Keuka College - Kiondaga Yearbook (Keuka Park, NY)

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THE COLLEGE RECORD. 2 1 All people are familiar with the great axiom of our govern- ment, Taxation without representation is tyranny. We have been taught that in union there is strength. Have we a true union, have we a representative government when one-half of the people have no voice in it ? Are not women taxed without representation ? When a woman has stock in a business deal she can vote in its direction, why not for her taxes ? There is in this Union State to-day over a billion dol- lars' worth of property owned by women. Ought they to have no vote in the government when they pay taxes ? Women ask that the government mold a constitution for our State consis- tent with its profession ; that our government be no more false to its trust, and that justice be henceforth enthroned as law. Woman should be allowed to vote because of her great in- fluence on politics. Observe what great good woman has done in school betterment in the last twenty-eight years. She has made the schools more sanitary, the teachers more efficient, the methods of instruction better. Even the lowest people de- sire to have their children's condition bettered, therefore if women had a voice in the government they would endeavor to pass law's for their children's betterment. If mothers knew politics better they could instruct their children in politics, thus making the citizens of the next generation better politicians. For years campaign speeches, of different political parties, have been remarkably free from vulgarity. Why ? Because the stump speakers have suddenly become chaste ? No, not at all. But because fully one-half of the listeners have been women. Can you not see in this a prophecy ? When you give women the ballot for a lever they will help you to level up, rather than down, the political status. Ruskin advises us when in doubt to seek great men's opin- ions. One of Plato's wisest sayings is that, in the administra- tion of a State, neither a woman as a woman, or a man as a man, has any special functions, but the gitts are equally dif- fused in both sexes. Woman should be allowed to vote because she would be the w7orking- woman's protection. Ought she not to be protected ? Consider her economic value. The suffrage as a right and a privilege for woman is urged for the protection and advance-

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20 THE COLLEGE RECORD. Ruskin said, Whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, those of us who mean to fulfill our duty ought first to live on as little as we can, and secondly, to do all the whole- some work for it we can, and to spend all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can. This he did ; this is the summary of his life. Class Exercise. — C. B. L. 'op WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE. A 7 OMEN -should have the right to vote, first, because V they are men's equals. They are morally better. In the reports of prisons, reformatories, etc., men's and boys' names appear more often than girls' and women's. Women, time and time again, have been admitted to have firm reason, endurance, foresight, skill, patience, temperate will and strength. Are not these the qualifications so greatly needed in the councils of the republic ? Where then, does the legiti- macy of soverignty lie ? With the thousands who have the power without these qualifications, or with the other thou- sands who have the qualifications but are forcibly excluded from the power ? In education women are men's equals. Con- sult the statistics of the Common and High Schools. You find that there are more among the girls who graduate than there are among the boys. Then there are women who have a higher education. Are not teachers, business women, lawyers, college graduates, nurses and doctors as intelligent, yes, more intelligent, than most voters? Surely women with such edu- cation are more capable of voting than many men who do vote. But the political system of to-day renders all women, no matter how well born, how rich, how intelligent, how servicable to the state, the political inferiors of all men, no matter how basely born, how poverty stricken, how ignorant, how vicious, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote ; the lady who devotes herself to getting the almshouse made habitable can not. Communities are agitated and legislatures convulsed to devise means to secure the right of suffrage to any illiterate voter, while well-educated women in the state are left in silence, obliterated behind this cloud of often besotted ignor- ance.

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22 THE COLLEGE RECORD. merit of our industrial and self-supporting homes. The gov- ernmental stamp of unequality extends to governmental pay, and women receive invariably lower salaries for equal service with men. Avenues for woman's employment are over- crowded ; from sheer necessity they have been forced to fight against prejudice and to invade men's departments. Men can can not, or will, not represent the working- woman. Men repre- sent only the ordinary interests of life, while women would, if the chance were given them, represent the interests of home. Men never have, of their own volition, granted a right to wo- man. It had only been after persistent efforts, on the part of women themselves, that any point has been gained. Take, for instance, the bills concerning woman's right of disposal of her own children and right to her own property. This shows that one class cannot represent another without doing injustice to the class represented. Women should be allowed to vote because debarring them is against the Constitution. The preamble of that noble in- strument declares that, we the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings do establish this Constitution. It will scarcely be denied that women are people. Women are counted in the basis of representation. What absurdity has been made of language, by the use of of words utterly without meaning, so long as women are disfranchised. Of course, the people of New York State did not establish this Constitution — only a portion of them. The opening paragraph of that grand first article of the Con- stitution, which is, in reality, our bill of rights, contains the • words : Section i. No member of this State shall be disfran- chised or deprived of any rights or privileges secured to any citizen, unless by law of the land or judgment of his peers. What does this mean ? Women are members of the United States and of the State in which they live. They have been declared so by the XIV amendment of the National Constitu- tion and by Section 1492 of the United States. Women are Still disfranchised. On what ground? Not by the judgment of their peers— that they never had in any court, nor can the words law of the land be held as disfranchising women, for