The same distinguished editor said:  “When women gather around voting booths on election days with sandwiches and coffee, they present an indecent spectacle to the public.”  The man who goes with gun in hand and shoots down another in defense of his country is a hero.  The mother lion or bear that defies the hunter’s bullets and dies in defense of her young we can but respect; but when woman, who has suffered so long in silence, goes near where the welfare of her home is at stake and out of the sore, sad sorrow of her heart appeals to men for protection to her home from the ravages of the saloon, she is not paid the respect given to a mother hen or bird or bear by the advocate of the liquor traffic.  When the niece of Cardinal Richelieu was demanded by a licentious king, the Cardinal said:  “Around her form I draw the awful circle of our kingly church; set a foot within and on thy head, aye, though it wear a crown, shall fall the curse of Rome.”  Shall the crown of gold on the distiller’s and brewer’s brow hush into silence the lion-hearted manhood of our republic when its sons and daughters are demanded to feed the maw of the liquor traffic?

One of the famous pictures of the masters is of a woman bound fast to a pillar within the tide-mark of the ocean.  The waves are curling about her feet.  A ship is passing under full sail but no one seems to see or heed the woman in peril.  Birds of prey hover above her, but she sees neither bird, nor ship, nor sea; knowing her doom is sealed, she lifts her eyes to heaven and prays.  This picture represents thousands of women tied fast to their doom within the tide-waves of the ocean of intemperance.  The ship of state passes by, bearing its share of the ill-gotten gains of the liquor traffic, but heeds not the moans and cries of struggling, strangling, dying woman.  Oliver Cromwell said:  “It is relative misgovernment that lashes nations into fury.”  The long suffering in silence by the womanhood of this country from the misgovernment that has heaped upon woman the woes of strong drink by the licensed saloon, whether a tribute to the patience of woman or not, is to the eternal shame of man, whose inhumanity to woman through the liquor traffic is making “countless millions mourn.”

To this misgovernment is due the unrest among women and the impetus behind the equal suffrage movement today.  There needs to be a saving influence brought into our political life, and I have faith to believe that woman’s ballot will provide that influence.  Having proved her dignity in every new field of activity she has entered, I believe the same flowers of refinement will adorn the ballot box when she holds in her hand the sacred trust of franchise.  Her life-long habit of house-cleaning will be carried to the dirty pool of politics, where the saloon is entrenched, and the demagogue and demijohn will be carted away to the garbage pile of discarded rubbish.