laws which would practically close them--not a single woman in that city
may record her vote against those wretched blots on civilization. The
profane, tobacco-chewing, whiskey-drinking, gambling libertines may
vote, but not their virtuous, intelligent, sober, law-abiding wives and
mothers!

You remember the petition of 18,000 of the best women of Chicago, a year
ago, asking the common council not to repeal the Sunday Liquor Law? Why
were they treated with ridicule and contempt? Why was their prayer
unheeded? Was it because the honorable gentlemen had no respect for
those women or their demand? No; on the contrary, many of them,
doubtless, were men possessed of high regard for women, who would have
been glad to aid them in their noble efforts; but the power that placed
those men in office, the representatives of the saloons, brothels and
obscene shows, crowded the council chamber and its corridors,
threatening political death to the man who should dare give his voice or
his vote for the maintenance of that law. Could those 18,000 women, with
the tens of thousands whom they represented, have gone to the ballot-box
at the next election and voted to re-elect the men who championed their
petition, and defeat those who opposed it, does any one doubt that it
would have been heeded by the common council?

As the fountain can rise no higher than the spring that feeds it, so a
legislative body will enact or enforce no law above the average
sentiment of the people who created it. Any and every reform work is
sure to lead women to the ballot-box. It is idle for them to hope to
battle successfully against the monster evils of society until they
shall be armed with weapons equal to those of the enemy--votes and
money. Archimedes said, "Give to me a fulcrum on which to plant my
lever, and I will move the world." And I say, give to woman the ballot,
the political fulcrum, on which to plant her moral lever, and she will
lift the world into a nobler and purer atmosphere.

Two great necessities forced this nation to extend justice and equality
to the negro:

First, Military necessity, which compelled the abolition of the crime
and curse of slavery, before the rebellion could be overcome.

Second, Political necessity, which required the enfranchisement of the
newly-freed men, before the work of reconstruction could begin.

The third is now pressing, Moral necessity--to emancipate woman, before
Social Purity, the nation's safeguard,