female suffrage; for my countrywomen are seeking it only as
an instrument for redressing wrongs and relieving wants by
laws and civil influences. Now, I ask, why not take a
shorter course, and ask to have the men do for us what we
might do for ourselves if we had the ballot? Suppose we
point out to our State Legislatures and to Congress the
evils that it is supposed the ballot would remedy, and draw
up petitions for these remedial measures, would not these
petitions be granted much sooner and with far less
irritation and conflict than must ensue before we gain the
ballot? And in such petitions thousands of women would unite
who now deem that female suffrage would prove a curse rather
than a benefit.

And here I will close with my final objection to woman
suffrage, and that is that it will prove a measure of
injustice and oppression to the women who oppose it. Most of
such women believe that the greatest cause of the evils
suffered by our sex is that the true profession of woman, in
many of its most important departments, is not respected;
that women are not trained either to the science or the
practice of domestic duties as they need to be, and that, as
the consequence, the chief labors of the family state pass
to ignorant foreigners, and by cultivated women are avoided
as disgraceful.

They believe the true remedy is to make woman's work
honorable and remunerative, and that the suffrage agitation
does not tend to this, but rather to drain off the higher
classes of cultivated women from those more important duties
to take charge of political and civil affairs that are more
suitable for men.

Now if women are all made voters, it will be their duty to
vote, and also to qualify themselves for this duty. But
already women have more than they can do well in all that
appropriately belongs to women, and to add the civil and
political duties of men would be deemed a measure of
injustice and oppression.

Mrs. H. M. T. CUTLER, of Ohio, then rose to reply. She said: I
account myself happy to be allowed to stand here to reply to the
objections of my friend, Miss Beec