t work and in other channels of duty too numerous to mention,
by which both men and women have been benefited, society improved and
the welfare of the human race advanced. We would take from women none
of their privileges as citizens but we do not believe that women are
adapted to the political work of the world.

The discussion of all questions growing out of the social and family
relations and local economic conditions has no direct relationship to
the right of women to participate in the political affairs of
government. The right of suffrage does not attach of right to the
owners of property, for, if so, all other persons should be
disfranchised. It is not a fundamental right of taxpayers, for a great
body of men are not taxpayers, and nine-tenths of the women who would
become voters, if woman suffrage were adopted, would be non-taxpayers.
It is not an inherent right of citizenship, for the time never was in
the whole history of the world when the franchise was granted to all
citizens.... Franchise is a privilege of government granted only to
those to whom the Government sees fit to grant it. As a law-abiding
people men and women alike should recognize once and for all that the
right of suffrage is not a natural or inherent right of citizenship
but can only come by grant from the Government. [Legal authorities
quoted.]

We must also recognize that woman suffrage is inconsistent with the
fundamental principles upon which our representative government was
founded and to accept it now involves revolutionary changes. The
framers of the Federal Constitution, a body of the wisest men the
country has ever produced, did not recognize or provide for woman
suffrage. No one of the original thirteen States which adopted it
provided in their constitutions for woman suffrage. True it was
permitted in New Jersey from 1776 to 1807, a period of thirty-one
years, when it was taken away by statute, by reason of unsatisfactory
conditions and results. After the close of the Civil War, the southern
States which had gone into rebellion were admitted back into the
Union under constitutions limiting suffrage to men. These precedents
in our governmental history were never departed from until in recent
years.

The greatest danger to the Republic of the United States today, as it
always has been in governments where the people rule, is in an
excitable and emotional suffrage. If the women of this country would
always think coolly and deliber