Give Women the Vote So They Can Help Improve the Public Sphere, 1936

From the December 1936 issue of The Southern Planter’s “Farmers’ Forum”

“The place of woman,” cries the opponent of her advance, “is in the home.” But the true sphere of woman, like the true sphere of man, is the place here real constructive work is to be done, whether it be in the home or in the workshop.

In primitive society, women were confined almost entirely at home by the bearing and rearing or too large families, but society has advanced to the point of demanding quality before quantity. “It is far more essential, maintains the modern philosopher, “that we bring up a few children well, than bring into the world a great mass of humanity to maintain a precarious existence.”

Nevertheless, the woman is still rightly engaged, and will be engaged unto the end of time, in the proper rearing of the next generation, but her home duties make her only more competent for the transation of public services.

Where the opportunity to express opinions on public questions—the opportunity to vote has been given to women—they have found and utilized wide opportunities for public services. For instance, the woman of Colorado have had the privilege of voting since 1894, and in that time they have procured certain advanced types of legislature for the protection of women and children, for social reform, and for municipal reform. In Washington, undesirable men were holding office, and in Colorado a desirable man was running for office against fearful odds. In both cases the votes of women turned the tide for democracy, incidents which prove beyond a doubt that the franchise has given women vast opportunities for public service.

It is true that men have constructed modern, cooperative society. They have built the house of politics, but they have left it littered with trash and rubbish. Graft lies about thick as dust. Bad water, adulterated child labor, antiquated penal codes, vice and debauchery in public affairs are all the results of unrestricted masculine dominance of social institutions. In the home, women have proved by centuries of conclusive experiments that they understood best the methods of keeping things clean and tidy. The city and state, as well as the home, need cleaning, and it is in this field that woman has a wonderful opportunity for social service.

Therefore, women hold a most important place in public life by their choice of paternal parents for their children, by the bearing and rearing and teaching of children, by their control of the home, and of the purse strings of the nation, and by their marvelous ability as house cleaners of civilization. Racially, socially, individually, and politically women play a part upon which the nation is intimately dependent for its future citizens, and its future society.

                --Mrs. W.C. Cox, Onslow County, North Carolina