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Show cans and have a deep and abiding interest in the welfare of this country. . To all such we would give the franchise There are many more who," -when they vote,, use no more' intelligence in voting than would the clog who follows them to the polls. These we would strike the privilege from. .-. '. . In the North there are thousands of . ignorant men in the same position. Tn addition there are thousands and tens of thousands of corrupt scoundrels scoun-drels who, when they cast a ballot, have no thought if it is going to be to the best interest of the eountry or not. -.From all such we would withdraw the privilege privi-lege of voting. '.. When we say "ignorant men'' we mean it in a double sense. " We mean ignorant of books and ig-' norant of the principles on' which our country rests. We have seen many a man, who could not read or ! write, whoT made a first-class voter, because he was ready at his country's calTto lay down his life if need be for her welfare. The patriotism in the heart of such a man is what enables him to cast an intelli- gent vote, for has heart goes with it, and the good God, who is keeping watch, measures the wish in all such hearts" and nfakes "that-wish effective.."- ' In the; same Way there are many ignorant and careless women,' who are not 'worthy to vote, but the proportion of them is less than among men, and hence, our judgment is that while there is indiscriminate indiscrimi-nate voting among men, there should be indiscriminate indiscrimi-nate voting among women, and that the new tests which ought to be made to establish whether a person per-son is a competent voter or not, should apply to men and women alike. ' ;' -- -" '- There have been thousands and tens of thousands thou-sands of foreigners who have obtained naturalization papers wrongfully. -They have sworn in court that they are devoted to the interests of this country and its institutions, when in truth they know nothing about this eountry or its institutions. There ought to be very much more care taken by the courts in naturalizing foreigners." "The law makes a' certain term of residence necessary in this country before a foreigner can- obtain citizen ' papers. We would change that. We would give an Irishman naturalization naturali-zation papers in a year. We would keep.them away from the Englishmen as long as they are kept away from Americans before they can vote, that is 21 years, because an Englishman that comes to this country, as a rule, if he has reached the voting age, does not believe there is any other country on earth except" England and no other Government on earth that is worth a cent except the British Government, and it takes him about twenty-one years to outgrow that, if he ever does. Really what we need is this: "We would not permit Courts to naturalize foreigners. "We would have commissions in every State and we would fix the law so that if a man applied for naturalization papers, we would have him questioned, and if he could tell nothing about the history of this country or the differences between parties that is, if he showed he was ignorant of all that constitutes a thorough American, we would send him out and tell him to come back in one year or two years, or not to come until he could give a reason why he wanted to be an American and wanted to cast a ballot in this country. "We would have the same rule applied to men and women alike, without distinction distinc-tion of sex. j In point of actual practice the presence of women wom-en at the poils has a civilizing effect. If there is a brawler about the polling place that a man could not still with a club, the presence of a true woman makes him, for the time being at least, respectful and decent. ' When men flock by themselves without the presence of true women about them, no matter if they are from the best families in the world, in a little while a large proportiow of them become reckless reck-less and do things that they would be ashamed to do in the society in which they were raised. In this same way around the voting place when only men are present: the lawless, the savage and the blatherskite lhave their way and they grow still when a true woman comes to the polls. ( . The general rule is that a woman who is fit to become a mother of men and to guide a household, is not only fitted but perfectly entitled to have her say in the government of this country, much more than the loafer, who, by a false oath has obtained the right from the court to have his vote count for just as much as does that of Theodore Roosevelt or Grover Cleveland. WOMAN SUFFRAGE. In the editorial part of the current North 'American Reivew, the editor devotes some space to the interest of woman suffrage. It seems to us that that subject has been discussed dis-cussed enough. The thought that women ought not to vote was a thought born out of ancient prejudice, and the assumption, expressed or understood, that a creature who is not physically competent to be a soldier is not mentally competent to understand and intelligently vote on public questions. ' The experience of those States which have adopted adopt-ed woman suffrage gives a lie to all that. It has been found that a great many women in these States do not intelligently vote, but the proportion of women who fail in that respect is very much less than among 'their male- friends. Our own belief is that the two essentials that make a good voter, be that voter man or woman, are intelligence and patriotism. patriot-ism. Our own idea is that the franchise is shame- ' fully abused in the United States, that there are thousands and thousands of corrupt men who only prize the right to vote as a means to make a little money on election day. That another great class of Americans, native and naturalized, are not -fit to cast a ballot, because they have never taken the trouble to try to understand the principles on which our Government was founded, or their own obligations obliga-tions to the Government Hence, we would be glad if there were-some further tests made before the privilege of franchise is given to men. For it is but a privilege and it is!the right of the Statt'to designate to whbmthaF privilege shall be entrusted. In the South there are many ignorant colored r en and white men. Some of these are true Aaeri- |
