Rochester Evening Express, Editorial

Woman Suffrage in the Legislatures 

The activity of the advocates of female suffrage is in no degree abating, but rather on the increase. It is probable that very few comprehend the measure of this activity, and the broad fields on which it is being displayed. Not only the ignorant and vulgar, but many comparatively well informed people probably suppose that the advocacy of woman’s claim to the suffrage is confined to a few able but erratic women, who are agitating the subject to acquire notoriety. Whether friendly or averse to the movement, the quicker one disabuses his mind of that notion the better for his side of the case. Not only do many of our most influential divines and literary men rank among the friends of the movement, but, also, what gives promise to its advocates of speedy success, many of our legislators and politicians. The subject has been brought to the attention of nearly every Northern Legislature in the Union. . . . Some of the Legislatures have only given a hearing and taken no action. Others have referred the matter to special committees to report, some of which have reported favorably. In Iowa a constitutional amendment, giving women the right to vote, passed one House of the Legislature, and failed in the other House by only a few votes. In this State, even, a suffrage bill was referred to a committee, and the committee reported in its favor, but no action was taken on their report. It will thus be seen that while some, as Miss Anthony and others, are claiming the ballot on the broad ground of Constitutional right, they with associates of both sexes are at the same time urging, and in some places have the prospect of securing, specific legislation giving the right to vote to women. 

The cases of alleged illegal voting on the part of women in this city, afford an opportunity which the leaders of the movement very much desired, to test the constitutionality and legality of their cause in the courts. It is not probable that the framers of the Constitutional Amendments, under which the ladies claim authority to vote, dreamed of the loop hole they left for the admission of this novel claim, but their work is done, perfectly or imperfectly, as we may choose to regard it, and there appears to many eminent legal minds a door in these amendments wide enough to admit woman in full dress, to both the passive and potent rights of citizenship. Of the consequences of this admission we have nothing to say. Arguing the case abstractly with a keen advocate of the movement, there is no chance for the negative. In such a discussion Miss Anthony could courteously close the mouth of the sharpest lawyer in Rochester in ten minutes. What the results may be is another matter.