Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/197

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THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT
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side; because the special sphere of woman is the home, women ought to have the vote.

The time will never come when women will cease to regard the home and children as their special concern. A God-implanted instinct has taught them this truth. The granting or the withholding of the vote will make no difference here. Those who fear that the enfranchisement of women will mean an interference with the laws of God and nature pay a poor compliment to their Creator. The laws of God and nature are not so easily interfered with; they can safely be left to take care of themselves. As the face of a flower turns naturally towards the sun, so the heart of a woman turns towards a little child. The most rampant feminism would never accomplish the destruction of this natural and beautiful instinct towards life-giving and life-protecting inherent in all women. The pity of it is that so many women, for various reasons, some of them preventable, cannot with honour achieve the sphere towards which every instinct of their being calls them. Poverty so abounds that thousands of men dare not marry and take upon themselves new and unknown responsibilities. More than one-fourth of the working people of the country are so poor that they have to live in houses which do not conform