sk him at the ballot-box, and you will hear his
statement. You will hear it in a thousand ways, and in a thousand
voices. His own personal interest. A man invests _himself_ in
society; woman invests infinitely more, for she throws in _her
child_. The man can run away to California with his interests,
and from his duties; the woman is anchored to her home. It is
important to him, you say, whether the community provides, by its
statutes, schools or dram-shops. Then how vast, how unspeakable
the importance to her! Deprive every man in the nation of the
ballot, if you will, but demand, oh, demand its protection for
the wife and the mother!

See the unjust workings of the present system. I knew in a town
in Massachusetts a widow woman, who paid the highest tax bill in
the town; nay, for every dollar that any man paid in the town,
she paid two, and yet that woman had not the right to the ballot,
which belonged to the most ignorant Irishman in her employ. She
hadn't the right to protect her child from the misappropriation
of his property; and if she had owned the whole town, and there
had not been any other person to pay a property tax except that
solitary woman, the case would have been the same, and not the
slightest power of protection would have been in her hands,
against the most outrageous misappropriation.

In another town of Massachusetts there is a story told of a man,
a member of the Society of Friends. He was once sending his wife
on a long journey. As she was about to set forth in the stage,
"My dear," said she, "thee has forgotten to give me any money for
my journey." "Why," said the Quaker, "thee knows very well that I
paid thy fare in the stage." "But thee knows," said she, "that I
am going to be away for some weeks, and perhaps it may be well
for me to have some little money, in case I should have any
expenses." "Rachel," said the astonished husband, "where is that
ninepence I gave thee day before yesterday?" That man had gained
all the money he had in the world through that wife. He obtained
her property by marriage; he invested that property in real
estate, and had grown richer and richer, until he grew rich
enough to spare a ninepence for Rachel the day before yesterday.
It is such marriages as that, that we wish to avert, by plac