The Unreasonable Burden of Moral Regeneration
A bold editorial argument for women's suffrage, dismissing the 'degradation' objection and the notion that men need women to save them from their own vices.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Women are pretty much like men; good, bad, and so-so, the latter largely predominating. The accepted notion that she has to shoulder the whole burden of the moral regeneration of the world, and work out not only her own salvation, but that of all mankind is, to say the least, unreasonable. The fact is, men as well as women have to purify and elevate themselves. The true basis of the right of women to the elective franchise is precisely the line upon which that of men rests. If men are so vile and brutal that merely to meet them occasionally at the polls is so great a contamination, how can women associate with them socially with impunity? I believe that the womanly delicacy of woman rests upon a firmer foundation than lack of opportunity, and that generally speaking they have no inclination to become rowdies or drunkards. The suppression of opinion for the sake of peace is the argument of tyrants only.
“The suppression of opinion for the sake of peace is the argument of tyrants only, and is not capable of being sustained when carried out to its logical consequences.”
This piece was published during a period of volatile legal flux for Washington women, who had gained and then lost the right to vote in the late 1880s due to Territorial Supreme Court interference. It captures the intellectual rigor of the suffrage movement, which argued that women were independent civic agents, not domestic moral shields.
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