]^ OMAJSr AND THE BALLOT. 251 



It is not the casualties of life nor of business that drive 

 women as a class into industrial occupations, but the constant 

 inventions that liberate their time, once useful in the house. 

 Woman's work has always been one of the main stays of the 

 home, although men have cherished the fiction that they "sup- 

 ported " it. Now that man has laid violent hands on woman's 

 former employments — cutting children's garments by machinery, 

 baking, pickling, and preserving for the nation — it is inconceiv- 

 able that woman, industrious woman, should fold her hands and 

 sit in a corner. She has gone forth and sought for work ; she has 

 become " an economic factor," and this status is the precedent, not 

 the consequent, of the ballot. 



We are, however, informed that " women want the ballot in 

 order that they may open to themselves a free career in all the 

 professions and occupations in which men are engaged. . . . They 

 wish to make ivounds which the present social structure now 

 receives its chronic status." 



This diagnosis is faulty, the caution too late. The wounds 

 were rifts in the larval envelope that woman has cast from her. 

 She asks recognition now in the new order to which she is ad- 

 mitted. 



It is to be deprecated that individualism in seeking its due 

 should overlook what it owes to others. Women, in the past at 

 least, have sought much more actively for duties than for rights, 

 so that it is superserviceable for a man to suggest this course to 

 them. Even yet some women need to be informed that they 

 have any rights, such rights as the Constitution of the United 

 States avers belong to every man — life, liberty, and the pursuit of 

 happiness. 



Our antisuffragist again brings forth the bugaboo which is 

 dear to the conservative heart : the threat of unsexing woman. 



" The inevitable ultimate result of subjecting the two human 

 sexes to the same labors, the same employments, the same cares, 

 will be just the same as when domestic animals have been 

 subjected for long periods to the same conditions. Sexual dif- 

 ferences, physical and mental, will tend to disappear, and the 

 two branches of the race will tend to approximate a common 

 type." 



We can safely let the matter of sex rest entirely with Nature. 

 It is a fundamental fact of our being, not to be disturbed by any 

 little transformation scenes that we can bring about. We may go 

 for analogies to the domestic animals, birds, or fishes, and in none 

 of them will we find sexual differences disappearing or tending to 

 disappear. What are called secondary sexual characteristics are 

 very tickle in their nature, and do for various reasons often desert 

 the sex with which they are identified. These are characters 



