Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity are words of real meaning

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane November 17, 1894.

Chivalry a dream of the past.

The arguments used years ago against manhood suffrage, and which are now being trotted forth and used against womanhood suffrages, when dispassionately analysed are simply cold blooded, brutal, Conservatism of the meanest order. Sanguine indeed are those who expect such a measure as is now before the Queensland Assembly to be passed by the present chain gang Government, who make no presence of legislating for the people, and to whom the word Justice is but an empty sound. Mr. Dalrymple, whose conceit sometimes over whelms his prudence, has taken upon himself the part of “opposer-in-chief,” airing his eloquences in bitter denunciation of woman's rights. He asserts that “to give woman a vote would, at once increase clerical influence,” and in the same breadth he declares “ it would strain family relations.” Now both of these assertions cannot be right, for surely under the moral influence of the Church the marriage tie and family relations would be strengthened. However, the talk of “clerical influence” does not come well from Mr. Dalrymple, who has blindly supported the present the present Ministry and made his own convictions sub-servient to Nelson's influence. It is but pitiable hypocrisy on his part to deny women the right to vote because they might do exactly what he has done.

He also says “to enfranchise women would do away with the chivalry of men towards women.” and that “women would no longer get the privileges which men now accorded them as the weaker sex.” As far as chivalry goes, it is but a dream of the pass, and, if it ever did exist, the industrial struggle has very effectually killed it, for the only privileges I can find extended to the majority of women nowadays who have to earn their own living is to work at starvation wages or be but the playthings of men. Women, because she is voteless, is the thoroughly neglected portion of humanity. It is necessary therefore that the men of the colony should take an active interest in this great question of women suffrage, and prove at the next elections that the terms Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity are words of real meaning. The influence of an economically enslaved sex must be bad. “If the mother is a slave can the children be born free?” Men of Queensland, be just, and help women to reach her proper sphere, and take her place as the helpmate, equal, and companion of man. It is the most selfish of all crimes to quietly submit to injustice, and if some women apparently do so it's only the result of ignorance and despair. Give her but a whiff of the fresh air of freedom and she will no longer submit to slavery and degradation. Democrats can never obtain industrial equality whilst acquiescing, by inaction, in the slavery of one half of the human race. Walt Whitman writes in his “Democratic Vistas” “that the sole avenue and means to a reconstructed society depended primarily on a new birth, elevation, expansion, and invigoration of women.”

Amy A. P.