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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and respect for the family tie. To 

 summon women to the polls would 

 signify an antagonism between their 

 interests and those of men. It would 

 signify that a man and the women 

 of his household are separate social 

 units in the same sense in which two 

 men are, and that they require pro- 

 tection against one another that 

 each must be armed with the ballot 

 lest the others encroach. This as- 

 sumption, in our opinion, is not war- 

 ranted. Making all deductions for 

 unfortunate instances, the family 

 is in general a unit, and the wife, 

 daughter, or sister has no desire to 

 antagonize the vote of the husband, 

 father, or brother. How about those 

 women, it will be asked, who have 

 no husband, father, or brother to rep- 

 resent them in a satisfactory manner? 

 Our answer is that their case does 

 not appear to us to be one of hard- 

 ship unless it can be shown that, con- 

 sidering them as a class apart from 

 those who have male relatives, they 

 are suffering through lack of polit- 

 ical influence. Simply as women 

 they receive whatever benefit accrues 

 to the sex in general through such 

 improvements in the law as are daily 

 taking place, and through the sym- 

 pathy with woman which character- 

 izes the normal man. To a consider- 

 able extent also the same means of 

 influence are open to them as are 

 open to other women. They are 

 not cut off from society : they can 

 speak and write ; and how potent 

 "women agitators" can be in pro- 

 curing changes of the law Miss 

 Tweedy has told us. What is main- 

 ly needed, in our opinion, is the 

 deepening of the sense of trustee- 

 ship in men, and that fortunately is 

 a process which is realizing itself 

 more and more before our eyes. Far 

 better so than that all trusteeship 

 should be snatched from man with 

 the snappish declaration that hence- 

 forth his wife, daughter, and sister 



will take care of their own interests. 

 A singular time indeed for such a 

 change to be made, when things have 

 so shaped themselves that so earnest 

 a female suffragist as our contribu- 

 tor is hard put to it to say what 

 the disadvantages are under which 

 women labor through man's control 

 of the suffrage, or what laws they 

 want passed which if duly explained 

 and urged they could not now get 

 passed ! 



There are other views of the 

 question which we have only space 

 to glance at. We can not lose sight 

 of the fact that all law means com- 

 pulsionphysical compulsion in the 

 last resort ; and this to our mind 

 points to the conclusion that the re- 

 sponsibility for making laws should 

 rest with those who could if neces- 

 sary fight for their enforcement. It 

 has before been pointed out that the 

 situation which would be created if 

 a large majority of women, in com- 

 bination with a minority of men, 

 passed laws repugnant to a large and 

 effective majority of men, would be 

 a very critical one for social order. 

 Yet if nothing of this kind is going 

 to happen, it is difficult to see where 

 the special influence of woman's vote 

 will come in. 



Another point deserving of con- 

 sideration is that the male sex, when 

 all is said and done, is the progress- 

 ive sex. Mr. Havelock Ellis's in- 

 teresting and certainly far from 

 prejudiced book on Man and Woman 

 makes this clear. Broadly speaking, 

 woman shows the statical, man the 

 dynamical, aspect of humanity, and, 

 as the work of legislation is in its 

 nature continuous and progressive, 

 it seems natural that it should be 

 intrusted to that sex which best 

 represents the onward movement of 

 the race. Here, however, we must 

 adjourn the discussion, which is one 

 difficult to confine within narrow 

 limits. Much probably remains to 





