The advocates of the ballot for woman hope through its aid to secure an overthrow of this rule, or escape from this so-called bondage. They demand a change in public sentiment regarding the sphere woman is to fill, securing to her an equality before the law, in representation, in privileges, and in wages.
In other words, there are women who hope and expect to do away with the disabilities incident to the female portion of the community, and by education and culture, obtain for woman this same strength, this same ability to study, to think, to work, and to plan, that is enjoyed by man. In short, some believe that a woman can be so changed that she can, for all practical purposes, get on without man's help or protection.
Against this revolutionary scheme we protest, because, by a reference to the Word of God,[A] we find reasons for believing that it is in the constitution and nature of woman, with some slight modifications, to occupy the place assigned her in this land, where Christian influence unites with the better instincts of humanity in lightening her burdens, smoothing her pathway, and filling her lap with the tributes of manly regard.
[Footnote A: I am aware that this sneer is often made: "The same class oppose us who defended the divine right of slavery." This is untrue so far as I am concerned. I was second to no man in condemnation of slavery, because the Bible condemned it. That one utterance, "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth," was the seedling out of which liberty, equality, and fraternity grew. Liberty was won because of the faith, and prayers, and efforts of a God-believing and a Christ-loving church. Their prayers and their faith girded the nation with strength, and their prowess, aided by those who followed their lead, secured victory.]
The Scriptural Argument.
To state our faith more definitely, we believe that in Eden woman enjoyed an equality with man; that she took advantage of her privilege, and, transgressing the law of God without consulting her husband, proved treacherous to her high trust, opened the gate of perdition to the enemy of souls, and brought upon man and the race the curse consequent upon sin, and the ruin wrought by the fall. In consequence of this, God pronounced a curse upon her; gave her sorrow in child-bearing, as he gave to man fatigue in toil; changed the relations hitherto subsisting between man and woman, and compelled her to live henceforth in another; to sink her own individuality, and merge it in that of her husband. This is the language. Unto the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." This is her portion of the curse. This portion endures. Man from that moment became ruler. The wife's desire was to the husband, so that whatever she desires is naturally referred to him. He became adviser, lawmaker and head. The right or wrong of God's action it does not become us to discuss. It is right because God did it. Dispute the right who will, but the curse lives. The serpent crawls on his belly and eats dust. The wife has sorrow in conception; her desire is to her husband, and he rules her; and man, by the sweat of his brow, eats his bread.
But, says some one, did not the coming of Christ change the status of woman, and place her again on the same equality which she enjoyed when Adam led the beautiful Eve to her nuptial bower, and found it impossible to exist without what the poet describes as
"Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self,Thy wish exactly to thy heart's desire?"
If we have not mistaken the relations subsisting even in Eden between the original pair, woman was not the ruler even there. Milton has truthfully said,—
"For well I understand in the prime endOf Nature her the inferior, in the mindAnd inward faculties which most excel,In outward, also, her resembling lessHis image who made both, and less expressingThe character of that dominion givenO'er other creatures; yet when I approachHer loveliness, so absolute she seems,And in herself complete, so well to knowHer own, that what she wills to do or saySeems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best:All higher knowledge in her presence fallsDegraded; wisdom in discourse with herLoses discountenanced, and like folly shows;Authority and reason on her wait,As one intended first, not after madeOccasionally; and to consummate all,Greatness of mind and nobleness their seatBuild in her, loveliest, and create an aweAbout her, as a guard angelic placed."
