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ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Please visualize the gentleman “Occasionally explaining” to Grandmama 15 “Oh, Mr. Blank,” she said, “Do you think women should vote?” 23 For some odd reason the Wholesale Liquor Dealers’ Association doesn't happen to like the idea of female suffrage 34 Before she dares approach the distressing fact that the grocer's bill was fiercer than usual this month. 47 Now and then at...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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7 HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE You are the party aimed at. You who stood on the side-walk and urged passionately that we who marched go home and wash the dishes or mind the baby. Nobody answered you then. To be frank, you didn't say much that sounded worth
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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8 considering; besides, it's not good form for a procession to indulge in acrimony. But don't you think for a moment that the forlorn little corporal's guard marching at the tail end of the first suffrage parade down Fifth Avenue didn't feel acutely every hostile taunt. It takes a good deal better man than I've met yet to face the mirth of a mob...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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9 If you can go back to your kid days and remember how the gang at some time sat in judgment on you and, for alleged failure on your part to shine in the full glory of a budding male, rounded up on you, called you “cry baby,” and callously bade you “go play with the girls,” you'll get a little of the sensation...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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10 frank statement. After a man has lived in the same house with a suffragette for a number of years, he is likely to have a severe disesteem for all forms of excuse or apology. Some one said once: “It's far more important that a man make good than be good, and this applies with special force to husbands.” You can safely add that...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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11 the world than her grandmother ever let on to have had. Grandmother had it pounded into her, from the cradle to the finishing-school, that it would be money out of her pocket if she ever confessed to knowledge of any human mystery deeper than the compounding of custard-pie. Here, by way of proof, is a quotation from a time-honored volume pertaining to women:...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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12 of her heart; but all criticism beyond this sits awkwardly upon her. She should, by habit, form her mind to the noble and pathetic, and she should have an acquaintance with the fine arts because they enrich and beautify the imagination; but she should carefully keep them out of view in the shape of learning and let them run through the easy vein...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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13 accompanied it with one of those nice little, old-fashioned, lace-edged valentine letters, every word of which breathed his ardent and reverential devotion to grandmama. Wasn't the editor grand? Can you see grandmama sitting at home alone, carefully cultivation the noble and pathetic, while grandpa hooted around town nights with the boys, finding the noble and pathetic utterly unnecessary in his business? And that...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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14 immaterial proposition and fondly hoping that he is successfully diverting grandmama's mind from some of the basic facts of life? There is still extant an extremely lovely daguerreotype of grandmama, ætat twenty-two, at the time of the presentation of the book; and, looking into the beautiful young face, sparkling with intelligence, you are almost tempted to think that possibly grandmama knew a thing...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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17 one of the big colleges for girls, she is likely to know just as much about art as her gentleman friend. She talks some before she is married, and more afterward, and she talks very much to the point. Mr. Husband has got to be prepared to stand the gaff, and if he is indiscreet enough to com weaving in at three G....
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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18 his moral nature. He had better trust for protection to the fact that he has at one time rowed a boat or lifted weights—if it comes to actual physical violence; because if he starts to duck he is liable to get something for contempt of court. So you can put it down as the first mile-stone to observe on the road to being...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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19 up your “nights out” a trifle at times. Getting a suffragette for a wife is no different from obtaining any other kind of a wife. The formula is the same in both cases. There's a certain excitement, though, in the fact that you don't always know she is going to be a suffragette until after you have got her. But that, happily, is...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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20 to you, if you sit up with her long enough. Personally, we—I and mine—fell into suffrage together and practically made only one splash; but it was long after we were married. You notice that I said mine . I meant it. Sharing some common things in common doesn't necessarily prevent the lady from being all yours. We had been at a nice little...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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21 came accompanied by a rarely beautiful wife, and her efforts during the evening to have husband jump through the hoop and lie down and roll over and play dead were pathetic. Something had gone wrong business-wise during the day, and Melancholia had claimed him for her own. He would do nothing but grunt and grump. After dinner, when all were comfortable in the...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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22 and the hostess said her sweetest coo: “Oh, Mr. Blank, do you think women should vote?” And in a voice that carried more grouch than any previous grunt during the evening, he answered: “Of course I do, course I do; and if they hadn't been such damn fools, they would have been doing it long ago.” On the way to the station the...