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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



they miglii be matched ? Surely 

 " woman's rights " stop short of that. 

 If voting meant merely the collect- 

 ing of opinions, no one would dream 

 of refusing the votes of women; but 

 so long as it means the determining 

 and arraying of forces, which must 

 in the last resort be physical forces, 

 something else than an instinctive 

 desu'e to tyrannize may well inspire 

 the men who do not wish women to 

 vote. As to the women who do not 

 wish to vote, the simple answer they 

 have to give to inquiring committee 

 women is that they know " a more 

 excellent way." 



If the book to which we are re- 

 ferring has a fault it is that it is too 

 argumentative. The author seems 

 to have made up her mind to achieve 

 a victory at evei*y point, and has con- 

 sequently entered on one or two dis- 

 cussions which might perhaps have 

 been advantageously omitted. We 

 doubt whether it was very necessary 

 to prove that aristocratic institutions 

 are more favorable to the political 

 prominence of women than demo- 

 cratic ones. It is enough to prove, 

 as we think the author has done, that 

 there are reasons for believing that 

 the participation of women in the 

 suffrage to-day, far from improving 

 the constitution of society, would tend 

 to impair it. It was useful, however, 

 to insist that there is no connection 

 between the democratic theory of 

 society and the extension of the suf- 

 frage to women. It would be an 

 insult to the female sex to maintain 

 that, in the progressive lowering of 

 the conditions for the exercise of the 

 electoral franchise, women ought to 

 be taken in ; or even that, because the 

 franchise is very widely bestowed, 

 women ought to possess it. These 

 unflattering arguments are more or 

 less used by the advocates of woman 

 suffrage; but those who have a truer 

 sense of the position and claims of 

 women perceive that it never can be 



a question of conceding any right to 

 her after men have obtained the 

 same right, or even because they have 

 obtained it; whatever is a woman's 

 right belongs to her whether men 

 have it or not. 



How odiously in certain cases the 

 suffrage party have stated their posi- 

 tion is well shown by Mrs. Johnson 

 in the following paragraph : 



''The argument for woman suf- 

 fi'age which bases it upon a fancied 

 grouping of women with the vile 

 and brainless element in the country 

 appears to me at once the weakest 

 and the meanest of all. When the 

 United States Government invited 

 its women citizens to share in mak- 

 ing the Columbian Exposition the 

 most wondrous pageant of any age, 

 the National Suffrage Association, at 

 its official exhibit, gave a picture of 

 the expressive face of Miss Willard 

 surrounded by ideal heads of a pau- 

 per, an idiot, and a criminal, with a 

 legend recording their belief that it 

 was with these that American men 

 placed American women. So false a 

 picture must have taught the thought- 

 ful gazers the opposite lesson from 

 the one intended. It could have told 

 them that the United Slates Govern- 

 ment had at least guarded one trust 

 with sacred care. The pauper was 

 excluded from the ballot as not being 

 worthy to share with freemen the 

 honor of its defense. The unfortu- 

 nate was excluded by an inscrutable 

 decree of Providence. The criminal 

 was excluded as being dangerous to 

 society. The women were exempt 

 from the ballot because it was for 

 their special safety that a free ballot 

 was to be exercised from which the 

 pauper and the criminal were to le 

 excluded. They were the ones who 

 have given to social life its meaning 

 and its moral, the ones who give to 

 civic life its highest value." 



The writer lays proper stress on 

 the fact that the occasions are not so 



