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That accident may throw her into this outer circle is of course true, but
it is not her natural habitat, nor is she fitted by nature to live and cir-
culate freely there. We underestimate too, the kind of experience which
is essential for intelligent citizenship in this outer circle. To know
what is wise and needed there one should circulate in it. The man at
his labor in the street, in the meeting places of men, learns unconsciously
as a rule, the code, the meaning, the need of public affairs as woman
learns those of private affairs. What it all amounts to is that the labor
of the world is naturally divided between the two different beings that
people the world. It is unfair to the woman that she be asked to do
the work of the outer circle. The man can do that satisfactorily if she
does her part, that is if she prepares him the material. Certainly, he
can never come into the inner circle and do her work.
EQUALITY NOT LIKENESS.
    “The idea that there is a kind of inequality for a woman in minding
her own business and letting man do the same, comes from our con-
fused and rather stupid notion of the meaning of equality. Popularly
we have come to regard being alike as being equal. We prove equality
by wearing the same kind of clothes, studying the same books, regard-
less of nature or capacity or future life. Insisting that women do the
same things that men do may make two exteriorly more alike—-it
does not make them more equal. Men and women are widely apart
in functions and in possibilities. They cannot be made equal by exterior
devices like trousers, ballots, the study of Greek. The effort to make
them so is much more likely to make them unequal. One only comes
to his highest power by following unconsciously and joyfully his own
nature. You run the risk of destroying the capacity for equality when
you attempt to make one human being like another human being.”
    All evidence proves that the adoption of woman suffrage brings into
evidence the bold, obtrusive woman whose conduct cheapens the sex
and deprives all women of a portion of the chivalry and respect which
are their birthright.
    Marie Corelli has well said:
    “If woman would impress man with an abiding sense of her moral
and mental power and with the purity of her intellectual influence
upon the time, she must begin to teach him in the nursery and school
room and not at the polling booth.”

OUR PROTEST
    In conclusion we, American women, citizens of the State of Oregon,
protest against the proposal to impose the obligation of suffrage upon
the women of this State, for the following, among other reasons:
    1. Because suffrage is to be regarded not as a privilege to be
enjoyed, but as a duty to be performed.