true
manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for
it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last
century. Society is but the reflection of man himself, untempered
by woman's thought, the hard iron rule we feel alike in the
church, the state, and the home. No one need wonder at the
disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when
we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being,
with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the
absolute control of all sublunary matters.

People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call
the strong-minded, because they say, "the right of suffrage will
make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which
we are involved to-day. Though disfranchised we have few women in
the best sense, we have simply so many reflections, varieties,
and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural
characteristics of womanhood are repressed and ignored in
dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please
the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold
in society woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect
his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She
must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every
inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by
the finger of God on her own soul. She must believe his theology,
though it pave the highways of hell with the skulls of new-born
infants, and make God a monster of vengeance and hypocrisy. She
must look at everything from its dollar and cent point of view,
or she is a mere romancer. She must accept things as they are and
make the best of them. To mourn over the miseries of others, the
poverty of the poor, their hardships in jails, prisons, asylums,
the horrors of war, cruelty, and brutality in every form, all
this would be mere sentimentalizing. To protest against the
intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that
her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying,
cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant
nonsense. In this way man has been moulding woman to his ideas by
direct and positive influences, while she, if not a negation, has
used indi