and contemptible. It never seems to occur to
discontented working-women that the best way to get what they want
is to act, and not to talk. One silent woman who quietly calculates
her chances and achieves success does more for her sex than any
amount of pamphleteering and lecturing. For nothing is more certain
than that good work, either from man or woman, will find a market;
and that bad work will be refused by all but those disposed to give
charity and pay for it.

The discontent of working-women is understandable, but it is a wide
jump from the woman discontented about her work or wages to the woman
discontented about her political position. Of all the shrill
complainers that vex the ears of mortals, there are none so foolish as
the women who have discovered that the founders of our republic left
their work half finished, and that the better half remains for them to
do. While more practical and sensible women are trying to put their
kitchens, nurseries, and drawing-rooms in order, and to clothe
themselves rationally, this class of discontents are dabbling in the
gravest national and economic questions. Possessed by a restless
discontent with their appointed sphere and its duties, and forcing
themselves to the front in order to ventilate their theories and show
the quality of their brains, they demand the right of suffrage as the
symbol and guarantee of all other rights.

This is their cardinal point, though it naturally follows that the
right to elect contains the right to be elected. If this result be
gained, even women whose minds are not taken up with the things of the
State, but who are simply housewives and mothers, may easily predicate
a few of such results as are particularly plain to the feminine
intellect and observation. The first of these would be an entirely new
set of agitators, who would use means quite foreign to male
intelligence. For instance, every favorite priest and preacher would
gain enormously in influence and power; for the ecclesiastical zeal
which now expends itself in fairs and testimonials would then expend
itself in the securing of votes in whatever direction they were
instructed to secure them. It might even end in the introduction of
the clerical element into our great political Council Chambers,--the
bishops in the House of Lords would be a sufficient precedent,--and a
great many women would really believe that the charming rhetoric of
the pulpit would infuse a higher tone in legisl