As the claim of woman to share the voting power is related to the
fundamental principles of government, the progress of government must be
studied in relation to that claim in order to learn its bearing upon them.
It is possible to suggest in one brief chapter only the barest outline of
such a far-reaching scrutiny, and wiser heads than mine must search to
conclusion; but some beginnings looking toward an answer to the inquiry I
have raised have occurred to me as not having entered into the newly-
opened controversy on woman suffrage.

I say, the newly-opened controversy, for, through these fifty years, the
Suffragists have done nearly all the talking. So persistently have they
laid claim to being in the line of progress for woman, that many of their
newly aroused opponents fancied that the anti-suffrage view might be the
ultra conservative one, and that democratic principles, strictly and
broadly applied, might at last lead to woman suffrage, though premature if
pushed to a conclusion now.

The first step in finding out how far that position is true is, to
ascertain what the Suffragists say about this noblest of democracies, our
own Government. In referring to the "The History of Woman Suffrage" for
the opinions of the leaders, I am not only using a book that on its
publication was considered a strong and full presentment of their
arguments, but one which they are today advertising and selling as "a
perfect arsenal of the work done by and for women during the last half
century." In it the editors say: "Woman's political equality with man is
the legitimate outgrowth of the fundamental principles of our government."
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, writing in the New York Sun in April, 1894, says:
"Never, until the establishment of universal [male] suffrage, did it
happen that all the women in a community, no matter how well born, how
intelligent, how well educated, how virtuous, how wealthy, were counted