There was once a notion that the men who had knowledge, and experience, and strength, should think for and act for those who had not; in short, that those who were strong should protect and care for the weak. The father in some countries--not all--yet does pursue this plan; he is head and master of his household, and is expected to know how to act and what to do better than his boys and girls.
We have exploded that idea. Under this "best government upon which the sun ever shone," we have made discoveries. We find that children know what _they_ want better than their fathers; that women are really stronger than men, have larger brains, more sense, more heart, and more purity; and that when women and children both vote (mistress Biddy too) the world will go right--for they--the pure, the honest--_will_ "holler out gee!"
This old paternal or family government was a _despotism_, tempered with love, to be sure, but a despotism not to be tolerated in an enlightened age. Shovel it out, shovel it out!
It is a sad fact that children now, while wiser and purer than their fathers, are not physically quite so strong. But it is found that the pistol puts the holders upon a _perfect equality_, and that is the thing to be aimed at. The redress of the weak is therefore in the pistol, which I expect to see in every child's pocket soon. The tyrant man will then be degraded to his place. With women voting, and children holding pistols, men and fathers will be pulled down from the pedestal they have usurped so long.
We know that women have more virtue than men (?), and that children have more purity, and therefore, knowing well the "good, the true, and the beautiful," they must and shall govern the land. They shall be tyrannized no longer.
And so, as New England has cut into old England, and has set her own machinery and steam to work making many things cheaper than old England can make them, and bids fair to starve out some of her garrisons of workers, just in the same way have Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, and Chicago taken it into their heads to set their machinery and steam to work; and now torrents of hats, and shoes, and woollens, and cottons, and clothing, and furniture, and stoves, and pots are pouring out of those nests of industry, so that even they are beginning to cry out, "Why don't you buy what we want to sell, and thus make _us_ rich?"