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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25 of a station hack. It was so sudden that, I am ashamed to confess, I dived in the hope of avoiding it. I went down like a mud-hen, deep enough, as I trusted, to let an ocean liner go over my head. When I came up there was the same old question with both barrels trained full on me. Did I believe that...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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26 blend of old cartoons, funny men's paragraphs, and an occasional squint at a set of spit curls on an elderly dame who seemed to be discontented with something? I held my breath for half a minute and thought so hard that I could almost hear my mental processes. “Yes,” I said, “I do believe they should vote.” “Why?” asked the silent partner. Well,...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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27 for all the people of these United States. Then you get down to the proposition: “Are women people? ” I believe they must be, or they wouldn't act the way they do. Besides, it's discouraging to try to argue that women aren't people. After you've done your best, you are likely to wind up by merely proving that you yourself are either a...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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28 believe it, the argument bogs down right there. Then you've got the fact that about fifty per cent. of the population is feminine and that in the minds of the other fifty per cent. they certainly represent, at least half of the sweetness truth, and idealism of the nation. Of course, there may be an odd Schopenhauer here and there who jumps sidewise...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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29 inclined to accept meekly the hereditary intellectual dominance of the male. Lots of good men who have no intellectual objection to women's voting nurse at heart a timidity whenever they visualize the horrible results. You can see it in many a polite, genteel citizen's eye, the moment suffrage talk starts, as if he were wondering just what his own women folks would act...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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30 suffrage states because of suffrage; and logically there is no more reason why two domestic partners who are comrades, mutually acknowledging a pleasant equality, should separate, than there is for the separation of two people of opposite sex who, condemned to live together, are striving diligently to maintain an inequality. And isn't it quaint that the states which have given suffrage to their...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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31 with two guns ought not to be so much afraid of his wife as the man who is afraid of firearms. It is the man whose polite soul cleaves to gentle ways who is most likely to dread the possibility of being surrounded by women whom the law has pronounced his equals. To him the possibilities even of verbal rough-house seem appalling, and...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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32 W. C. T. U., the average woman is quite prone to look on drinking largely as a masculine accomplishment, and as long as it is pursued in reasonable moderation is fairly content to have it that way; that is, she neither clamors for the booze herself nor is she insistent on wholly separating man from it; and you will find that few of...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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37 neck; and even then it is likely to be a measure tending to repress rather than to extirpate. You may think that all of this is irrelevant. You may want more intimate details. But I was asked to tell “how it feels,” and that's what I am trying to tell you—how it feels rather than the daily routine and whether the coffee was...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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38 Mr. Asquith's windows and had to spend the next two years in jail in separate cells; or you may have read in the American press that the distinguished Mrs. Blank, who lives in New York, is delivering a lecture in New Orleans, and immediately your mind conjures up Mr. Blank as a sad-eyed, lonesome, scared-looking tyke, with debilitated side-whiskers, who alternates being neglected...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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39 Personally, I believe that a lady with a well-worn latch-key, who has healthy interests outside her home, is better company than one whose view of life is circumscribed by the four walls that the landlord refused to paper last spring. And that pretty clothes as an incidental habit are cheerier to live with than swell raiment as an engrossing topic of conversation and...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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40 and the politics of China; she understands the workings of the Gutenberg liquor law, and she has gone pretty thoroughly into street-cleaning problems with one of the engineers of the department. She also has time to go on long, lazy fishing trips with me, when we rustle our own grub and forget what day of the week it is. And she drives a...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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41 But you are this far wrong: She is only remarkable in this, that she didn't stop with the “finishing-school,” as so many of them do: she went right on trying to learn things that were worth while, trying to get better acquainted with life, trying to economize the efforts spent in drudgery and utilize the time saved for better things, trying to stop...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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42 eminently correct when he said—speaking of her type of lady—“Her price is above rubies.” You can bet Solomon had a right to know. He perished in a gallant attempt to live with a thousand of the other kind simultaneously, and he surely had opportunities to garner experience that you and I are bound to pray will be forever denied us. About the hypnosis—oh,...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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43 The fact that she asks for her place in the world as a human being usually indicates a consciousness of ability on her part. And, having declared this consciousness to others, if she is any kind of a woman at all she is in honor bound to try to make good on the ability in her own home. I will confess right here—and...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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44 whether my wife would let me wash them if I did. She values the dishes too highly: they are safer in the hands of a well-trained maid. I'll make one exception. When we go camping I do it, Just as I usually do the long end of the cooking; but that's because I can do things out of doors better than she can,...