p. 709 | A VIGOROUS PROTEST by Theodore L. Cuyler

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 24, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 45.

A VIGOROUS PROTEST.

By Theodore L. Cuyler

SOME able and excellent women—chiefly among the class who appear on public platforms—do indeed favor the project of loading their own sex with the burdens of political citizenship and civil government. But they are a very small minority. Horace Greeley once said to me very wisely: "I will be more inclined to grant the ballot and all its attendant responsibilities to the female sex when a large majority of the thoughtful, cultivated, and conscientious women of the land really want the ballot. But I do not yet discover that they do want it." He was right. Four-fifths of the most sensible women of America are utterly opposed to the imposition of the burdens of political duties upon their shoulders. Woman's empire is wide enough already, her burdens heavy enough. It would be the meanest and most skulking cowardice on the part of the men to call upon woman to bear and train every child, to regulate every home, to educate the human race, and then, in addition to these vital and exacting offices, to turn to and pry out of the mire the vehicle of civil government which their masculine incompetence had capsized! Shame on such poltroonery!—T. L. Cuyler.