We acknowledge no inferiority to men. We claim to have no less ability to perform the duty God has imposed upon us, than they have to perform those imposed upon them. We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties of each. We believe our trusts to be as important and sacred as any that exist.
It is our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons who represent us at the ballot-box. Our fathers and husbands love us. Our sons are what we make them. We are content that they represent us in the corn-field, the battle-field and the ballot-box, and we them in the school-room, at the fireside, and at the cradle; believing our representation, even at the ballot-box, to be thus more full and impartial that it could possibly be were all women allowed to vote.
The proper sphere of woman we hold to be in no way inferior to that of man. That sphere is of the highest. As wife and mother she is queen of the most holy aspirations. When she moves in her proper orbit she fulfills her true duties as a citizen ; and while men are struggling with the battle of life for food and raiment she cares for the progeny-- the future men and women of this country. Who shall guard our children when women seek the polls, and amid the haunts of men wear themselves and their better thoughts away?
Establish the right of suffrage for women and it involves a common responsibility in the duty of bearing arms, for which we are absolutely unfitted. In the discharge of of this severest of all masculine duties we cannot bear a share. If forced to do so, inferior size and strength must make inferior troops. We may therefore sum up these objections by the consideration that the present movement proposes to make the whole range of duties common to the sexes instead of the present division of the duties of life, which assigns to each sex those most appropriate.
Such an innovation upon the practice and experience of the world, and which reason, law, and religion alike condemn, would be at variance with the natural law. The advocates of female suffrage claim that if women had the right to vote they would purify legislation of many abuses. We hold that the new status will prove to be the worst kind of communism. The relations between the sexes, so carefully guarded by religion and by parents, by law and by society, will become common and therefore corrupt. The family, the foundation of the State, will disappear. The mothers, sisters and daughters of our glorious past will exist no more and the female gender will vanish into epicene. Involved in one ruin from our present proud preeminence, we shall become a laughing-stock and a by-word to the nations of the world. We appeal to our women to be content that as mothers they control man in his early and impressible years,; and as wives they rule him not less surely in the riper hours, and share with him whatever of most worth life and the common lot bring. And we implore all women to ignore this subtle, dangerous, and fatal delusion held out to them. Life has its evils and sorrows incident to humanity-- nor man nor woman may escape the burden of duties assigned by the great Creator, nor may we hope to find in the ballot a panacea for every ill. For our own sex, for the coming generations who must fare badly at the hands of voting mothers, we appeal to legislation not thus to oppress us,; not to throw down the time-honored barrier which religion and the universal voice of Christian civilization have raised to protect us. We appeal to your honorable committee to save us from the inevitable degradation that must follow the promiscuous mingling of the sexes, now advocated under this new phase of irreligion. We most earnestly protest against the contemplated wrong, and if our women will not save themselves, we look to our natural protectors to save us and the future women of the country from the dread and evil curse which female suffrage will bring upon us."