Mrs. Leonard's mistake is not in misunderstanding the
nature either of woman or of man, which she understands perfectly; it
is in misunderstanding the nature of politics, that is, the political
arena; and this lady has been in the political arena for the last
ten years of her life, one of the most important and potent forces
therein.
It is true, as she says, that the wife and the mother educate the
child and the man, and when the great function of the state, as we
hold in our State and as is fast being held everywhere, is also the
education of the child and the man, how does it degrade that wife and
mother, whose important function it is to do this thing, to utter
her voice and have her vote counted in regard to the methods and the
policies by which that education shall be conducted?
Why, Mr. President, Mrs. Leonard says in that letter that woman, the
wife and the maiden and the daughter, has no political ends to serve.
If political ends be to desire office for the greed of gain, if
political ends be to get an unjust power over other men, if political
ends be to get political office by bribery or by mob violence or by
voting through the shutter of a beer-house, that is true: but the
persons who are in favor of this measure believe that those very
things that Mrs. Leonard holds up as the proper ends in the life of
women are political ends and nothing else; that the education of the
child, that the preservation of the purity of the home, that the care
for the insane and the idiot and the blind and the deaf and the ruined
and deserted, are not only political ends but are the chief political
ends for which this political body, the state, is created: and those
who desire the help of women in the administration of the state desire
it because of the ability which could write such a letter as that on
the wrong side, and because the qualities of heart and brain which God
has given to understand this class of political ends better than He
has given it to the masculine heart and brain are needed for their
administration.
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