Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/526

492 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE stood with her back turned squarely toward the cause. She wouldn't even turn around to look at it, she would have none of it, but when she awoke slowly to a social consciousness, when eyes and brain were at last free, after a terrible reconstruction period, to look out upon the world as a whole ; when she found particularly among the more fortunate classes that her leisure had come to mean laziness; when she realized that through the changed conditions of modern life so much of her work had been taken out of the home, leaving her to choose between following it into the world or remaining idle; when with a clearer vision she saw that her help in governmental affairs, especially where they touched her own interests, was much needed right about face she turned and said to the southern man : "I don't wish to usurp your place in government but it is time I had my own. T don't complain of the way you have conducted your part of the business but my part has been either badly managed or not managed at all. Tn the past you have not shown yourself averse to accept- ing my help in very serious matters; my courage and fortitude and wisdom you have continually praised. Now that there is a closer connection between the government and the home than ever before in the history of the world, I ask that you will let me help you." Mrs. Dudley described the effect of the demand for woman suf- frage on the politicians, on the men who feared they would be "reformed," on the sentimentalists, and then she paid tribute to the broad-minded, justice-loving men who encouraged the women in their new aspirations and concluded: "So you see not only the southern woman but the southern man is now awake and present conditions strongly indicate that before another year has passed we will have some form of suffrage for the woman of Tennessee. . . . We have had a vision a vision of a time when a woman's home will be the whole wide world, her children all those whose feet are bare and her sisters all who need a helping hand ; a vision of a new knighthood, a new chivalry, when men will not only fight for women but for the rights of women." The plea of Mrs. Valentine for a higher womanhood should be given in full but an idea at least can be gained by a quotation : If I were asked to give one reason above all others for advocat- ing the enfranchisement of women I should unhesitatingly reply, "The necessity for the complete development of woman as a prerequi- site for the highest development of the race." Just so long as woman remains under guardianship, as if she were a minor or an incom- petent just so long as she passively accepts at the hands of men conditions, usages, laws, as if they were decrees of Providence just so long as she is deprived of the educative responsibilities of self-