licious man, and take pleasure in tormenting the mother, or he
may bring up the children in a way that the mother thinks ruinous
to them, and she has no redress in law. Why do not all the
fortunate mothers in the land cry out against such a law? Why do
not all women say, "Inasmuch as the law has done this wrong unto
the least of these my sisters it has done it unto me." It is true
that men are almost always better than their laws, but while a bad
law remains on the statute-books it gives to an unscrupulous man a
right to be as bad as the law.

It is often said to us when all the women ask for the ballot
it will be granted. Did all the married women petition the
Legislatures of their States to secure to them the right to hold
in their own name the property that belonged to them? To secure to
the poor forsaken wife the right to her earnings?

All the women did not ask for these rights, but all accepted them
with joy and gladness when they were obtained, and so it will be
with the franchise. But woman's right to self-government does not
depend upon the numbers that demand it, but upon precisely the
same principles that man claims it for himself.

Where did man get the authority that he now claims to govern
one-half of humanity, from what power the right to place woman,
his helpmeet in life, in an inferior position? Came it from
nature? Nature made woman his superior when she made her his
mother--his equal when she fitted her to hold the sacred position
of wife. Did women meet in council and voluntarily give up all
their claim to be their own law-makers?

The power of the strong over the weak makes man the master. Yes,
then, and then only, does he gain the authority.

It is all very well to say "convert the women." While we most
heartily wish they could all feel as we do, yet when it comes to
the decision of this great question they are mere ciphers, for
if this question is settled by the States it will be left to the
voters, not to the women to decide. Or if suffrage comes to women
through a sixteenth amendment of the national Constitution, it
will be decided by Legislatures elected by men. In neither case
will women have an opportunity of passing; upon the question. So
reason tells us we must devote our best efforts to converting
those to whom we must look for the removal