BLACKWELL FAMILY Henry B. Blackwell ArticlesWoman's Journal, July 11, 1908 p. 110. England and America It is interesting to note the difference in manifestations and methods of the woman suffrage movement in this country and Great Britain, especially as shown in the recent militant and sensational tactics employed by its advocates in the mother country, as contrasted with the quieter American activities. This difference is due to a variety of causes, but not, let us hope, to any lack of earnestness in the latter. A movement which first took organized shape in the United States will not lack for martyrs here whenever martyrdom is needed. Our conditions are altogether different. If, for instance, in Massachusetts, or Illinois, or Oregon, or California, or the District of Columbia, there was hope of speedy affirmative action as a result of legislative pressure through mass meetings, processions, or personal demonstrations before before halls of Congress in Washington, these would not be lacking. In American cities, as in London, the friends of woman suffrage number thousands. But legislative power, in America, is subdivided by state lines, limited by constitutional restrictions, and hampered by party divisions. Our social uses are more conservative and our political machinery vastly more complicated. Great Britain has no written constitutions, State or national, limiting legislative action; no Supreme Court assuming to set aside legislative action. Parliament is practically omnipotent. The whole world-wide British Empire has its center on the banks of The Thames, with a concentration of power which has no counterpart in this country. In the United States, the suffrage question, except as to the choice of Presidential electors, is local, not national. It is under the separate control of forty-six independent sovereignties, and the battle has to be fought out in each of these. And even there the suffrage has tobe now by gradual approaches, and ratified by a referendum to the voters, in which women have no share. Moreover, colonies which secede from their parent State cease to feel the direct impulses of their original national life, and develop peculiarities of their own. Chief Justice Chase once said to me: "The American people are the most conservative in the whole world, and for the simple reason that they are better off." In San Domingo still linger social habits of the era of Christopher Columbus, its founder. In French Canada the relations between priests and people are akin to the era before Voltaire and the French Revolution. We cannot expect too close a parallelism between English - speaking peoples in their methods of advocating reform movements. Meanwhile, [?] heartily rejoice in the recent agressive de[v]elopment of public opinion in England. It [?]ll arouse American suffragists to increased activity H.B.B. Woman's Journal, July 25, 1908 p.118 Women For Social Reform Women's right, as American citizens, to take part in the choice of their law-makers, is disregarded by many as being secondary to considerations of personal fitness and practical expediency. Men want to feel convinced that the exercise of suffrage by women will give the community better legislation, wiser and purer government than we now have; or, at least, that it will not add to existing evils. We call the attention of these objectors to the evident superiority of women over average men in matters of social reform. It is women who take the lead in charities and correction, who found and support social settlements in the slums, who organize for the promotion of temperance and social purity. In every organized effort for the betterment of the unfortunate, women are the most active and devoted workers. So, too, in the family, it is the wife andmother who keeps the home and administers the often scanty resources which the husband supplies. Women excel the men in industry, working longer hours, under more monotonous and depressing conditions. Since they are now, as a rule, the conservators of private morals, is it not reasonable to hope that in a better future they may become conservators of public morals also? Anchored by their maternal responsibilities, keenly alive to the daily needs of their husbands and children, is it not wise to enlist them in every effort to suppress crime and violence, and to have an honest government and an efficient policy? The comprise two-thirds of our church members, three-fourths of our teachers, less than one-tenth of our criminals. H.B.B. Woman's Journal, Aug 1, 1908 p 122 Why Women Oppose. Many people oppose woman suffrage, because a few women have arrayed themselves against it, while most women remain apparently indifferent. But the same has been true of every class of men subjected to personal and political disabilities since the world began. As Jefferson reminds us in the Declaration of American Independence, "All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." In so country, anywhere, have revolutions been effected with the active cooperation of a majority of the class to be freed. So powerful is the force of habit, so seductive are the daily associations of thought