Votes for Women

What People Say What We Say
The majority of women don’t want to vote. The majority never wants progress.
Women will not vote when they are given the right. Official figures show women do vote largely wherever they have the right.
If women vote they ought to fight and do police duty. Men who could not fight still vote; this is the age when right makes might.
If women vote they must hold offices. A woman will have to be elected to office by the men and women together. Do the men all have to hold office?
Women have enough to do without voting. Voting takes but a few minutes and can be done on the way to the market.
It would interfere with a woman’s business, the care of the house. Does it interfere with man’s business in factory, store of office?
It would double the ignorant vote. 1/3 more girls than boys attend the high schools and women will soon be the more educated class.
It would double the foreign vote. There are in the United States over 12 times as many native born women as foreign born.
It would double the criminal vote. Only 1 in 20 of the criminals are women. It would add largely to the good vote and very slightly to the bad vote.
It would double the expense and trouble of election. The safety of a democracy lies in giving the vote to all classes so that all are fairly represented, and the result will be a Fair Average opinion. Ought we to cut the present vote in half to save money?
Women can change or make laws by indirect influence. Why be indirect when we can be direct? Why waste time and strength in beating around the bush?
A woman’s place is in the home. She leaves it to go to the market and why not to vote—it takes less time.
Women are represented by men. Would men let women represent them at the polls?
Does a man with women to represent have more than one vote or does he cast his vote according to the majority vote of those he represents? No! Then he doesn’t represent them.
Is a man’s vote given him to represent some one else’s opinion or his own?

 

Credit text

Women’s Political Union. "People Say: We say." National American Women Suffrage Association, circa 1910-1915. Broadside.