(Continued from first page.)
(1) Such an argument would disenfranchise the majority of the educated men of the country.- (x) The majority of professional men tested during the war were found unfit for service.- (2) Such an argument is not applicable to municipal government.- (x) Municipal fighting is done by policemen hired for the purpose.- (d) The objection that women should not vote, because many do not wish to vote, is unsound.- (1) If the interests of the city require it, the ballot should be accepted as a duty.- (2) Those who do not wish to vote have no right to deprive of their privilege those who do.- (3) 50,000 Massachusetts women have petitioned for the privilege.
III. Municipal suffrage for women is for the best interests of the family.- (a) The woman is directly responsible for the rearing of her children and the making of them honest men and women.- (b) In the functions of municipal government are involved the most vital interests of the family.- (1) Education in public schools.- (2) Sanitary conditions.- (x) Water supply. (y) Clean streets.- (z) More wholesome tenements.- (3) Parks and play-grounds. (4) The reduction to a minimum of the municipal evils involved in-(x) Saloons,- (y) brothels,- (z) gambling houses.- (c) The direct voice of woman is necessary to the efficient carrying out of the municipal functions.- (1) She has the care of the family most at heart. (x) The husband is occupied away from the family at work.- (y) He often is a patron of vicious places near his own home.- (z) Municipal evil appeals so strongly to women that their vote would be constantly for purity as against vice and corruption: Testimony of the Govs. of Kas. and Wyo. in W. S. Leaflet, Vol. II, No. 28; Hon. J. S. Clarkson, "How Women Vote in Colorado," W. S. Leaflet, Vol. II, No. 6.- (d) The objection that, if the municipal franchise were extended to women, the entire immoral female element would vote with the corrupt men, has no weight.- (1) Unless the bad equal or outnumber the good, a gain would still be made.- (2) The immoral class of women is a criminal class.- (x) By reason of the occupation.- (y) Through influence of surroundings and associates.- (3) As a criminal class, few would dare to register.- (x) Name and occupation at least must be given.- (y) Such information would bring the woman more easily within the grasp of the law.- (z) It is shown by the fact that of the great immoral population of Denver, only 150 registered and but 12 of these voted: Hon. J. S. Clarkson, W. S. Leaflet, Vol. No. 6, p. 4.- (4) Brothel keepers would not allow their inmates to register.- (x) Registration would furnish evidence as to the character of the houses without the necessity of a raid.- (e) The objection that honest women, because ignorant or of foreign birth, would vote detrimentally to municipal interests, fails.- (1) The strongest instinct in every woman is the protection of her children from evil.- (2) This instinct may be trusted to vote.- (x) in the interests of the family, for good public education, improved sanitary conditions, the reduction to a minimum of evils involved in saloons, brothels, and gambling houses,- (y) against public officers by whose maladministration, families are reduced by disease, left in ignorance and corrupted by immorality.
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