CHAPTER VI

OBJECTIONS TO THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT

I. States rights.  This objection is urged by all opponents of woman suffrage, but is either A barricade to defend themselves from the necessity of exposing the fact that they have no reasons, or is A play to postpone woman suffrage as long as possible.  By A few it is urged conscientiously and with conviction.

That there are many problems whose treatment belongs so appropriately to state governments that any infringement of that right by the Federal Government would be an act of tyranny, no American will question.  But assuredly woman suffrage is not one of these.  One by one classes of men have been granted the vote until women are the only remaining unenfranchised class.  States have set up various restrictive qualifications so that criminality, idiocy, insanity, pauperism, drunkenness, foreign birth are accepted as ordinary causes of disfranchisement.  Yet not one of these conditions is common to all the states.  The foreigner votes on his first papers in eight states and a five years’ residence will usually secure his naturalization and a consequent vote in any state.  The criminal, idiot and insane are not denied a vote in several states, and in most a large class of ignorant un-American men with no comprehension of our problems, our history, or ideals, are conspicuous voters on election day.  Millions of new voters have entered our country and without the expenditure of time, money or service have received the vote since the pending Federal Amendment was first introduced.

For two generations groups of women have given their lives and their fortunes to secure the vote for their sex and hundreds of thousands of other women are now giving all the time at their command.  No class of men in our own or any other country has made one-tenth the effort nor sacrificed one-tenth as much for the vote.  The long delay, the double dealing, the broken faith of political parties, the insult of disfranchisement of the qualified in a land which freely gives the vote to the unqualified, combines to produce as insufferable a tyranny as any modern nation has perpetuated upon a class of its citizens.  The souls of women which should be warm with patriotic love of their country are growing bitter over the inexplicable wrong their country is doing them.  Hands and heads that should be busy with other problems of our nation are withheld that they may get the tools with which to work.  Purses that should be open to many causes are emptied into suffrage coffers until this monumental injustice