"But are there not plenty of things for us to fight; worse enemies than Germany-intemperance, ignorance, crime, vice, disease, and that most dread of all invaders that sooner or later reaches every home? Are the dominions of Death not wide enough that nations should spend £400,000,000 per year on extending them? 'There were Crusades in the Middle Ages when princes and kings dropped their feuds and abandoned their quarrels for some great holy purpose.

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"There is a nobler crusade awaiting princes and peoples today. Let them cast aside suspicion, mistrust, quarrels, feuds, and unite in redeeming humanity from the quagmire where millions are sunk in misery and despair."

XVI.

EQUAL FRANCHISE.

Madam Chairman of the El Paso Equal Franchise League:

When asked to furnish a paper for the League, I consented to do so, because I believe in woman's franchise; not only from a moral standpoint, which is the true basis of all law, but because our civil government also has for its most fundamental principle the "consent of the governed." In his speech for the emancipation of the slaves, Lincoln, that great and good man, said it was not possible to maintain a government part slave and part free; and while he was speaking of course concerning separate states, it would seem to apply with still greater force to any law dealing with the rights of individuals, whether they be distinctively men or women. And to deny the ballot to woman must ever be regarded as a continuance of the primitive law that might makes right, and every argument that can be made against it resolves itself into that fact and that alone.

While I am perhaps not so optimistic about the aims of suffrage as held by some of its advocates, that equal suffrage will bring about a Utopian condition, and free our country from every form of evil, I do think that since conditions under the single standard that woman's place is in the home, have resulted rather in the defeat of the very possibility for business

and domestic affairs have become so complicated that few women have a home to keep, but not from any choice of their own in the matter, for if they did have this greatly desired privilege there would doubtless never have been any great agitation for a changed condition; but when in the struggle for a livelihood women are forced to compete with men and to be dominated by the laws they make, which oftentimes leave her helpless and without redress for wrongs of which she is a victim, it is not surprising that she should seek relief from a thraldom so merciless.

And perhaps it is not any more to be wondered at that man, entrenched in his stronghold of might, should seek to retain a power so beneficial to himself; but right, which is Truth crystalized, is mighty and will prevail; and so long as women have to observe the laws of taxation, and the "Boston Tea Party" succeeded by the "American Congress" set the example in its Declaration of Independence that there should be "no taxation without representation," it would seem to be consistent that women should be granted the same rights as men, many of whom do not thus add to the resources of the government.

Again, how long would men tolerate the idea of organized womanhood saying to them: "We will make our laws and not allow you any voice in the matter!" Man has absolutely no authority in the matter, as said before, except that vested in his physical strength and the customs he has built up around it, as an almost invincible barrier. So far as the trite argument that

the ballot will rob woman of her femininity and take her away from her family is concerned, it is scarcely less than absurd; for elections are so few and far between that not more than an hour or two a year would be necessary to “squander in the neglect of home," and as for the loss of femininity, most women are so accustomed to going to market or the bank or Postoffice where they have to stand in line with men that they are not much exercised by the warnings of politicians concerning the dangers lurking in the polling booths.

No, women have a way of looking on men, most men, at least, as brothers, friends and protectors; so that this argument has little weight. And it is usually the men who do not care for a "square deal" who make such hostile opposition and outcry against a matter of simple justice to all. There are a few good men however who really believe that the power to vote will tend to make women masculine and take away from their attractions in the home; and it is these same men, bless their hearts, who do all in their power to make the home a heaven on earth for the women of their households, and naturally these women do not care for the ballot. Why should they, under such ideal conditions?

But there are many other men who have seen the handwriting on the wall and who realize that it is "a condition and not a theory" that confronts the women of our time, who are working for and with the women; some of whom, like Mr. Hughes, believing it to be only a question of time when equal franchise will be enact

ed into law, think for economical reasons it would be wiser to make the national amendment desired by the women, and possibly save unnecessary legislation and expense, while others like the President believe that it is better to leave the Constitution as it now exists in separate states, according to his understanding of the platform on which he was elected, take its slower but probably surer course; in the meantime voting for it himself, and thus giving, without violation of conscience the weight of his high office, which will no doubt in the end accomplish better results than if he had taken more drastic steps, and thus called forth greater antagonism, by its opponents.

Now the conclusion of the whole matter is that the suffrage movement had its incipiency and will no doubt have its consummation not in the fact that all women have failed in their duties as chaste keepers at home, but from the exigencies of that other fact, that such a large number of men have failed in their duty to provide homes for their women to keep; and being forced to provide a livelihood and homes for themselves they are also forced to secure a voice in the making of the laws pertaining to the government of that livelihood and those homes.