A PLEA FOR UNCONSCIOUS SLAVES Please permit me to dissent from the ably written editorial in The Outlook for April 6 on "Women and Politics." I seriously question the right of withholding the ballot from women, even if a large majority of them shrink from assuming political and civic responsibilities. To my mind, those who thus shrink afford thereby but evidences of their psychological enthralldom. As a class, women have not yet awakened to the fact that they are really free or can be free, that they have in themselves the possibility of as much independent existence as the other sex enjoys. Now, is it right to withhold from the thoroughly emancipated woman the right to govern herself, simply because her backward sisters, even though they may be in the majority, shrink from exercising the political prerogatives that of a right belong to the new womanhood? Miss Stephen, whom you quote, seems to think that the bestowal of the ballot upon women will work injustice or hardship upon those of the sex who shrink from political duty. Is it necessary or imperative, however, that the timid woman, the overly feminine woman, the psychologically unemancipated woman, avail herself of her prerogative of voting? We condone more or less political passivity in men. Why should we not do so cheerfully in the case of women, remembering that they have been sorely oppressed for ages and that they should not be expected one and all, therefore, to rise at once to the full stature of perfectly free womanhood? The fully emancipated woman wants the ballot. By all means let her have it, and let us wait as patiently as possible for the fuller development of the woman who is still ever and anon casting her eyes backward to that retarded frontier of social advance where she dwelt so long in subjection to the authority of man. Shall we deny to the enlightened, intelligent woman who wants to govern herself, the right that in the United States is granted to the ignorant foreigner and the lowly negro? Is it right that the college-bred and cultivated negro woman of some Northern city should have no voice in the government, while the negro criminal of the South is a voter? Is it right that the intelligent women of whatever race or color should have no right to express a choice as to who shall be the Mayor of their city, the Governor of their State, or the President of the United States, while ignorant, irresponsible men, in spite of the Australian ballot system, are voted by the party boss? In my opinion, running the government is in this age no more the work of men than it is of women. The designations women's work and men's work are but marks of a psychological lagging behind the times. Division of occupations on a basis of sex has long ago begun to break down. A woman lawyer pleads, and pleads ably, cases at law; while a man does the cleaning and scrubbing in the apartment-house where the woman lawyer lives. A woman administers the finances of Kansas City, Kansas, while men bake our bread. As for the danger of a contest in politics between the sexes, such a thing is in my opinion an impossibility, for the real welfare of the two sexes is one and the same thing. If there does arise a struggle having reference to sex privileges, it will not be a struggle between the sexes, but a struggle between two parties made up of both sexes, one party recognizing the right, and, yea, the expediency too-for citizens inherit both from mother and father-the right and the expediency of the fullest freedom for woman, consistent with her health and morals; while in the other party will be found those whose mental processes are impeded by some vestige of the long bygone ages, when woman was the mere slave and creature of man, those who are possessed perhaps of some of the spirit that made it possible for a mediæval church council to debate the question as to whether women had souls. Some women, having risen to the full stature of the new, freer womanhood, demand the ballot. They should have it. The English, the American woman, the woman in every enlightened country in this advanced twentieth century, has as much moral right to vote as has man; and England and the United States will continue to be democracies butin name as long as their women are denied equal political rights with men. RAYMOND V. PHELAN. Letchworth Gift, The. London, Municipal Reaction in.. *Longfellow Centennial, The.. McClellan, Mayor 397 51 591 345 *249 100 .......... EDITORIAL.-Continued. *Messenger, A False.. "Messiah," The, on the Plains of Kansas. Milk for the City, 635; Pasteurized. Moyer-Haywood Trial, The PAGE 788 874 EDITORIAL.-Continued. Anarchy against Anarchy. 341 587 916 735 393 868 249 6 776 911 152 58 1. 151, *246 339 H. G. Bissell, 77; Y. M. Bose ..... 130 Trade Unions and Politics ...J. G. Brooks 25 Alice M. Bacon 644 Spirit of the Game, The... Texas Idea, The... "Thoughts from the Dish-pan 951 Edith Rickert 567 When the Fever was at Uist.. Workmen's Compensation........A. B. 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