ”

“ A great majority of those who were present thought that the Prime Minister had recognised that women's suffrage was inevitable, and that it would not be for the benefit of his party that he should withstand to the last this great advance in human freedom. ”

“ She thus became an earnest and profound student of social, political, and religious questions, and when she adopted the idea that women should be allowed to vote as a fundamental right she at once, in characteristic style, began to do all she could to bring about the great reform. She considered women's suffrage the greatest movement in the world's history, claiming that the ballot would give women every social and intellectual, as well as political, advantage. She wrote and lectured, and studied and explained the doctrine of equal suffrage for women for thirty years. ”

“ Hard upon the track of the man suffrage movement presses the movement for woman suffrage, a logical step onward. It has come as inevitably and naturally as the flower unfolds from the bud or the fruit develops from the flower. Why should woman suffrage not come? Men throughout the world hold their suffrage by the guarantee of the two principles of liberty and for these reasons only: One, "Taxation without representation is tyranny"; who dares deny it? And are not women taxed? ”

“ The evils of woman suffrage lie, first, in the fact that to give the vote to women is to give it to voters who as a class are quite incompetent to adjudicate upon political issues; secondly, in the fact that women are a class of voters who cannot effectively back up their votes by force; and, thirdly, in the fact that it may seriously embroil man and woman. ”

“ With 7,316 more women than men in this District, we call your special attention to the inconsistency and injustice of granting suffrage to a minority and withholding it from a majority, as you have done in the past. If the District is your special ward, then women, being in the majority here, have peculiar claims upon you for a consideration of their rights. The freedom of this country is only half won. The women of to-day have less freedom than our fathers of the revolution, for they were permitted local self-government, while women have no share in local, State, or general government. ”

“ The granting of women's suffrage would be against the disintegrating power of the other side, as women were everywhere anti-revolutionary forces.... This would add about 800,000 to the electorate. They would be, she believed, middle-aged women of property, than whom she thought they could not assemble more anti-revolutionary forces. ”

“ Had either party lived up to the high ideals of our nation and courageously taken the stand for right and justice as against time-serving, vote-winning policies of delay, women would have been enfranchised long ago.... If, however, neither of the dominant parties has made as clean and progressive a record as its admirers could have wished, there is no question but that individual men of both parties have given heroic service to the cause of woman suffrage and this has been true in every State, those which ratified and those which rejected. ”

“ He asked to be considered as a friend of the movement, and added, "No one can be blind to the fact that at the next General Election, Women's Suffrage will be a real practical issue and the next Parliament, I think, ought to see the gratification of the women's claims. ”

“ The conference decided by a majority in favour of the principle of women's suffrage. The work of women during the war, the new position to which they are called in the whole industrial life of the country, are considerations which have effected a sweeping change in general opinion on this great matter; and it is by this time fairly plain that a measure of women's suffrage must be included in any reform legislation which is seriously meant. ”

“ I have never yet been able to see that the right of voting is secured legally to women under any instrument which is recognized as having the force of law. A republican form of government does not mean universal suffrage. We know that the framers of the Constitution never dreamed that the idea of a republic would include even all the males of the country. ”

“ What the National Union aimed at was the creation in each constituency of a Women's Suffrage society on non-party lines, which should by meetings, articles, and educational propaganda of all kinds create so strong a feeling in favour of women's suffrage as to make party managers on both sides realise, in choosing candidates, that they would have a better chance of success with a man who was a suffragist than with a man who was an anti-suffragist. ”

“ In 1910, the membership of the various Women’s Suffrage Societies, and of bodies of men and women who have declared in favour of the idea of women’s suffrage, is estimated by some at over half a million—a figure subject, no doubt, to great deduction ”

“ In the election of 1894 a greater per cent. of women voted than men, and instead of their being contaminated by any influence of a bad nature at the polls, the effect has been that there are no loafers, there are no drunkards, there are no persons of questionable character standing around the polls. One of the practical effects of woman suffrage will be to inject into politics an element that is independent and does not have to keep a consistent record with the party. ”

