82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



devotion of energy, time, and thought which her official oath 

 exacted of her, she would be obliged to do it at the expense of 

 that assiduous care, watchfulness, and service which her wifely 

 and maternal relations demand. 



Let us consider contingencies quite likely to occur under a 

 regime which divided fairly between men and women the respon- 

 sibilities of civic and public life. Would a husband of the city 

 where this is written, going early to and returning late from his 

 business — say that of chief salesman in a large retail store, or a con- 

 tractor engaged in erecting a block of buildings — enjoy the honor 

 of his wife's election to the Legislature, if while she were shut up 

 in committee rooms with men, or interviewed at her lodgings by 

 lobbyists, or waiting to mingle her shrill voice in the melee of a 

 general debate in the House, the measles or the scarlatina should 

 break out in the forlorn group of his motherless children ? The 

 banker, who had been harassed all day by the intelligence of a 

 financial crash that threatened his own fortunes and the funds of 

 widows and orphans of whom he was the trustee, would have a 

 still stronger claim on the public sympathy if, coming home at 

 night for fellowship and cheerful words, and asking his eldest 

 daughter where her mother was, he should be told : " Oh, you know 

 she is out on the jury with eleven men on that dreadful murder 

 case, and it is not thought they can come in before morning.'' 



I know the answer to this objection generally made: Yes, 

 there are many women, as there are also some men, whose health, 

 whose business, whose domestic cares, render them averse to office 

 and exempt them from its responsibility. The good sense of the 

 voters may be trusted not to select such engaged persons as candi- 

 dates ; and if they should be selected the good sense of the candi- 

 date can be trusted to decline the office, and that will end it. 



But is this answer quite satisfactory ? It is a question of re- 

 considering and readjusting the occupations respectively of men 

 and women, which all civilized and uncivilized peoples, without 

 concert among themselves, have established and built into their 

 social institutions. An arrangement of this permanence and 

 universality may be considered an arrangement of Nature. 

 Nature evidently regards as of supreme importance the perpetua- 

 tion of the race, and imposes presumably, and at least potentially, 

 upon all women a paramount duty in accomplishing this purpose. 

 The political disability, whether extending actually to four fifths 

 of womankind or potentially to all womankind, is one irrevocably 

 connected with that very office and raison d'etre, which called 

 woman into existence. An objection to employment in public 

 office good as against four fifths of the female sex ought to be 

 good as to the whole sex, just as if it were a question of enlist- 

 ing women as soldiers, or shipping them as seamen, or engaging 