With woman, as God made her, we are not acquainted. Glimpses of her pristine beauty, and characteristics of her former excellence, shine forth; but sin has marred the original picture, and defaced the model fashioned by the Creator's hand. The ruin wrought by the fall brought Christ to earth. He opened a way back to Eden—not on earth, but in heaven. The curse remains. The race is under it, because sin is in the world. The law, formed after the fall, is the expressed will of God. Christ did not come to do away with it, but to fulfil it. Then, as now, it was a law of love, of good will, of peace. When Christ came, woman's condition was deplorable. She was the abject slave of man in nearly all the world. Yet Christ made no attempt to break down their original arrangements. He knew that without a change in woman herself, no external changes in her condition could be of any benefit to her. He recognized the great fact that she herself must be educated to a better life, that she must have a character which in itself would command respect, and make her worthy of a higher place and a larger liberty. Truly has it been said, "Institutions, of themselves, can never confer freedom upon a people. They must be free men, capable of liberty, and then they will be able not only to make their own institutions, but keep and defend them also. So the emancipation of woman can be effected only by breaking the bonds of her ignorance, frivolity, and vice. A character must be given her, and then the iron door of her prison-house will open to her of its own accord, and she will find that the angel of liberty has been leading her forth indeed." In this direction Jesus labored. Paul, in his Epistles, gave emphasis to the teachings of the Old Testament, and so he wrote, "Let your women keep silence, in the churches, for it is not permitted them to speak; but they are to be in subjection, as the law also says; and if they will to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church,"—I Cor. xiv. 34, 35.
Against this command many arguments have been brought to bear, and despite this apostolic command, some women insist upon their right to preach. It is a significant truth, that whoever does this, enters upon a conflict with public sentiment born of God, and subjects herself to terrible mortification. The refusal of lending Universalist divines to share the exercises of an ordination with a woman, illustrates this principle. The recognition given to man as the head of the household, involves the loss of woman's individuality, and of her right to a support. It opens a window to life, and shows why our higher nature revolts against woman being compelled to labor in the field. That is man's place, and the labor elevates him. It degrades a woman. The praises of agricultural toil for man find a place in song and story; but labor in the field is destructive of womanhood, of motherhood, and of wifehood.
We have seen that the Scriptures declare, 1. That it is not well for man to be alone. He is not complete until woman is joined to him in marriage. 2. Woman was made for man. Manliness is an attribute that belongs to man; it disgraces a woman. To be womanly, is the noblest tribute that can be paid to woman; but it disgraces a man, because God, the Creator, placed this characteristic within the heart and soul and nature, just as he gave a difference of nature, mould, and form, to the outward appearance of man and woman. He made them for a particular purpose, and not for the same purpose. They were not made in the same manner, nor of the same material. If woman be the weaker vessel, she is of the finer mould. God made man in his own image, and woman was created to be his helpmeet.
3. We have noticed the change in the relations which was the product of the curse. Woman in Eden was the source of influence. After it, man became the head, and her desire was unto him.
4. Since the fall, labor has been multiplied to man, sorrow to woman; but such is the kindness of God, that these two facts are sources of perpetual joy in the home. The wife is proud of her toiling husband, the man is tender of his suffering wife; and in the bliss of childhood happiness both find their reward.
These statements shrine all the facts of the separate histories of man and woman. It were easier to change earth to water, and sea to land, than it is to make a womanly woman consent to appear manly. Her God made her a woman. It is not a fault. It is a glory. The bird that skims the wave would not exchange places with the bird that goes to meet the sun; but this is not to bring a charge against the eagle or the swan.
One more truth, and then we will pass to the consideration of the lessons discoverable in woman's nature. All the Scripture requirements, such as refer to the plaiting of the hair, to being uncovered in public, are said to refer to the customs of the East, and not to bind woman in this age of progress. The principle covered by those requirements then, rules now. Paul said, Let not a Christian woman break through any of the restraints of womanhood, and so appear as do the harlots, with uncovered faces and with plaited hair, who mingle freely with men, and are shorn of that modesty and weakness so becoming woman. Woman's right to be a woman implies the right to be loved, to be respected as a woman, to be married, to bring forth to the world the product of that love; and woman's highest interests are promoted by defending and maintaining this right.
