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Welty, "The Need of White Cross Work," 1895
repentance and restoration. Before God they have an equal chance to
repent and reform and they should have the same equal chance
before men.
There must be a mighty campaign of annihilation against this
hoary, unjust and wicked law. The cruelty, tyranny, injustice and wrong
of it must be portrayed before the people until public opinion is
changed and its repeal secured.
3. That there is need for such work as the White Cross proposes
is evident from the fact that women do, in many ways, suffer wrong
and degradation.
There is discrimination against women in legislation, in business,
in commerce, in the trades, in the shops, in civil service, in many
schools and colleges and everywhere in matters of work and wages.
Men still arrogate to themselves the legislative function, and this is
the prime cause for all unjust and unequal discrimination against
women. They that do not have equal rights and privileges in political
matters must suffer wrong and submit to limitations in many other
places and in many ways. Keep women from the ballot and you debar
them from a thousand other rights and make the path of human
progress an unequal one. Continue to exclude them from legislative
halls and they will be just so long handicapped in every other
department of political and industrial life. It is more that we dare expect
of human nature that one sex can or will wisely, justly, impartially and
fully legislate for the other sex. Men in the past and up to the present
time in all their legislation in matters concerning the sexes, have
uniformly discriminated against women and no doubt will continue to
so discriminate as long as they are the sole law makers. "Because of
the hardness of their hearts" it has been so. The best for each, for the
men and for the women, for society also, and the State, can be
reached only when women as well as men shall have a voice and vote
in the making of the laws that govern either or both.
Reward in the matter of wages has ever been and is to-day a
grievous wrong against women. Poverty is the enemy of virtue, and
women in poverty are doubly tempted. But there will be, there can be,
no correction of this crying injustice until women can vote and have
their votes counted. There can be no uplift for mankind to the highest
and best until womankind is fully emancipated. The sexes must rise
together and at equal pace, and with equal political rights, or they shall
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