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FOR EQUAL VOTEThe editor of the Stockton Mail in a recent editorial says, lam in receipt of a letter from the Caifornia Women’s Anti-Suffrage Association, in which the ladies opposed to their sisters’ exercising the right to vote request space in which to print, from time to time, their arguments. ' They can’t have it. These ladies, or any-. body else, can have space to present facts or news or matters of personal privilege. But when it comes to furnishing editorials on the question of woman’s right to the ballot, the Mail is quite able to experess its own editorial opinions. Speaking for myself, I am heartily in sympathy with the woman suffrage movement. The ballot belongs to my wife and to my sisters as much as it belongs to me— certainly with a far greater claim of right than can be set forth by the hordes of ignorant negroes and of ignorant white men who, without any conception of our institutions or any knowledge of our history or any faint shadow of patriotism, cast their ballots by the million into the boxes. I have no sympathy with the women who would deprive other women of their indubitable rights as free women - and citizens. I have small opinion of their intellect, less opinion of their charity and none at all of their logic. They will afford me much pleasure, and themselves some small profit in stamps saved, by refraining from sending the second-hand editorials they mistakenly proffer.I say deliberately and meaning the words, that I have never heard or read an argument against the right of . women to have the ballot that was worthy the intellect of a properly trained school boy. The usefulness of women’ voting is a matter upon which wise men may differ—the right is indisputable. The usefulness of per-mittng thousands of men to vote wh o now do so is not apparent. The right of these men to vote, so long as we hold to our system of government, is not open to debate. And there is not a single argument worthy of the name which can be pleaded for any man’s right to vote that does not apply with full force to the woman’s right. Sentiment may oppose her voting, churchmen may dig up texts from their different sacred books, ancient custom may raise its voice of dissent, but argument and reason have no kinship with prejudice or dogmas. I have even heard the convincing objection put forth that a woman cannot bear arms for the country. When the gentlemen whose powerful logical faculties lead them to this remarka-able discovery of woman’s incapacity will show me themselves bearing children for their country, I will be in a frame of mind to listen to them with less of astonished contempt for the workings of the machinery inside their skulls.’’HALThe legislature of the State of California, at its regular session commencing on the second of January, nineteen hundred and eleven, two-thirds of the members elected to each of the two houses of the said legislature voting in favor thereof, hereby propose that section one of article two of the constitution of the State of California be amended so as to read as follows:Section 1. Every native ( ) citizenof the United States, every ( )person who shall have acquired the rights of citizenship under or by virtue of the treaty of Queretaro, and every ( ) naturalized citizen thereof, whoshall have become such ninty days prior to any election, of the age of twenty-one years, who shall have been a resident of the state one year next proceeding the election, and of the county in which he or she claims his or her vote ninety days, and in the election precinict thirty days, shall be entitled to vote at all elections which are now or may hereafter be authorized by law; provided, no native of China, no idiot, no insane person, no person convicted of any infamous crime, no person hereafter convicted of the embezzlement or misappropriation of public money, and no person who shall not be able to read the constitution in the English language, and write his or her name, shall ever exercise the privileges of an elector in this state; provided, that the provisions of this amendment relative to an educational qualification shall not apply to any person prevented by a physical disability from complying with its requistions, nor to any person who shall be sixty years of age and upwards at the time this amendment shall take effect.
Newspaper Details
Ukiah Republican Press
Ukiah, California, US
Fri, Aug 25, 1911
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Oakland P.
CA, USA 19 Mar 2025
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