There are those who object to the wordservice, and claim that those who take the Bible as authority wish to reduce woman to slavery. No charge could be more absurd; and God's care for woman is manifest, both in the teachings of the Bible and in the constitution of the race. Woman owes to Christianity all she enjoys. Leave her to be subject to the conditions imposed on her by unregenerated manhood or womanhood, and you leave her to become either a thing in society, or else reduce her to a level with the beasts of burden. In old savage and pagan tribes the severest burdens of physical toil were laid upon her. She was valued for the same reason that men prize their most useful animals, or as a means of gratifying sensual and selfish desires. Even in the learned and dignified forms of modern paganism, the wife is the slave rather than the companion of her husband. She is kept apart from him. The education of her mental faculties is neglected. She is not allowed to walk with him; she must walk behind him. She must not eat with him, but eat after he has done, and eat whathe leaves. She must not sleep until he is asleep, nor remain asleep after he is awake. If she is sitting down, and he comes into the room, she must rise up. She must bow to no other god on the earth besides her husband. She must worship him while he lives, and when he dies she must be burned with him. In case she is not burned, she is not allowed to marry, and is considered an outcast. There is little social intercourse between the sexes, little or no acquaintance of the parties before marriage, and, consequently, little mutual attachment. Women are not allowed to learn to read, because there can be no solid foundation laid for future influence.
Under the Crescent the condition of woman is worse rather than better, for in pagan India she is permitted to share in the hope of religion; but in Mohammedan countries it is a popular tradition that women are forbidden paradise; and it requires some effort for the imagination to conceive how debased and wretched must be the condition of the female sex to originate and sustain such a horrible and blasphemous tradition.
Even in the refined and shining ages of Greece and Rome, where the cultivation of letters and the graces of polished style, the charms of poetry and eloquence, the elegances of architecture, sculpture, painting, and embroidery, the glory of conquest and the pride of national distinction, were unsurpassed,—even then and there, woman was but the abject slave of man, the object of his ambition, avarice, lust, and power.
Truly has it been said that nothing more surely distinguishes the savage state from the civilized, the East from the West, Paganism from Christianity, antiquity from the middle ages, the middle ages from modern times, than the condition of woman.
In China, she is used as a beast of burden. The Chinese peasant woman goes to the field with her male infant on her back, and ploughs, sows, and reaps, exposed to all the changes of the weather. In Calcutta, women are the masons, and maybe seen daily conveying their hods of cement, and spreading it on the tops of their houses.
In a country where no European man can labor, where the native rests until compelled by his conqueror to work, seven thousand of these women might have been seen, in 1859, climbing to the edge of ravines, with baskets of stone on their heads, to fill, with these tedious contributions, thousands of perpendicular feet, in order that a railroad might wind among the mountains.
In Australia, she carries the burden which man's indolence refuses; and in Great Britain, the condition of women among the lower classes, revealed by the statistics of her mines and of her manufacturing districts, is such as to make a moralist blush. Behold her, with a strap around her waist, dragging the coal-cart in the mine, and so ignorant, that when asked if she knew Jesus, replied, "He never worked in our shaft."
Do we turn to America, we find that in the providence of God her fortune has been advanced and improved by the extension of the era of free government, and by the diffusion of the principles of the gospel of Christ.
True, in the past, throughout the South, a negro woman worked in the field as a beast of burden; but emancipation and the diffusion of the principles of Christianity changes all this in the South, as it has changed it in Turkey and in the East. The colored man builds for his wife a house, and toils for her in the field or shop, while she keeps the house, and beautifies the sanctuary of the heart.
Now, in all this land, woman's right to be a woman is recognized, and "woman's right to be a man" is opposed, though eloquent orators of either sex may declaim in its behalf. God's law, natural and revealed, is against it. Woman's nature will be woman's nature no longer when she shall desire it.
An illustration of this fact was recently furnished. A female orator had just left the platform for the horse-car. She was tired, and, doubtless, needed a seat. She had been speaking in favor of woman's rights, and had berated the opposite sex for their unwillingness to grant them. Worn out with fatigue, and excited, her lace red, her eyes flashing, she looked around for a seat. The car was full, and among the number sitting down was a workingman.
She spoke so that all could hear her, saying, "You are not gentlemen, or you would not let a woman stand." The workingman looked up, and replied, "Did I not just hear you speak in behalf of woman's rights?" The woman, supposing she had found a friend, replied in the affirmative. "Well," said he, "I will stand up any time, with pleasure, for a housewife or a kitchen girl; but you contend for an equality of rights with men; take it, and stand up among them." The shout of approbation proved that the argument was not on the side of woman. She did not herself believe in the theory advanced. Down in her heart she felt that, because she was a woman, she was entitled to be treated with love and respect, with honor and consideration.
