LET US THEREWITH BE CONTENT. 347 



cising the suffrage, their instinct seems to be to draw back. Ask 

 the women, one after another, in a representative community, if 

 they wish to vote, and again and again will come the answers : 

 " I haven't time," " My hands are overfull now," " How can I 

 undertake a duty which means that I must inform myself upon 

 all the public questions of the day ?" Naturally, many of them, 

 especially those who are temperance workers, or those whose 

 property interests are not represented under existing conditions, 

 desire the ballot. But the great majority are content to occupy 

 themselves with the multitude of interests which are already 

 theirs, and to leave the formal affairs of state to men. The great 

 majority, when they speak sincerely, will say that home-making 

 and its allied interests is their chosen life, and that its demands 

 are so exacting that they must leave the work of government to 

 other hands. 



This attitude is certainly open to criticism. Perhaps it is true 

 that the sons could be better educated by mothers who voted, 

 that homes could be better made and protected by wives who 

 held the power of the ballot, that the welfare of schools and 

 charities would be furthered if women who are interested in 

 them had a share in the making of the laws. Yet it would seem 

 that if woman possessed by nature any great aptitude for polit- 

 ical life, she would be eager to exercise it. It has been said 

 that " the men are not what they are because they vote, but they 

 vote because they are what they are." They make politics, and 

 they are interested in the work of their hands. Women do not 

 make it and (always in general) are not interested in it. If 

 woman alone were to govern the state, how radically different 

 would be her methods ! And how can oil and water mix ? Until 

 she can disfranchise man and establish a rule of her own peculiar 

 sort, woman may perhaps be expected to show indifference to 

 political affairs. Furthermore, she might evince more alacrity 

 for reaching out for the august power of the ballot if she ob- 

 served that the men who exercise it thereby get what they want. 

 But to her puzzled query, " If you want this reform or that 

 measure, why don't you put it through ? " the conclusive reply 

 is that " you can't get at it," on account of the " primaries," or 

 " the bosses," or " the spoils system," or the " rings," or the 

 wheels within wheels of whatever other complications interfere 

 to muddle the brain and thwart the will of the sovereign Amer- 

 ican people. A woman answered thus, and reflecting upon the 

 suffrage, is apt to wonder, in her silly, feminine way, if the 

 game is worth the candle. 



Perhaps it is worth the candle. Many a wise man thinks so, 

 and having the suffrage himself, a man should be able to esti- 

 mate its value. However that question may be finally settled. 



