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physical strength to vote in its application to those women who
are bearing and training the coming millions?... The average
mother will attend church at least forty times yearly from her
cradle to her grave; and there is, besides, an infinity of other
social, religious and industrial obligations which she performs
because she is a married woman and a mother rather than for any
other reason whatever. Yet it is proposed to deprive all women
alike of an inestimable privilege for the reason that on any
given day of election perhaps one woman in twenty of voting age
may not be able to reach the polls....

When one thinks of the innumerable and trifling causes which keep
many of the best of men and the strongest opponents of woman
suffrage from the polls upon important occasions, it is difficult
to be tolerant of the objection that woman by reason of
motherhood has no time to vote....

It is urged that woman does not desire the privilege. If the
right exist at all it is an individual right, and not one which
belongs to a class or to the sex as such. Yet men tell us that
they will vote to give the suffrage to women whenever the
majority of women desire it. What would we say if it were
seriously proposed to recall the suffrage from all colored or
from all white men because a majority of either class should
decline or for any cause fail to vote? If one or many choose not
to claim their right it is no argument for depriving me of mine
or one woman of hers. There are many reasons why some women
declare themselves opposed to the extension of suffrage to their
sex. Some well-fed and pampered, without serious experiences in
life, are incapable of comprehending the subject at all. Vast
numbers, who secretly and earnestly desire it, from the long
habit of deference to the wishes of the other sex upon whom they
are so entirely dependent, and knowing the hostility of their
"protectors" to it, conceal their real sentiments. The "lord" of
the family referring this question to his wife, who has heard him
sneer or worse than sneer at suffragists for half a lifetime,
ought not expect an answer which she knows will subject her to
his censure and ridicule. It is like the old appeal of the master
to his slave to know if he would like to be free. Full well did