and action, that the average victim of injustice is unconscious of his disabilities, and accepts his lot without question or resentment. Indeed, the more complete the subjugation themore stolid is the contentment. Probably no class of Chinese women are to-day so averse to change as those whose feet have been crippled in infancy. Aversion to radical change is apparently greatest among those who most need it and will derive from it the greatest benefit. This attitude of mind is not peculiar to women. It has been shown by men in every movement for human advancement; physical, mental, or moral. The mass of African bondsmen in the United States, prior to their emancipation, showed very little discontent with their lot. The fugitive slave fleeing north from his master, was the exception, and was usually impelled by some personal injury and resentment. Progress always begins with the minority, who instill into the reluctant masses the divine leaven of discontent. It required a "long train of abuses and usurpations" to goad the loyal American colonies into a demand for independence. And it was only a shocking tragedy of insanity and child-murder by a victim of exceptional marital tyranny that enabled Massachusetts suffragists, after a half-century's refusal, to wring from an inert Legislature for married mothers an equal right with their husbands to the legal care and custody of their minor children. Let no one feel discouraged, therefore, by the lingering inactivity of many women and the perverse opposition of a very few. The rosy dawn is in the sky. The sun has already risen on the rocky mountain heights, and will soon make its appearance on the plains and valleys below. H.B.B.Woman's Journal, Aug. 22, 1908 p.134 Votes for Women. Our so-called "Republic", under the forms of democracy, has become a plutocracy in disguise. Commercialism to-day absolutely dominates our social and political system. Enormous taxes are levied in order to promote great enterprises, all primarily for the benefit of capitalists. Take the Panama Canal, for example, in which hundreds of millions of taxes are being annually invested. Not one in a thousand of the people of this country, who pay the bills by onerous exactions upon every thing they eat, drink, wear, or use, will ever derive any benefit from it. but many transportation companies, manufacturers, and merchants will profit by it. So, too, the vast sums of money spent by the government in irrigation and other works of public improvement will enable many families to make productive homes out of arid deserts hitherto incapable of human occupation. But not one in a thousand of the tax-paying consumers at whose expense these public works are being constructed will ever own one of those farms. At best the general benefit will be partial and indirect in its bearing on individuals. But those after all are useful enterprises. Far less worthy of approval are the hundreds of millions of taxes annually squandered upon army and navy, which only serve to keep alive the war spirit and demoralize the public conscience. Everybody knows, or ought to know, that by friendly negociation with foreign powers all possible grounds of hostility can be removed. Commercial reciprocity would be welcomed even by bellicose little Venezuela. The ocean can be policed by a joint agreement of five civilized powers; America, Great Britain, Japan, France and Germany are masters of the ocean. Just as the great lakes have been open to friendly commerceupon our northern border for generations without a single fortification or battleship, so might the ocean the great highway of the world, be made the friendly property and "open door" of all mankind. The money now worse than thrown away, if properly applied, would educate every child in useful industry, would support every destitute widow and orphan, and give old age pensions to every man and woman over fifty years of age. What prevents this blessed application of enlightened commonsense? The short-sightedness of rulers, due to the exclusion of women from their rightful share in government. Nothing else. "It is not well for man to be alone." we live under an aristocracy of sex. When the feminine element is accorded its rightful place in the councils of nations, when fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters take counsel together and unite in making the laws, brute force will be made for evermore subservient to the higher qualities of human nature. An exclusively masculine government, representing only half of human nature, can never establish or maintain national or international peace. H.B.B.Woman's Journal, Sep. 26, 1908, p. 154 Women vs Waste The enormous waste of natural resources, which has recently aroused public alarm, is a direct result of the exclusion of women from the administration of municipal, state and national affairs. Women, in private life, are, as a rule, the economists, saving and utilizing the family incomes. Their habit of avoiding needless expense often causes them to be called "stingy." But, alas for the poor man who is cursed with an extravagant wife! The foundations of many of the largest private fortunes