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NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1897.
277

been deserted, bad women have not flocked to the polls, conjugal strife has not been aroused, bad effects have not come but good effects have. Bad men seek office in vain where women have the ballot. New States are coming into line and the triumph of the cause can not much longer be delayed."

Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson spoke with her usual ability on Duty and Honor:

Underlying the objections to woman suffrage is a reason of which, as an American, I am deeply ashamed. I do not think either men or women have the same honest pride in our democracy that they had fifty years ago. We are becoming a little afraid of what Europe has always told us was an experiment, but one reason it has not yet been all we could wish is that it is not a democracy-at all, but a semi-democracy, one-half of the race ruling over the other half.

Another deep-seated feeling is that, while development is the general rule, yet the production of the best men and women requires "the maternal sacrifice," i. e. that the mother shall be sacrificed to her children, and incidentally to her husband. If the sacrifice is necessary, well and good; but how if it is not? .... It has been regarded as dangerous to improve the condition of women for fear they would not be as good mothers. If gain to the mother means robbery to the child, let the mother remain as she is. But the standard is the amount of good done to the children, not the amount of evil done to herself. ....

Grant that it is a woman's business to take care of her children— not merely of her own children. If children anywhere are not under right conditions, women ought to see to it. The trouble is we are too wrapped up in my children to think of our children. We can not keep out disease by shutting our own front door. We have to know and care about the world outside our gates. In order to do our duty to our children we must make this world a better place to live in.

Our children are not born with that degree of brain power that we could wish. They will not be, until our minds are widened by study of the whole duty of a human being. .... What is needed for women is an enlargement of their moral sense so as to include social as well as private virtues. We have been taught that there is only one virtue for us. Our morality is high but narrow. It is not wholesome to limit oneself to one virtue, or to six or to ten. Sons resemble their mothers. While mothers limit their interests to their own narrow domestic affairs, regardless of the world outside, their sons will betray the interests of the country for their own private business interests. .... Women and men are so connected that we can not improve one without improving the other. Under equal rights we shall raise the moral sense of the community by the natural laws of transmission through the mothers. We shall