The right which exempts her from certain things which men must endure,grows out of her right to be a woman. We feel that it is her privilege and her right to be relieved from the necessity of working in the field, from doing many things which it is manly in man to do.
We do not object to woman's sharing in the toil of the store, the shop, or the factory. Better this than idleness and want; yet there is a reason for pondering the question whether woman is wise in trying to displace man for her own advantage. If any one must be idle, let it be woman, and not man. It has been well said, "There are in Massachusetts over seventy thousand more females than males, and probably twice that number in the State of New York. It is an unnatural condition of things. At the West the number of men greatly preponderates."
"Our young men go off early in life, leaving fathers, mothers, and sisters behind them. The prospect for their sisters to marry, then, is lessened by every emigration." Now, what shall be done in behalf of these thousands of virtuous, educated, and noble girls? The cry is, make them into clerks, and bookkeepers, and bankers, and give them all the employments of men. Think it over. Suppose now we make these girls into clerks in stores and counting-rooms, say ten thousand in Massachusetts, and twenty thousand in New York—don't we displace so many young men; drive them off to the West; prevent so many new families from being established here; take away thirty thousand chances of marriage from these females, and enhance the evil we are trying to remedy?
Is it a blessing to woman to lessen her opportunities of marriage?
Again, a woman can be idle, and not be lost. Whereas man, if left unemployed, runs to mischief, if not to crime.
The history of those manufacturing districts in England, so eloquently described by Charlotte Elizabeth, where woman is preferred because of the cheapness and skill of her labor, proves this position correct. The husband lives in idleness, and has the care of the house. The result is, that comfort and neatness are at an end. The children are reared in crime, in indolence; the men pass their time in drinking and in gambling, prostitution abounds, and the health of the community, socially, physically, mentally, and morally, is destroyed.
On the other hand, enter one of those manufacturing towns where the skilled labor of man is rewarded, and where women keep the house with thrift and care, and you behold order, virtue, and prosperity. This is not poetry. It is fact. It proves that God's laws must be heeded and obeyed. "Marriage," said Gail Hamilton, "is a friendship of the sexes so profound, so comprehensive, that it includes the whole being. The inflow of the divine life,
"'Bright effluence of bright essence increate,'
"blends the man nature and the woman nature into an absolute oneness, which shapes itself ever thereafter into the only perfect symmetry. Thus alone comes humanity in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Thus marriage forever tends to its own annihilation,—not the annihilation of a stream swallowed up in desert sands, but of a river broadening to the boundless sea. The more perfect its substance, the more yielding its form. As it gathers power it diminishes pomp, till, by a pathway which the vulture's eye hath not seen and never can see, marriage itself leads to the land where they neither marry nor are given in marriage.
"Wherever man pays reverence to woman,—wherever any man feels the influence of any woman, purifying, chastening, abashing, strengthening him against temptation, shielding him from evil, ministering to his self-respect, medicining his weariness, peopling his solitude, winning him from sordid prizes, enlivening his monotonous days with mirth, or fancy, or wit, flashing heaven upon his earth, and mellowing it for all spiritual fertility,—there is the element of marriage. Wherever woman pays reverence to man,—wherever any woman rejoices in the strength of any man, feels it to be God's agent, upholding her weakness, confirming her purpose, and crowning her power,—wherever he reveals himself to her, just, upright, inflexible, yet tolerant, merciful, benignant, not unruffled, perhaps, but not overcome by the world's turbulence, and responding to all her gentleness, his feet on the earth, his head among the stars, helping her to hold her soul steadfast in right, to stand firm against the encroachments of frivolity, vanity, impatience, fatigue, and discouragement, helping to preserve her good nature, to develop her energy, to consolidate her thought, to utilize her benevolence, to exalt and illumine her life,—there is the essence of marriage. Its love is founded on respect, and increases self-respect at the very moment of merging itself in another. Its love is mutual, equally giving and receiving at every instant of its action. There is neither dependence nor independence, but inter-dependence. Years cannot weaken its bonds, distance cannot sunder them. It is a love which vanquishes the grave, and transfigures death itself into life."
