refore we urge that this large proportion of patriotism,
temperance, morality, religion and intelligence may be allowed to
impress itself upon the government through the medium of the
ballot-box.

Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer substituted for her own address on Universal
Suffrage a Pretence a paper sent by Rudolph Blankenburg, one of
Philadelphia's most distinguished citizens, entitled: Not Sex but
Intelligence, in which he said:

That universal suffrage--an arrant misnomer--has fallen short of
its well-meant original purpose is beyond dispute. We see its
baneful effect in municipal, State and national government. The
unparalleled political corruption in most of our large cities,
the narrowness of public men in State and nation, whose horizon
is bounded by the limits of their home districts or their own
sordid purposes, regardless of public interests, find their
culmination in the highest legislative body of our land. They
crowd seats of mental giants and honored statesmen of former days
with golden pigmies or political highwaymen of recent growth and
can be directly traced to our defective franchise system. It
permits the vote of the intelligent, law-abiding, industrious
and public-spirited to be overcome by that of the ignorant,
vicious, purchasable, lazy and indifferent. The ranks of the
latter are largely reinforced by the "stay-at-homes," who are a
permanent menace to good government.... Thinking people agree
that some qualification should be exacted from all voters. The
absurdity of the intelligent, tax paying but disfranchised woman
being governed by the vote of the illiterate, shiftless loafer or
pauper would be laughable were it not so serious. An educational
qualification should be a paramount requisite....

Mr. Blankenburg gave statistics of the illiterates in the United
States and said: "An educational qualification, wisely considered,
would within a few years entirely obliterate the whole mass of this
species of undesirable voters. The right of suffrage can not and
should not be taken from those who at present legally enjoy it. All
women of legal age with the proposed educational requirements should
be enfranchised without delay but laws should be enacted demanding
that all citizens, men and women alike, presenting themselves to cast
their ballot after 1910 must be able to read and write. If th