Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/622

586 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE At this hearing the opponents made their supreme effort, know- ing that it was their last chance, and they brought to Washington one of the South's most noted orators, former U. S. Senator Joseph W. Bailey, of Texas. He began by saying : "I shall con- fine my speech entirely to the political aspect of the question, leav- ing these very intelligent women to explain the effect of suffrage on their sex and on our homes," but he got to the latter phase of it long before he had finished. He believed that under the Fed- eral Constitution the right to control the suffrage belonged abso- lutely to the States but he said : "I am opposed to women voting anywhere except in their own societies; I would let them vote there but nowhere else in this country. . . . No free government should deny suffrage to any class entitled to it and no free gov- ernment should extend suffrage to any class not entitled to it, for the ultimate success or failure of every free government will depend upon the average intelligence and patriotism of the electorate. I hope to show that as a matter of political justice and political safety women should not be allowed to vote. . . ." Giving other reasons why women should not be allowed to vote, he said: "The two most important personal duties of citi- zenship are military service and sheriff's service, neither of which is a woman capable of performing. Reminded by the chairman that there were many plaees where women then were performing the duty of sheriff, constable, marshal and police, he answered: "They may be playing at them but they are not really performing them. If an outlaw is to be arrested are you going to order a woman to get a gun and come with you? If yon did she would sit down and cry, and she ought to keep on crying until her hus- band hunts you up and makes you apologize for insulting his wife. ... A woman who is able to perform a sheriff's duty is not fit to be a mother because no woman who bears arms ought to bear children. . . . Ve agree, I think, that the women of this country will never go into our armies as soldiers or be required to serve on the sheriff's posse comitatus. That being true I hardly think they have the right to make the laws under which you and I must perform those services." The chairman asked: "When the men go to front with the cartridges and guns the women assisted in making are the latter not participating in the