The heroines and the prophets were going to be replaced, he believed, by
leaders much more practical and less scrupulous, and the movement would
follow the leaders. As far as polities went, he not only looked for no
millennium, but for a reaction in the other direction. There'd be more
open graft, he thought.
Rose asked him if he meant that he thought women were less honest than
men.
"It isn't a lack of old-fashioned honesty that makes a man a grafter,"
he said. "It's seeing the duties and privileges of a public office in a
private and personal way, instead of in a public, impersonal one; being
kind to old friends who need a helping hand, and grateful to people
who've held out helping hands to you. Well, and women have been trained
for hundreds of years to see things in that private and personal way,
and to exalt the private and personal virtues. Just as they've been
trained to stick to rule of thumb methods that more or less work, rather
than to try experiments. So, on the whole, I think their getting the
vote will mean that politics will be crookeder and more reactionary than
they've been in a good many years.
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