These laws are varied by God's word, and written indelibly upon the nature of man. Surely nothing can be more manifest than that they must be obeyed.
Nature teaches us the Wisdom of adhering to the Divine Plan.
Anatomists tell us that in the embryo skeleton there is a marked difference of general conformation in the two sexes; that in the male there is a larger chest and breathing apparatus, which, affects the whole organization, forming a more powerful muscular system, and producing a physical constitution which predestines him to bold enterprises and daring exploits. The woman, being differently constructed, finds it natural to content herself in the house, removed from the gaze of the world, and from rude contact with its jostling cares.
There is an outside and an inside world. The work of the street, or the shop, or the field, is no more essential to the well-being of the family than is the work performed in the house. God assigned to man the field, or out-door work, and to woman the home and housework. In proportion as men and women fill well their separate spheres, there is harmony and happiness. Man toils, and provides for the wants of his household. Woman toils, and sees to it that the children are well reared, and that the house is well kept. Woman is respected and supported, not in idleness, but in caring for the wants of those committed to her care. The attempt is being made to disregard these natural laws, by those who claim to have outgrown divine legislation, and who have the hardihood to trample upon the laws of nature. But in vain. When God made our first parents, he made them male and female, and it will not be difficult to believe in the impossibility of the finite being able to undo the work of the Infinite. Each has his and her place, and nothing goes continuously right if husband and wife change places. Keep the positions assigned them by the laws of God and nature, and all will go well.
Give to woman the serious consideration due from every man born of woman's agony, and you build her up in love, endow her with respect, encourage her to cultivate her mind, and to develop the graces of her nature. The mightiest influence which exists upon earth is concealed in the heart of woman. It follows that her elevation and her happiness, her education and usefulness, are objects of deep concern. We have seen that the legislation of Heaven provides for the gratification of the early longing of the soul for companionship in making marriage honorable and love the holiest of instincts.
It is fashionable to talk against an early love. It is wrong thus to do. "Youth longeth for a kindred spirit, and yearneth for a heart that can commune with his own. He meditateth night and day, doting on the image of his fancy." It is the tendency of an early love to inspire youth with grand aspirations and lofty aims. "They that love early, shall become like-minded, and the tempter shall touch them not. They shall grow up, leaning on each other, as the olive and the vine."
It is only when love is scorned, when passion takes its place, when man forgets that the idol of his heart is a probationer of earth like himself, that it is his duty to be chary of her soul, feeling that it is his jewel. It is only when a man ceases to be a man, and becomes a beast, that he can consent, even in thought, to despoil woman of her virtue; to trample upon the sacred instincts of her nobler nature. A real woman will delight to make herself worthy of love. In the advancement of her mind, quite as much as in the adornment of her person, she strives to make herself beautiful as well as lovable. If she forgets her duty, and consents to seem to be what she is not, so that her admirer finds that the appearance which charmed him was not real, then the future of that woman is dark indeed. Her husband will discover, when too late, that "the harp and the voice may thrill him, sound may enchant his ear, but, by and by, the hand will wither, and the sweet notes turn to discord; the eye, so brilliant at even, may be red with sorrow in the morning; and the sylph-like form of elegance must writhe in the crampings of pain."
Naturally the man and woman will recognize the rule of God in the choice of their vocation. He will go abroad, and she will stay at home. He will earn the bread, and she will make it. He will build the house, and she will keep it. The difference between their spheres of labor seems naturally to be this: one is external, the other internal; one active, the other passive. He has to go and seek out his path; hers usually lies close under her feet. Yet, if life is meant to be a worthy one, each must resolutely be trod.
"When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up,And topples down the scales; but this is fixtAs are the roots of earth and base of all:Man for the field, and woman for the hearth;Man for the sword, and for the needle she;Man with the head, and woman with the heart;Man to command, and woman to obey;All else confusion."
Woman is not content to remain separate and apart. She will give her love to some object, and desires to repose her faith in some person worthy of her regard. She lives for man. She dresses and studies for him. She acquires knowledge and accomplishments, which are known to please and to allure.
