en as have been and are
identified with the agitation for the political emancipation of
their sex? Saloons, brothels and gaming-houses might vanish
before such an administration; wars avoidable with safety and
honor might not be undertaken, and taxes might be diverted to
purposes of general sanitation and higher education, but neither
in these respects nor in the efforts to lift the bowed and
strengthen the weak would the right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness be placed in peril. Women have exercised the
highest civil powers in all ages of the world--from Zenobia to
Victoria--and have exhibited statecraft and military capacity of
high degree without detracting from their graces as women or
their virtues as mothers....

The preponderance of women in our churches, our charitable
organizations, our educational councils, has been of such use as
to suggest the benefit of their incorporation into our voting
force to the least observant. A woman who owns railroad or
manufacturing or mining stock may vote unquestioned by the side
of the brightest business men of our continent, but if she
transfers her property into real estate she loses all voice in
its control.

Their abilities, intellectual, physical and political, are as
various as ours, and they err who set up any single standard,
however lovely, by which to determine the rights, needs and
possibilities of the sex. To me the recognition of their capacity
for full citizenship is right and desirable, and it only remains
to consider whether it is safe, whether it is expedient. To this
let experience answer to the extent that the experiment has been
made.

During the first thirty years of the independence of New Jersey,
universal suffrage was limited only by a property qualification;
but we do not learn that divorces were common, that families were
more divided on political than on religious differences, that
children were neglected or that patriotism languished, although
the first seven years of that experiment were years of decimating
war, and the remaining twenty-three of poverty and
recuperation--conditions most conducive to discontent and erratic
legislation.

The reports from Wyoming, which I have examined, are uniform in
satisfaction with the system, and I do n