of the country were laid by the careful management and judicious housekeeping of the wives of our successful millionaires, or their parents, during their early struggles with poverty. Indeed it is only necessary to note what is going on in our midst every day in the lives of the poor and moderately well-to-do, to justify the assertion that women constitute the greatest check upon habits of wastefulness. Just now, when for weeks, New England has been shrouded in the smoke of burning forests, extending, it is said, like a pall, 500 miles out to sea, we may well ask why it is that no precautions have been taken in Maine, or Washington, or British Columbia, to prevent this frightful waste of virgin forests, which a century cannot replace? Why is it that our city government, in the face of daily conflagrationsstill permits the erection in our suburbs of blocks of lofty, wooden, three-family houses, grouped so closely together that the tragedies of Chelsea and San Francisco are sure to be repeated on a far larger scale during the coming fifty years? If women had been invited to take their legitimate place in our public councils, more stringent safeguards would long since have been enacted and enforced. Does anyone suppose that a government composed jointly of women and men would countenance the annual expenditure of one thousand million dollars of the hard earnings of our people - two-thirds of it spent for army, navy, fortifications, and pensions? Or that another thousand millions would every year be lavishly and corruptly spent on parks and public buildings, purchase of real estate at exorbitant prices, padded pay-rolls, and hydra-headed monopolies? Appeals for economy fall on deaf ears. Last years legislators elected to curtail expenditures, coolly voted to increase their own salaries. Every useless employee dismissed from public office makes himself a center of disaffection and becomes an obstacle to further retrenchment. The habit of living up to or beyond one's income grows apace. The poor immigrant, who brings here from Europe the habit of saving, accumulates property, too often at the cost of health and rational employment, while the sons and daughters of our own country too often adopt habits of expense far beyond what their incomes justify, and then seek by speculation or sharp practice to avoid what they consider the "drudgery" of productive industry. In the extension of votes to gratified women lies chief hopes of greater public economy. Let women, as votes, do for the public what they are doing in their dailylives. What is a City, or State, or Nation, but an aggregation of homes? Why not have in our public housekeeping the help of the faithful housekeepers, the careful wives and mothers, to limit reckless expenditure, to apply wisely the public income, to provide schoolhouses for all our children, to pay better salaries to our teachers, and by friendly reciprocity to maintain domestic and international peace? H.B.B.Woman's Journal Sep. 26, 1908 p.154 Our Decadent Politics. Last year, when the Springfield State Convention of the Massachusetts Democracy was reduced by force and fraud into a howling chaos, it seemed as if the decadence of our institutions under universal manhood suffrage had reached its lowest possible level. But last Sunday, when at a political rally in South Boston, Congressman O'Connell was assailed by a band of ruffians, and only escaped bodily bodily injury by being whisked away in an automobile, pursued far into Dorchester by a dozen "strong-armed" political opponents in another automobile, eluding his pursuers only by the greater speed of his machine, we seem to have reached a still lower depth of political degredation. What a grim irony seems to be the suggestion of "the consultative function of a vote," under our present system. Surely, sooner or later, the rational idea of a "consultative ballot," following a candid consideration of the merits of men and measures by husband and wife in the family circle, and resulting in two votes cast in the interests of the home, would be an improvement on such disorderly meetings as now provide rulers for the citizens of the "Athens of America." Apparently we have attained the desire of the opponents of woman suffrage, to limit political action to "men who can fight." But it seems very much like a return to primitive barbarism. Sooner or later suffrage must either be reformed by the exclusion of the too belligerentelement now dominant, or by the admission of a more self-respecting and peace-loving body of citizens. Since the elimination of voters seems practically impossible, why not give the latter method a trial? Why not adopt Wendell Phillips suggestion by the admission of women to "lift the caucus to the level of the parlor?" HB.B. Woman's Journal, Dec. 5, 1908 p 194 The National Convention. When Henry B. Blackwell came forward he received an ovation, the audience rising and giving the Chautauqua salute. Mr. Blackwell said in part: There is something wonderful about this great movement which began among both men and women 60 years ago. I am glad to have had a part in it, and to have been able to aid Lucy