Show OX ITS MERITS The promised argument against woman wo-man suffrage on its merits was delivered f livered in the convention by Delegate B H Roberts on Friday morning and was admitted by all hearers to be a splenlid oratorical effort This maybe well understood by all who are familiar famil-iar with the gentlemans style of public pub-lic freaking and his attractive gifts of d elamatlon and word painting But a ter all there were in the great orabn no objections but svch as have been met time pnd again and overturned over-turned showing that there was nothing noth-ing in them They were rainbowtinted Bubble that only needed to be touched I with the point of logic or with the gentle breath of sound reason to burst and leave not even a spot of soft roap in view The gentleman is greatly mistaken in supposing that this question has nut been discussed amon the people S of Utah on its merits until now When it was first mooted and placed in the statutes of Utah it was much debated In 1SSO when an endeavor en-deavor was made to eliminate then the-n male fron the law in relation S to tho qualifications of officeholders ruie main question of woman suffrage ws tiinrmieiilv discussed in and out of the legislature It was still further agitated when the proposition for the disfranchisement of women voters was under consideration in Congress and it has been a popular subject of question ques-tion throughout the territory ever I i since the act of 1887 was passed depriving de-priving the women of Utah of tho I I elective franchiseS franchise-S There is nothing that can be said on the question on either side that has not been brought forward and the people of Utah are thoroughly familiar with the subject The gentlemans arguments argu-ments 9 are od straw threshed over S till every particle of the semblance of nutriment has been beaten out of them He has simply woven them into braids of beauty as to form hut wih nothing in them of useful substance The Idea that women will be degraded de-graded by going to the polls with men is dissipated by the facts of experience Why should it be more hurtful to wo mans refinement to go to the ballot box to hand a piece of white paper to an election judge as men do than togo to-go to a theatre or ball or on an cx CUflon or bathe in the lake where men are i 5 l Some ladies who did splendid work at the Worlds Fair had a tiff over somi cf their differences therefore they must not have the ballot Should the men who fought in the Indiana egislature or those who came to blows In the Nebraska Senate be deprived of the ballot But the quarrels of the ladies at Chicago or in any other place were not consequences of woman suffrage for they did not have the elective iranchise The degradation of woman by giving j her the right to vote is the commonest I common-est and most insulting pretence advanced ad-vanced It is in Utah tantamount to branding thousands of our wives mothers and daughters as degraded fur they exercised that right for seventeen seven-teen years Has it degraded them Are they any the worse for their experience ex-perience Have they not respectfully and rationally contended for the return t re-turn of their franchise ever since it was wrested from them Then the claim that women who have the franchise often do not use it is 5 met with the fact that hosts of men who have it do not go to the polls Its It-s the same with every notion advanced ad-vanced against woman suffrage it can be used with equal force if it have any against a very large number of menMan i Man for the field woman for the hearth will do in poetry but it is nothing but a sentiment Man wants to < be at the hearth as well as woman and woman does not want to stay by the hearth all the time any more than jran In the field And if woman must not so to the pulls because her place is at the hearth man must not go to the polls because his place is in the field 15 Ufi3lg The citation of the position of woman in the family with man at her head is fatal to the very argument which the gentleman used it to support Woman has the choice of her head orS or-S ruler if lie pleases to have it so But he would not permit her to have S that choice as to her rulers in the state Women must obey the law and S if they break it are amenable to its penalties the husband father or brother bro-ther cannot take her place She should nae a voice in the making of the S laws which she has to obey and a choice of the men who are to make them and execute them The supposition that only the bad women would go to the polls if women S had the voting power is contrary to experience here and elsewhere and IfS if-S it were true would be offset by the J fact that bad men go to the polls InS in-S large numbers If good women must I not have the ballot because bad women would vote then good men ought not S to have the ballot because bad men vote 5 Thus it was with all the socalled arguments = ar-guments against giving women citizens S S dr s S S u one of the most cherished and valued powers of citizenship They are not reasons There are no reasons against equal suffrage They are prejudices and suppositions The idea that it will degrade women to give them the ballot is destroyed by the truth that it is an advance to man tobe endowed en-dowed with the elective franchise ard therefore it will be a step forward and upward for women That refined moral intellectual pure devotional and sensible women shall continue on a lower political level than the most ignorant depraved and brutal negro is simply shocking to a just and unprejudiced mind and is a disgrace to American institutions 5 We have hope and faith that the men of Utah who now have the pCwer to right this wrong will not falter in their work by pleas of expediency or flights of rhetoric which please the ear but do not convince the mind And that the pledges given by both parties will be held sacred notwithstanding the dishonest special pleading to disregard dis-regard them and betray the trust reposed re-posed in the representatives of the people Give men and women equal political rights and trust to their good sense and honor for the faithful exercise exer-cise of those inestimable privileges |