“ Anti-suffragists have abandoned the argument that working women do not wish the additional burden of the vote, and suffragists have learned to dwell far more upon the needs of working women than upon the grievances of taxpayers. Practically all advocates of woman suffrage are agreed that the working woman is in even greater need of the ballot than the woman of leisure, and that the introduction of woman suffrage is an important step in improving the condition of the working class. ”

“ Our protest is not that all men are lifted out of the degradation of disfranchisement, but that all women are left in. The Revolution and the National Woman's Suffrage Association make woman's suffrage their test of loyalty, not negro suffrage, not Maine law or prohibition. Do you believe women should vote? is the one and only question in our catechism. In this period of reconstruction the Woman Suffrage Associations sent their first delegates to National political conventions. ”

“ Are we ready to expose the country to the demoralization, and our institutions to the strain, which would be placed upon them for the gratification of a minority of the virtuous and good of our female population at the expense of the mortification of a very large majority of the same sex?
It has been frequently urged with great earnestness by those who advocate woman suffrage that the ballot is necessary to the women to enable them to protect themselves in securing occupations, and to enable them to realize the same compensation for the like labor which is received by men. ”

“ The result was a respectable democratic vote in favor of woman suffrage.
In a discussion with General Blunt at a meeting in Ottawa, Mr. Train said:
You say, General, that women in politics would lower the standard. Are politicians so pure, politics so exalted, the polls so immaculate, men so moral, that woman would pollute the ballot and contaminate the voters? Would revolvers, bowie-knives, whisky barrels, profane oaths, brutal rowdyism, be the feature of elections if women were present? Woman's presence purifies the atmosphere. ”

“ If the ballot in the hand of woman compels political parties to place their best men in nomination, this, in and of itself, is a sufficient reason for sustaining woman suffrage. Ex-Chief Justice Fisher, of Cheyenne, said in 1883: I wish I could show the people who are so wonderfully exercised on the subject of female suffrage just how it works. The women watch the nominating conventions, and if the Republicans put a bad man on their ticket and the Democrats a good one, the Republican women do not hesitate a moment in scratching off the bad and substituting the good. ”

“ Had it been either custom or statutory law which forbade women to vote, the suffrage would have been won by the same processes which have gained every other privilege. A few women would have voted, a few men and women would have upheld them, and, little by little, year after year, the number of women electors would have increased until it became as general for women to vote as it is for men. ”

“ Resolved, That as neither free trade, finance, prohibition, capital and labor, nor any other political question, can be so vital to the existence of the Republic as the enfranchisement of women, it is clearly our duty to aid and support the great National party that shall first inscribe woman suffrage on its banner. ”

“ Now I trust the day is not far distant when our institutions shall practically recognize this idea—when civil prerogative shall be limited not only by no distinction of color, but by no distinction of sex.
Are women politically oppressed that they need the ballot for their protection? I leave that question to be answered by women themselves. I demand the ballot for woman, not for woman's sake, but for man's. She may demand it for her own sake ”

“ We now ask Congress to do the same for women. We ask you to enfranchise the women of the District this very winter, so that next March they may go to the ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see that it is possible for women to vote and the republic to stand. There is no reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our demand ”

“ But in 1891 before the suffrage was a live subject, before it had entered the region of practical politics, the women suffragists in six weeks obtained 30,000 signatures of adult women. The first and the most natural result of the anti-suffrage movement has been to bring down enquiries on the United Council from all parts of the Colony how to help Women's Suffrage. ”

“ Men fully understood the power that the vote would place in the hands of women, with a lessening of their own, and in the mass they did not intend to concede it.
The pioneers in the movement for the rights of women, of which the suffrage was only one, contested every inch of ground and little by little the old prejudice weakened, public sentiment was educated, barriers were broken down and women pressed forward. ”

“ But even if a large majority of women do not desire any change in the Constitution, that would be a very bad reason for withholding the elective franchise from those who do desire it. Freedom of choice, liberty to choose their own sphere, is what is asked. We have not heard that the most ardent apostles of female suffrage propose to compel any woman to make stump speeches against her will, or to march a fainting sisterhood to the polls under a police, in Bloomer costume. ”