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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45 and a brass palm I arrogate to myself. We share our family finances: she has her own income, bank accounts, and investments, quite independent of me. All you've got to do is to translate that into masculine terms to find out how it works. Which friend do you enjoy more—the one who is constantly coming to you begging for small sums of money...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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46 money; but lots of men who regard themselves as good spenders, and who fancy themselves as enjoying the special beneficence of that Higher Power who is credited with loving a cheerful giver, keep their wives on what amounts to a domestic bread-line, and remain blandly unconscious of the fact. “Economic independence” is one of the watchwords of women nowadays. The lady who has...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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49 this month, hasn't got it. The lady who ALWAYS gives you an extra-good dinner, who only mentions her private finances as an occasion for mirth, and who now and then at odd intervals slides up in a bashful way and asks your help in working out an investment, is economically independent. She has a better time and she advertises it as such. I...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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50 has got to keep house better than any of her women friends who are not suffragettes. She knows that they would guy her if she didn't. She has got to have better-trained help, because she has formally announced that she has executive ability. She has got to be more reasonable with them than any other woman would be, because one of the planks...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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51 of hard-headed, and often hard-handed, men does not break up our home life. I sometimes go out of an evening myself, and I don't always have as much to show for it on my return as she does; nor am I always prepared to talk as interestingly as to where I have been and with whom I have conversed. There is this, however,...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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52 than you really feel like being. There are times when the promptings of the baser nature would lead you to camp down on the sofa immediately after dinner and snore, when you've got to subdue that inclination and sit up and look bright-eyed and be just as near a nice fellow as lies within your power. Otherwise, a certain look will come into...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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53 There is a streak of vanity, or something like it, in most of us male persons that makes us piteously grateful for a kind word now and then. We are more sensitive than we are given credit for being. We all want a word of appreciation occasionally. And when it gradually comes over you that your particular lady, in the course of her...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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54 I suppose those English Militants stick in your crop more or less. But they are running pretty true to form—only their petticoats get in their was now and then. They were not so much rougher than the last people who won the vote in England. You know the men of Bristol broke miles of windows, burned most of the public buildings in town,...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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55 hasn't been in jail any oftener than Saint Peter, and possibly no more than John Bunyan. I once had the pleasure of sitting at dinner in her company. A mild little gentlewoman, sad with the sadness of too much experience with the hard ways of injustice, clever though, and with a most fascinating care-worn little smile flashing at intervals through her talk. Able...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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56 God sends, she sees it—mothering a race. And it's a naughty bad lot of little boys she's trying to bring up. Asquith has told the women things that if he were fifty years younger would get him spanked. And the politicians are tricky, and not always truthful. For sixty long years they've been saying with fat, comfortable, delusive smiles: “Yes, yes, daughter, right...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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57 see them fade into the maze of politics. And Mrs. Pankhurst stood there sadly aloof from all the joy and comradeship, everything that makes life worth living, and said: “Make good on your promises. Stop these lies! Or I will make your life intolerable to you from the ridicule and humiliation heaped on your heads. I can't fight you with muscle. But I...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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58 “I will stop at nothing but harm to human life. In all the turmoil and rioting we shall be the only sufferers.” Is it any wonder that the man who runs England feared her, that thousands followed where she led, that they subscribed seventy-five thousand dollars in a single afternoon? Of course I'm glad my wife hasn't got her job. But then I'm...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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61 in the world's work is bound to make her act mannish, even if she doesn't go to the length of militancy. My experience is that so far as it has been tried out merely makes her act a little more like a gentleman. Of course there will be occasions when a frank difference of opinion between equal partners will get animated. It may...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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62 other and worse occasions when Mrs. Henry Peck hands out the final word to Henry. But, after all, it's only part of the rugged game of life and likely to be a mighty interesting part at that, as any one who has ever chummed with a wise lady will readily admit; and it isn't as black as your fancy would paint it, because,...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
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63 officer has charged you with wife-beating. Of course, if your early training hasn't fitted you for an active life, and you know that, if it comes down to brass tacks, the lady can lick you, you are up against it. All you can do, my brother, is to pray—pray fervently— that suffrage may never come; but with all due regard to Napoleon's remark...
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National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) - Catt, Carrie Chapman