Woman, being by nature dependent, finds it easier to lay hold of the offer of salvation than does man. His independent spirit keeps him back. Woman has only to recognize her dependence upon One higher than man, and in doing this is obliged to do but little violence to her habits of thought and feeling, and no violence at all to such sentiments of independence as stand most in the way of man. Hence men shrink with horror from coming in contact with a godless woman. In their eyes she is monstrous, unreasonable and offensive. Even an utterly godless man, unless he be debauched and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a woman without an excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. He would not intrust his children to her care. Oh happy lot, and hallowed even as the joy of angels, where the golden chain of godliness is entwined with the roses of love, as one of our own poets wrote:—
"O, what is woman—what her smile,Her lip of love, her eye of light;What is she if her lip revileThe lowly Jesus? Love may writeHis name upon her noble brow,Or linger in her curls of jet;The bright spring flowers may scarcely bowBeneath her step, and yet, and yetWithout that meeker grace, she'll beA lighter thing than vanity."
Thus wrote N.P. Willis. He felt that a woman, with Christ in her heart, was thebeau idealof man. The home is her kingdom, and the heart of husband or brother is her throne. In that sphere her influence is the most potent instrumentality on earth.
Demosthenes declared that by this influence she can in an hour upset the legislation of a year of statesmanship. Her power is, however, through man, not apart from him.
This is the scriptural view. Nowhere do we read of woman as though she had a mission apart from man. We talk of men and forget women. It seems almost impossible to legislate for woman and forget man.
Mankind includes womankind, but womankind does not include mankind.
It may not be complimentary, yet it remains true, that the Scriptures fail to furnish us with a model woman.
Jesus was the model man; but Eve, and Mary, and Rebekah, and Rachel, were model women to none besides those to whom they were given as wives. This, perhaps, is well, for it would be injudicious to try and prove to any man that his wife should differ radically from herself.
Having considered the teachings of the Scripture and of Nature, let us listen to the Voice of Common Sense.
Under this head we hesitate not to declare that the hope of woman lies in the recognition of the laws of God, and the laws of her own higher nature.
Look at the facts. Who demand the ballot for woman? They are not the lovers of God, nor are they the believers in Christ, as a class. There may be exceptions, but the majority prefer an infidel's cheer to the favor of God and the love of the Christian community. It is because of this tendency that the majority of those who contend for the ballot for woman cut loose from the legislation of Heaven, from the enjoyments of home, and drift to infidelity and ruin.
Our wives and mothers do not ask the ballot. Our young ladies do not care even to hear the question discussed. They believe that whatever hinders woman from being the helpmeet of man does her injury. It is claimed that woman needs the ballot to secure equal laws. This claim is urged, because, it is said, women are required to obey laws which they had no share in making. It is a mistaken notion. Woman has had a share in the legislation of the country. Her influence pervades society. Let her be true to temperance, and intemperance is restrained. Let her be true to freedom, and the pulsations of her heart find their way through the entire framework of society. Let her be true to her own glorious nature, and this attempt to unsex and discrown her will meet with the swift and terrible condemnation it deserves.
Another has said, "The Amazons have often been met with the statement, that a large majority of the women do not wish to vote, and would not if they could. The truth of this statement is not denied. The advocates of the ballot confess that many noble women affect a womanly horror of being thought strong-minded," and to offset this tendency they declare it to be the "imperative duty of women to claim the suffrage." "Does this mean that women are to be coerced in this matter? that our mothers, wives, and sisters are to be punished for staying away from the polls? We have never supposed it the imperative duty of every man to vote. And we know that many of the most intelligent and upright do not vote. Such is the inexpressible nastiness of our elections, especially in the larger cities, that men of the cleanest morals think it right to keep away from them. The foulest portions of the men go first, stay longest, and stand thickest at the places of voting. How then will it be when the foulest portion of the women get packed into the same crowd, and drive modesty away by the foulness of their speech and presence? When the aggregate filth of both sexes shall have met together at the polling stations, as it will be sure to do, we hardly think any chaste or modest home-loving woman will go near this stench unless compelled to do so."
