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Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887 by Various
page 52 of 234 (22%)
sentiments of men will be enlisted in their support.

Privileges bring responsibilities, and before women clamor for more
work to do, it were better that they should attend more thoughtfully
to the duties which lie all about them, in the home and social circle.
Until society is cleansed of the moral foulness which infests it,
which, as we have seen, lies beyond the reach of civil law, women have
no call to go forth into wider fields, claiming to be therein the
rightful and natural purifiers. Let them first make the home sweet and
pure, and the streams which flow therefrom will sweeten and purify all
the rest.

As between the power of the ballot and this moral force exerted by
women there can not be an instant's doubt as to the choice. In natural
refinement and elevation of character, the ideal woman stands a step
above the ideal man. If she descends from this fortunate position to
take part in the coarse scramble for material power, what chance will
she have as against man's aggressive forces; and what can she possibly
gain that she can not win more directly, more effectually, and with
far more dignity and glory to herself by the exercise of her own
womanly prerogatives? She has, under God, the formation and rearing of
men in her own hands.

If they do not turn out in the end to be men who respect woman, who
will protect and defend her in the exercise of every one of her
God-given rights, it is because she has failed in her duty toward
them; has not been taught to comprehend her own power and to use it
to its best ends. For women to seek to control men by the power of
suffrage is like David essaying the armor of Saul. What woman needs is
her own sheepskin sling and her few smooth pebbles from the bed of the
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