Stone, the gentlest and most heroic of women. She began her woman's rights lectures in 1849. I made my first suffrage speech in Cleveland, O., in 1854, at a convention got up by Mrs. Caroline M. Severance. I could fill an evening with reminiscences of victories and postponements of victories. The one great glory of my life is that when my wife consented to my request that our life - pilgrimages should be united, we issued our protest against the inequalities of the then existing marriage laws, and recorded our conviction that marriage should be a noble and permanent partnership of equals Editorial by H.B.B. undated - 1909(/) [To the editor of the Nation] In a recent article entitled "Woman Suffrage in Michigan", the new York Nation suggested various difficulties and disorders which may possibly arise if women are allowed to vote, and intimates that the advocates of Impartial Suffrage have not sufficiently recognized the essential differences of Sex. I will therefore state some grounds for believing that Woman Suffrage will result in a radical political reform. The eternal and ineradicable distinction of sex is one principal reason why women, in a representative government, should be directly represented, since they constitute one entire half of the body politic. If lawyers alone cannot safely be trusted to make laws for mechanics, if the Southern whites cannot do justice to the negroes, if every well-defined class in Society is entitled to its ownauthoritative expression - surely women, who are the wives and sisters and mothers of men, should give expression to the domestic interests from the feminine point of view. If mere differences of education, habit, race and interest make class - legislation dangerous, how much more partial and imperfect must be the legislation of one half of the community where the other half, in addition to such difference, differ organically also. If a blacksmith can not fairly represent a physician, how much less can a man represent a woman! The opponents of Woman Suffrage can only successfully oppose this argument by showing that Suffrage is a purely masculine function. If so, it is right that men should monopolize it, but not otherwise. Or, if Suffrage were a purely feminine function, then it would be right that women should monopolize it, but not otherwise. But Suffragists maintain that Suffrage is a human function, and that it demands for its exercise functions common to both sexes. So far as it is now colored and controlled by one sex it is one-sided and partial. The participation of both sexes is needed, each to neutralize the sexual bias of the other. What is Suffrage? The authoritative expression of an opinion; rational choice in reference to principles, measures and men. Are women capable of forming an opinion? Have they the capacity of rational choice? Have they interests to be affected by legislation; rights to protect; wrongs to remedy? If so, women ought to vote as citizens, just as they now vote as stockholders in the Bank of England, and in railroad or manufacturing corporations. Without going into minute particulars or enquiring whether the mentalpeculiarities of women are due to nature or to circumstances, all Suffragists recognize these peculiarities, and assert that they are precisely the qualities which our government lacks, and for the want of which it is not now truly representative. All admit that some change in our political system is needed. The growing corruption of public life is admitted and deplored by the Nation. Low as is the average standard of private morals, the standard of political ethics is confessedly far lower. Every year matters seem to grow worse, our laws and law-makers do not fairly represent the public sentiment of the Community. This deterioration evidently proceeds in part from the introduction into our political system of great bodies of ignorant men. For half a century a flood of immigrants has poured into our Sea-ports, Irishmen, Germans, Norwegians, Welsh, English, Canadian, French and Chinese. These people, mostly peasants and artisans, have not represented the average intelligence of their respective nationalities. But they have suddenly transformed our villages into cities and our wilderness into farms. These men, numbering millions, never voted at home. But here for the first time, they have been gifted with the ballot, often before they could read our newspapers or speak our language. In our Southern States a still more sudden change has taken place. Eight hundred thousand ignorant Plantation slaves have been enfranchised and made voters in a single year. The result, in many localities, is a political revolution. In South Carolina, for instance, the white voters are said to number 40000, the black voters 9000. Now if this vast number of ignorantvoters, North and South, were equally mingled in the two great parties and led by the intelligent majority, the evil would be less than it is. But unfortunately the more ignorant class is largely segregated and organized as Democrats in the North and as Republicans in the South, under shrewd but unscrupulous leaders. Another great series of influences, which has