me
goes on the assessor's list and she has to pay taxes on the $1,500. So
much for special legislation in favor of women!

In all the penalties and burdens of government (except the military)
women are reckoned as citizens, equally with men. Also, in all the
privileges and immunities, save those of the jury and the ballot-box,
the foundation on which rest all the others. The United States
government not only taxes, fines, imprisons and hangs women, but it
allows them to pre-empt lands, register ships and take out passports and
naturalization papers. Not only does the law permit single women and
widows the right of naturalization, but Section 2 says, "A married woman
may be naturalized without the concurrence of her husband;" (I wonder
the fathers were not afraid of creating discord in the families of
foreigners;) and again:

When an alien, having complied with the law and declared his
intention to become a citizen, dies before he is actually
naturalized, his widow and children shall be considered citizens,
entitled to all rights and privileges as such, on taking the
required oath.

If a foreign born woman by becoming a naturalized citizen is entitled to
all the rights and privileges of citizenship, do not these include the
ballot which would have belonged to her husband? If this is true of a
naturalized woman, is it not equally true of one who is native born?

The question of the masculine pronouns--yes, and nouns too--was settled
by the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Silver _versus_ Ladd,
December, 1868. The court said:

In construing a benevolent statute of the government, made for the
benefit of its own citizens, inviting and encouraging them to
settle on its distant public lands, the words "single man" and
"unmarried man" may, especially if aided by the context and other
parts of the statute, be taken in a generic sense. Held,
accordingly, that the Fourth Section of the Act of Congress, of
September 21, 1850, granting by way of donation lands in Oregon
Territory to every white settler or occupant, American half-breed
Indians included, embraced within the term single man an unmarried
woman.

Though the words persons, people, inhabitants, electors, citizens, are
all used indiscriminately in the national and State constitutions, there
was always a conflict of opinion, prior to the war, as to whether they
were synonymous term