WOMAN AND THE BALLOT. 247 



all those vocations that expose to premature death or great phys- 

 ical suffering/' An inventory of these exemptions follows : 



1. From the perils, wounds, and deaths incident to war. 



2. From all kinds of labor dangerous to life or exposing to 

 hardship and privation. 



3. From the care of earning her livelihood and that of her 

 offspring. 



One is at first sight aghast at this record of masculine arro- 

 gance. Women might retort, and say Men have exempted them- 

 selves — 



1. From the care of their progeny. 



2. From the preparation of clothes, food, and household toil. 



3. From nursing the sick. 



All these " exemptions " are misnomers. Men have " ex- 

 empted " women from nothing. They have excluded women in 

 former times, and still exclude them in some degree, from the 

 higher institutions of learning, the professions, and government. 

 These exclusions, however, would form another " bill of griev- 

 ances." The immunities mentioned are purely imaginary. Man 

 chooses to fight, to sail the seas, to dig for gold and iron, to hew 

 wood, and cut his own pathway in the- world because he is a man 

 and likes it, not to save any woman nor womankind from such 

 tasks. He has the. combative instinct that greets a struggle, the 

 well-knit muscles that crave vigorous action, the adventurous 

 spirit that courts the unknown, and the courage that defies dan- 

 ger. Does a boy wrestle with his playfellow to spare his sister ; 

 or run away to sea, or to the gold mines of South Africa, from an 

 altruistic feeling for womankind ? 



Neither do men go to war or enter upon any dangerous calling 

 with the purpose of exempting women. When John takes the 

 peach and hands Jane the apple, we do not say," Jane is exempted 

 from eating the peach." Were all womankind swept from the 

 earth to-morrow, men would not bury their weapons nor let 

 the ships drift. Love of the other sex is a spur to the endeavor 

 of either, but the choice of occupations calling for physical force 

 is instinctive with the sex possessing it in greatest degree. 

 All intellectual pursuits are feminizing in tendency, and it is 

 only with men engaged in these, only with the smaller number 

 among them who have allowed their masculine instincts to be- 

 come atrophied, that the fallacy of " exemption " would take root. 

 The wrestler, the sailor, the Alpine hunter, the blacksmith, would 

 laugh such a creed to scorn. Men have not exempted women 

 from deeds of force, from war, from labor, nor from self-support. 

 They have generally chosen these offices for themselves, and left 

 women to do the things that were left undone. 



Woman is not only weighted by these gratuitous immunities. 



