Wifehood and motherhood 'incidental relations.' They are incidental! Incidental not only to the continuance of the race in civilization, but to all that is best and holiest in that continuance. The mothers of the Rebellion say: "The love of offspring, common to all orders of women and all forms of animal life, tender and beautiful as it is, cannot as a sentiment rank with conjugal love. The one calls out only the negative virtues that belong to the apathetic classes, such as patience, endurance, self-sacrifice, exhausting the brain forces, ever giving, asking nothing in return; the other, the outgrowth of the two supreme powers in nature, the positive and negative magnetism, the centrifugal and centripetal forces, the masculine and feminine elements, possessing the divine power of creation in the universe of thought and action. Two pure souls fused into one by an impassioned love. This is marriage, and this is the only corner-stone of an enduring home."
The "homes" built solely upon this cornerstone have not endured in this country. The children born under such principles are taken care of by the "Community" in a building apart from that occupied by the "pure souls." The "institutional" bringing up of children was lately advocated in this city by Mrs. Stanton Blatch at Suffrage meetings.
The virtues that the Suffrage leaders denounce as "apathetic" are those that Christ signalized as the heavenly virtues, and are those which heroes emulate, whether they be women or men.
Dr. Jacobi says the Suffrage movement, "aims only to regulate and define the revolution already effected, and which leaves the family intact." I think it has been proven from words and acts that it does aim at just such a "sexual revolution" as threatens the family with dissolution. It aimed to accomplish this by every means in its power, by an industrialism which it desired should make woman independent of man, by divorce laws, and by the use of the ballot. Who has shorn man of all his portentous rights? Man himself, through the influence of woman. Is it likely, then, that he was taking steps in the direction of the destruction of his own home? He was endeavoring to build it on those sure foundations that make it what it is. He can build if woman occupies, but he cannot both fight for the home and against it. Circumstances, and not Suffrage cries, have forced or enticed woman into the trades and professions. She has gone farther afield for her work, partly because the Aegis of home is more broadly spread than it formerly could be on account of the very strength of the marriage tie, which makes honor, home, and woman more secure. So far as she has gone to help the home, and because of love of it, such causes have not hurt the family life, and will not. But when we come to Suffrage we have met a different matter. The vote is not an affair of feeling or opinion, like religious belief. The fact that the men of the family are the natural defenders of law, and the women are not, is seen at close quarters in the home, and in case of opposite votes and any serious resulting action, the father and son must stand in the attitude of actual physical as well as political antagonism to the mother and daughter. If it came to an issue, man would have to decide whether he would defend his own opinion, expressed in his ballot, or the opposite opinion expressed by his wife in her ballot. And the mere suggestion of difference in family opinion, final action upon which could only be taken by a resort to that in which the men must always be superior, would not only endanger family life and peace, but would develop a fatal inequality between the sexes. If the women of the family vote with the men, they only double the vote and the expense, without changing the result; if they vote against the men, they stand in the ridiculous attitude of opposing them where they cannot do more than pull hair, or inviting a revolution which they cannot stay.