lately come into play, aggravates the downward tendency. War always demoralizes; and the great War of 1861 has demoralized the nation. A national debt tends to enrich the wealthy and pauperize the poor; and the legacy of the War was a national debt of three thousand million dollars. A depreciated currency stimulates speculation and converts even legitimate business into gambling; and our currency has been and continues to be depreciated. A protective tariff builds up huge manufacturing monopolies and aggregates population in squalid masses, dependent upon their daily labor for a precarious sustenance; and a protective tariff is imposed. Thus, written in a single generation, the new world is brought face to face with many of the terrible, unsolved problems which threaten the life of European civilization. Now what shall we do about it? How shall we cope with these stern facts? How shall we redeem the future of the great Republic? Only by enlisting all the virtue, all the intelligence, all the patriotism of the nation in a struggle with the vice, and ignorance, and selfishness of the nation. In short, only by enlisting the interest of the whole American people in political questions, to a greater extent than ever before. We must somehow arouse the community to habitual thought and action on political topics. Fortunately it is the permanent interest of most people to have good laws,economical administration, and honest public servants. When office holders steal, their constituents have to foot the bills. To secure a just verdict we must first secure an impartial jury. Such a jury only an extended Suffrage can supply. And the greatest of all political problems is how best to enlist public interest in the intelligent criticism of public affairs. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." While absorbed in a struggle with Southern slavery we have ourselves become insensibly enslaved. To-day our government is republican only in form In every ward, in every town, we are governed by cliques of trading politicians through the machinery of parties. The nominations are made by less than five percent of the voters, assembled in the primary meetings. Now who are the men who compose these primaries? Go and see. The "managers" are there; men who have axes to grind. Their tools are there; men who are "the slaves of the ring". The floating population are there; the men who lounge on sidewalks and haunt saloons "drop in" as a pastime. When the meeting is called to order a ticket, usually distributed on printed slips is "nominated by acclamation". In ten minutes the caucus is adjourned. This ticket was carefully prepared, in advance of the caucus, by a little, self constituted clique of politicians, in a private parlor or barroom from which the public are jealously excluded. Half a dozen men, known only to their immediate followers, have settled the nominations for 5000 voters! But suppose men of public spirit attend the primary meeting as a protest against this caucus behind the caucus, this wheel within the wheel? They are contemptuously silenced. They are powerless. "The ring" has money and offices at its command. When election day comes, only from 30 to 60 percent of the qualified voters vote. In many localities less than 60 percent of the voters took parteven in the Presidential election; in other words, only sixty men out of a hundred cared enough whether Grant or Greeley should be the next President to go to the polls. It may be said that if our present political evils are so largely the result of male ignorance manipulated by cunning, the addition of an equal number of still more ignorant female voters will only make bad matters worse. But in the first place our female population is much more largely native American, or in other words is more generally educated. To prove this we need only to refer to the statistics of immigration which show a very great and constant preponderance of male immigrants. This preponderance reaches its maximum in the case of Chinese who are almost without exception, males. In the second place the grossly ignorant and vicious class are everywhere [in] the minority. Even if, by woman suffrage we should double the votes of this class, we shall also double the votes of the intelligent majority and thereby largely diminish the relative political power of ignorance and largely increase the relative political power of intelligence. Thus if 2000 out of 5000 voters are dangerous there is only an intelligent majority of 1000, but if 4000 out of 10000 voters are dangerous there is an intelligent majority of 2000 and the danger is reduced one half. And in the third place our chief danger has been shown to lie not ignorance but in indifference and this indifference will be vastly lessened when political ideas and interests are brought into the domestic circle and made a subject of family consideration. To call our present political system "a government of the people" is absurd. The only remedy is to attract the people to the primary meetings in sufficient numbers to check and overawe the "rings". To reform politics we mustfirst reform the caucuses. To day the men of