Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 4B

4. John James Ingalls, “The Sixteenth Amendment,” Forum (September 1887): 1-13.

Argument against women’s suffrage on the basis that voting is not a natural right but rather a privilege granted by the government to citizens who are apt to use it wisely. The article concludes with this statement. “Social and political institutions are a growth and development to meet the requirements of some antecedent and pre-existing aspirations of the human soul. Whenever woman wants the ballot and society needs her enfranchisement, then the sixteenth amendment will be adopted. Till then they labor in vain that build it. There is no legislation that can annul the ordinances of nature, or abrogate the statutes of the Almighty.”