Women's Desire for the Ballot.

Lake County Press, Issue 905, 5 April 1900, Page 7

Women's Desire for the Ballot.

A desire for the ballot, which distinguishes what is probably quite a small minority of our feminine population, is motived by 'one or other of three considerations. 'The ballot is claimed by some because of the mistaken notion that suffrage is a right inherent in personality. other women are suffragists not because they care anything for the ballot in Itself considered, but because possessed of those masculine prepos-

sessions (hat make them restless at seeing men doing anything that they are not themselves Allowed to do. Many of (his class probably are not so

;iii-villus to vote as they are anxious to know that they eau vole if they want to. It would In- interesting to know how many of sneli women would be converted from their views if it should seriously be proposed to pass a bill requiring women to vote. Human nature is a peculiar thing, and it certainly will not be ungallant to say that all the peculiarity is not monopolised by the male sex. Probably the parlietilar stripe of suffragists 1 am eommeutiiig on just now would find the virulence of their distemper measurably relieved by having the coveted privilege accorded to them for a time, it would work something as in the ease of a jealous dul l who is cured of its jealousy by being allowed to hold in its own hand a little while the exclusive plaything of the mate it is jealous of. There are. how-

ever, in the third place, a considerable 'number of women that are considering with a great deal of honesty and womanly seriousness the question whether the ballot, if put into woman’s hands, would not he a means of correcting certain evil conditions in society that could bo less easily reached in any other way.

It is very easy to have a pronounced opinion upon the effect which such an extension of the ballot would produce, although the data, do not seem its yet to he sutlicieutly at command to give to such pronounced opinions any particular value. Our uneasy sisters would he making a substantial contribution to the cause they have so closely at heart if they, for instance, would canvass two of the wards in this city, say the Tenth and the Twenty-second, and by this means put themselves in condition to inform the public distinctly and authoritatively just what effect would bo produced at our next election by having the privilege of suffrage accorded to the women of those two most important districts.—Rev. Charles 11. Parkhurst, D.D., in the “ Ladies’ Home Journal.”