intellect and character do not, ass a rule attend them. Such men are too busy and too much absorbed in social engagements. They go with their wives and sisters to church meetings, concerts, lectures, and social parties. They associate with ladies at home and abroad. These women expect their society and would feel disappointed at their absence. The presence of such men in political meetings can be secured in only one way, viz: by enlisting the social sympathy and cooperation of women in such meetings. Where the women go the men will go. Men of refinement will take little interest in the practical work of politics so long as women are excluded. Because society is civilized, while politics are still semi-barbarous. Women are in society; women are the life of our churches and schools, of our charities and reforms; they should be the life of our politics also. What God has joined together let not man put asunder." But until men and women go together to the primary meetings, these meetings these meetings will continue small in numbers, sordid in tone, poor in character and corrupt in management. Real political reform must begin by a reform in our caucus system. And in order to reform the caucus we must open its doors to men and women. In Impartial Suffrage irrespective of sex lies the only salvation of American politics. When, Therefore, a great State like Michigan, exceptionally prosperous, exceptionally intelligent, exceptionally well circumstanced for testing this broader application of the principles of representative government, proposes to establish Impartial Suffrage for women, this proposition deserves the sympathy and support of every friend of enlightened liberty and political reform. In view of the necessity of radical political reform,will not the Nation bid it God-speed? Instead of conjuring up phantoms of terror and suggesting forebodings of disaster will it not give the movement a generous support, and await the results of the great experiment with friendly and hopeful cordiality. H.B.B. Woman's Journal, Jan. 9, 1909 p. 6 Daybreak in Turkey One of the most cheering manifestations of the movement for women's equality is taking place in the Turkish Empire, wherein, for many centuries, women have been denied education and kept in a condition of forced seclusion and ignorance. Five hundred years ago, Islam swept over the degenerate relics of a corrupt form of Christianity, and threatened to subjugate Europe, actually laying siege to Vienna in 1529. The Ottoman Empire then included large parts of the States bordering on the Mediterranean, Spain, Northern Africa, Egypt, the coast of the Black and Red Seas, Arabia, Asia Minor, Persia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece. But, although triumphant in military prowess, and unified by unquestioning religious zeal, Islam proved a social failure, becauseit placed its women in a position of hopeless inferiority. Under Moslem rule, even the conquered races adopted much of its barbarous contempt for the female sex; their education was forbidden, and in some cases even the veiling of the face was adopted. ----But modern missions in Turkey have done wonders. They have not been able to convince Mohammedans that Mahomet was a false prophet, or that Jesus Christ is God; but they have shown the Turks the value of an educated womanhood to itself, to the family, and to society. In the recent uprising of the "young Turks," women have taken an active part; they have shared in the toils and dangers of political conspiracy, and have co-operated heroically with their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons in their demand for free institutions and constitutional liberty. ... A century hence Islam will have ceased to inculcate and enforce the illiteracy of its women. A few belated individuals there, as here, will cling to enforced seclusion in the harem, just as our Antis continue to preach and teach the subjection of wives, the supremacy of husbands, and the disfranchisement of female citizens. But the day of woman's emancipation has dawned, even in Turkey. A woman's rights movement is already in active operation there. The benighted Orient is about to break the chains of religious bigotry, and to bid its oppressed womanhood go free. H.B.B.Woman's Journal, Feb. 6, 1909 p. 22 Unmarried Women Appreciated. The striking phrase "race suicide", invented by President Roosevelt to emphasize the importance of marriage and parentage as a social ideal, may possible have proved useful in some cases, where conditions of domestic happiness were suitable and encouragement was needed. But it has also been harmful as encouraging hasty and injudicious unions, where material and moral adaptations were lacking, and has tended to intensify a narrow popular prejudice, which regards an unmarried life, especially for women, as necessarily a failure. On this, as on most other social questions, there is another side which needs to be considered. We are glad that President-elect Taft has given it expression. In an address to the women students of the Georgia State Normal School at Atlanta, a few days ago, he said to the prospective women