teach. The larger number of females offer to teach
because other occupations are not open to them. The smaller number of
males offer to teach because other more profitable occupations are
open to most males who are competent to teach. The result is that the
competition for positions of teachers to be filled by ladies is so
great as to reduce the price: but as males can not be employed at
that price, and are necessary in certain places in the schools, those
seeking their services have to pay a higher rate for them.

Persons having a larger number of places open to them with fewer
competitors command higher wages than those who have a smaller number
of places open to them with more competitors. This is the law of
society. It is the law of supply and demand, which can not be changed
by legislation. Then it follows that the ballot can not enable those
who have to compete with the larger number to command the same prices
as those who compete with the smaller number in the labor market. As
the Legislature has no power to regulate in practice that of which
the advocates of woman suffrage complain, the ballot in the hands of
females could not aid its regulation.

The ballot can not impart to the female physical strength which she
does not possess, nor can it open to her pursuits which she does not
have physical ability to engage in; and as long as she lacks the
physical strength to compete with men in the different departments of
labor, there will be more competition in her department, and she must
necessarily receive less wages.

But it is claimed again, that females should have the ballot as a
protection against the tyranny of bad husbands. This is also delusive.
If the husband is brutal, arbitrary, or tyrannical, and tyrannizes
over her at home, the ballot in her hands would be no protection
against such injustice, but the husband who compelled her to conform
to his wishes in other respects would also compel her to use the
ballot, if she possessed it, as he might please to dictate. The ballot
would therefore be of no assistance to the wife in such case, nor
could it heal family strifes or dissensions. On the contrary, one
of the gravest objections to placing the ballot in the hands of the
female sex is that it would promote unhappiness and dissensions in the
family circle. There should be unity and harmony in the family.

At present the man represents the family in meeting the demands of the
law and of society upon the