"
These motives may not be generous; but the schoolhouses, when they are
built, are just as useful. Even girls get the benefit of them, though the
long delay in many places before girls got their share came in part from
the want of this obvious stimulus. It is universal male suffrage that
guarantees schoolhouse and school. The most selfish man understands that
argument: "We must educate the masses, if it is only to keep them from our
throats."
But there is a wider way in which suffrage guarantees education. At every
election time political information is poured upon the whole voting
community till it is deluged. Presses run night and day to print newspaper
extras; clerks sit up all night to send out congressional speeches; the
most eloquent men in the community expound the most difficult matters to
the ignorant. Of course each party affords only its own point of view; but
every man has a neighbor who is put under treatment by some other party,
and who is constantly attacking all who will listen to his provoking and
pestilent counter-statements. All the common school education of the United
States does not equal the education of election day; and as in some States
elections are held very often, this popular university seems to be kept in
session almost the whole year round. The consequence is a remarkable
average popular knowledge of political affairs,--a training which American
women now miss, but which will come to them with the ballot.
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