teachers: "I hope that you will not regard matrimony as necessary. I think that the secret of most domestic infelicity is in the fact that young women think that unless they are married their lives are not a success. As a matter of fact, I think the reverse is often true." He called to mind the sweet self-sacrificing maiden aunts he had known, and boldly expressed his disbelief that "all such women would have been better off if they had married". In this connection it is a fact worthy of consideration that in the more civilized and progressive communities, for thousands of years, celibacy has been regarded as a condition of the highest possible human life. Even in Pagan Rome, the "Vestal Virgins" were objects of popular veneration, while in the Catholic type of Christianity, priest and nuns have been and still are pledged to celibacy, as inseparable from a life especially devoted to "religion". Certainly in works of philanthropy, self-sacrifice, and social reform, unmarried women, in modern society have been and are honorable conspicuous and almost indispensable. Success and failure depend mainly on personal character and achievement. No intelligent person would say that Florence Nightingale, Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, Frances Willard, or Jane Addams have been failures! George Washington is deservedly idolized as the "father of his country", although he was not the father of children. The same newspaper which reported Mr. Taft's address, announces the decease, at Ogden, of Lorin Farr, aged 87, one of the founders of Utah, as having been "the husband of seven wives and the progenitor of three hundred children grandchildren and great-grandchildren". Which of the two lives is most worthy of honor? Is Washington or Farr better entitled to be regarded as a success"? H.B.B. Woman's Journal, Mar. 27, 1909 p. 50 For International Peace. When will women and men wake up to the fact that woman suffrage is absolutely needed for the progress of civilization? The primary object of human government is to put moral force above brute force; in other words, to keep the peace between individuals and nations. War has been, ever since the dawn of history, the great chronic curse of the world. It is so to-day. It is and ever has been the underlying cause of poverty, ignorance, intemperance, vice, and crime. Yet, notwithstanding arbitration treaties and international peace conferences, militarism has never been more rampant than now. In no previous period were such enormous sums extracted from the hard earnings of labor, to be wasted in payment of war indebtedness already incurred, and in preparation for bloody conflicts present or prospective. Our government andall governments are making most costly provision for killing and destroying their neighbors as effectively as possible. Army, navy, fortifications and pensions will, within this single year, eat up seven hundred million dollars in the United States alone, which is more than seven dollars for every man, woman, and child in America. All this in a period of international peace, without any likelihood of war, unless it be of our own making. Only to-day we read of a British panic and a costly struggle impending between England and Germany; the former to maintain her maritime armed supremacy; the latter to wrest from her rival the long-established control of the ocean. These two leading nations of the old world, nominally civilized and Christian, intimately related in race, language and religion, are literrally reducing the masses of their peoples to poverty in order to resist an imaginary conspiracy against each other. Why this suicidal chin[???]? Because neither country has a government representing its entire people. Because each is an aristocracy of sex, wherein the belligerent and acquisitive instincts of the male human being rule supreme, while the mother element is denied any effective share in its councils. A government by men alone never did and never will keep the peace. So long as the home is deprived of its equal representation, women and children will go to the wall. This is not rhetoric, but fact, and until that fact is ended war will continue to prevail, with poverty, ignorance, intemperance, vice, and crime as its inevitable results. The United States is more secure against aggression than any other nation. Possessor of a continental area, bounded by the oceans, and two friendly republics, she is undisputed mistress of the western hemisphere. There are five great powers, and three of whose present armed fleets,combined, would outweigh all others. Why should not these five powers enter into a friendly alliance to police the oceans? Let the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan, each agree to keep its relative naval strength unchanged, or to build only a certain number of battleships of specified dimensions within the next three years. These limitations would save each nation hundreds of millions of needless outlay, and would lift the burden of taxation from the toiling workers of the world. Why should not the United States take the lead in proposing a naval alliance for international peace. H.G.B.