It is because this scheme lifts the gate to the increasing wave of corruption and pollution, that we are surprised that so-called statesmen give their countenance to it. Give to woman the ballot, and this country is hopelessly given up to Romanism. The priest loses the man, but he keeps the woman. Give to the priests the control of the votes of the thousands of servants in the great cities, and there is an end to legislation in behalf of the Sabbath, the Bible, and the school system, temperance, or morality.
The right to vote implies the right to rule, to legislate, to go to Congress, and to take the Presidential chair. On this point hear Miss Muloch. "Who that ever listened for two hours to the verbose confused inanities of a ladies' committee, would immediately go and give his vote for a Female House of Congress, or of Commons? or who, on the receipt of a lady's letter of business,—I speak of the average,—would henceforth desire to have our courts of justice stocked with matronly lawyers, or thronged by
"'Sweet girl graduates, with their golden hair?'"
Well has Gail Hamilton said, "How will the possession of the ballot affect in any way the vexed question of work and wages? One orator says, 'Shall Senators tell me in their places that I have no need of the ballot, when forty thousand women in the city of New York alone are earning their daily bread at starving prices with the needle?' But what will the ballot do for those forty thousand women when they get it? It will not give them husbands, nor make their thriftless husbands provident, nor their invalid husbands healthy. They cannot vote themselves out of their dark, unwholesome sewing-rooms into counting-rooms and insurance offices, nor have they generally the qualifications which these places require.The ballot will not enable them to do anything for which their constitution or their education has not fitted them, and I do not know of any law now which prevents them from doing anything for which they are fitted, except the holding of government offices.… What can the ballot do towards equalizing wages, where work is already equalized without affecting wages, as is not unfrequently the case? There are shops of the same sort, on the same street, with male clerks in one and female clerks in another, where the former work fewer hours and receive higher wages than the latter…. Moreover, the question of female clerkship is not yet settled. There are conscientious, intelligent, and obliging shopkeepers, who say that female clerks are not satisfactory. Their strength is not equal to the draughts made upon it. They are not able to stand so long as clerks are required to stand. They have not the patience, the civility, the tact that male clerks have…. All the voting in the world can never add a cubit to a woman's stature."
Woman is not naturally a law-maker. Even in our homes she desires the head of the house to lay down the law. Never shall I forget the influence exerted by the utterance in a convention of Sabbath school teachers. A paper was read, complaining that in a certain Sabbath school there was a lady superintendent, because no man could be found to take the place. In conclusion, the writer said, "We need a man in our town. We have things that wear pantaloons, but we need a man, to give direction to the school, and to attract the nobler and better portion of community." It was an honest declaration, and voiced a truth. Every town, every Sabbath school, every home, needs a man. Women of talent have tried to figure in politics and in the pulpit, but a sorry figure they have made of it.
Think of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton in the train of George Francis Train, perambulating the country in favor of the ballot in Kansas. These are the leaders; but let it not be forgotten that they sided against the ballot for the negro in hopes of getting it for themselves, and proved their utter worthlessness and untrustworthiness by trailing the banner committed to their keeping in the slime of a convention which went for the repudiation of the national debt, the defeat of the party of progress, and for the overthrow of republican liberty. Had woman possessed the ballot, and had the course pursued by the leaders of this movement exercised an influence over the majority, this wonderful victory over the rebellious spirits of the land had not been achieved; but, in its stead, the stars and bars would have resumed their sway, and the stars and stripes, which now kiss the breeze, and greet the rising hopes of uncounted millions, would have been furled in gloom and night.
It is claimed that the ballot will secure for woman social respect. The claim is not well founded. Those who seek it lose social respect, because they step out of the path marked out for them by Providence and by Nature. Woman, in her sphere, is man's good angel and helpmeet; out of it, she is man's bitterest foe and heaviest curse.
There is an instinctive respect for woman in her proper sphere, which is of itself a power superior to any merely conventional position that a woman can build up for herself by her own hands, even through the aid of the ballot.
How natural to see woman waited on by man! Sir Walter Raleigh was praised because he cast his cloak into the mud to save the foot of his Queen from being soiled. As noble acts have been performed by many men, times without number. The uprising of gentlemen in the cars when a tired woman enters with a child; the disposition to lighten her cares and sweeten her joys, is everywhere considered manly.
Education is essential for her. She is the educator of the home, for she is its soul. If one must be ignorant, let it be the man, and not the woman. Many of our most intelligent men have had cultured mothers. Very few sons ever grew to be learned whose mothers cared not for books. This fact is appreciated, and leads us naturally to conclude that if woman lacks social respect it is her own fault. If a woman prefers superficiality to thoroughness; music, drawing, and dress, to a knowledge of housework, an acquaintance with literature, and the endowments of common sense, simply because brainless men are disposed to seek out the effeminate and the frail in preference to the rugged and the well-endowed, then she must suffer the consequences. If a young lady, compelled to toil for support, will prefer the factory or the store, with its hot air and depressing associations, to work in the home, because she hopes in the store or factory to secure the hand and heart of a husband sooner than elsewhere, she must suffer accordingly. But if woman will unite in securing a reform in this direction,—if the pure and the virtuous will say, Such a life as is offered me in the family is in harmony with my future well-being, and I will scorn the allurements elsewhere held out, and fit myself, by study, for companionship with the noble of the land, she will succeed. If woman will respect herself, she will be respected.
It is not by clamoring for rights that have been conferred upon others; it is not by restless discontent, by partisan appeals, by stepping out of her God-given sphere, and by attempting to destroy the network of holy influences by which he ever has surrounded her; it is not by ridiculing marriage and casting scorn on motherhood, that she is to obtain the blessings she courts, but by tranquilly laboring under this heaven-imposed law of obedience. Woman's weakness is transmuted into strength when she opens her nature to the influences of love, and when she consecrates herself to the happiness of others. Then it is she obtains a moral and spiritual power to which man is glad to do homage. Ambition, pride, wilfulness, or any earthly passion, will distort her being. She struggles all in vain against a divine appointment. It is from the soul of meekness that the true strength of womanhood is derived; and it is because it has its root in such a soil that it has a growth so majestic, showering its blessing and fruits upon the world.
It was the sun and the wind that in the fable strove for the mastery; and the strife was for the traveller's cloak. The quiet moon had nought to do with such fierce rivalry of the burning or the blast; but as in her tranquil orbit she journeys round the world, she gently sways the tides of the ocean. Woman's influence resembles that exerted by the queen of night. In the conflicts of life she has little to do; but her influence is felt from the cradle to the grave, and the sphere of it is the whole region of humanity. Woman's worst enemy is he who would cruelly lift her out of her sphere, and would try to reverse the laws of God and of nature in her behalf. They deceive woman who cause her to believe that she will find independence when she abandons the position assigned her by her Creator, and reaches one against which her nature, the interests of society, and the laws of God contend. Woman has her sphere and her work, and she is only happy when she finds pleasure in lovingly, patiently, and faithfully performing the duties and enacting the relations that belong to her as woman. She is not the natural head of society. Man, rough, stern, cold, and almost nerveless, is made to be the head of human society; and woman, quick, sensitive, pliant (as her name indicates), gentle, loving, is the heart of the world. As the heart, she has power. She rules through love, and finds the work set for her to do in the doors opening before her loving nature. She rules through love, and becomes a blessing greater than we can ever acknowledge, because it is greater than we can measure. Let woman take heart. She is not in captivity. The law of service is on her, as it is on man. Much of her service consists in suffering; much of man's consists in toil. Before both there are fields of endeavor, white with beckoning harvests. In literature, in reforms, in ministering to the wants and woes of humanity, in making home more and more like heaven, woman has an open door set before her, which no man will desire to close. Let her enter it and work. There is a law of companionship far deeper than that of uniformity and equality, or similarity—the law which reconciles similitude and dissimilitude, the harmony of contrast, in which what is wanting on the one side finds its complement on the other; for,—
"Heart with heart and mind with mind,When the main fibres are entwined,Through Nature's skill,May even by contraries be joinedMore closely still."
Such was the exquisite companionship of the sexes as they were represented by our first parents, and such, however they may be momentarily disturbed, they will remain, as the ideal for all the generations of men and women. Let woman repose her trust in man, and then, lifting up her heart, she may sing,—
"Though God's high things are not all ours,'Tis ours to look above;All is not ours to have and hold,But all is ours to love."