The real merits of the question are of much greater significance than is generally supposed, even by those who raise it.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
gutenberg.org
The welfare and the individual rights of three-fourths of the people are at stake.
That such conditions can exist and really increase in power and importance, so that they can virtually control legislation, gives evidence that principles are operative that do not promote the interests of the entire people.
It is in certain protections and guarantees that law extends to individuals, which permit them to have an advantage over those with whom they sustain the relations of society.
These laws arise out of false conceptions of the principles of common equality and economy, which pertain to man as a common fraternity.
In legislation, which first allows and then fosters such departures, then, must the point at which reform should begin be sought.
Any attempt to teach the general mind can have no practical effect, unless, finally, the result of the teachings express themselves through legislation.
Legislation presupposes legislators, and to have the right kind of legislators involves the necessity of the laboring classes giving sufficient time and attention to the matter of nominations and elections to insure that those who will…
Although the remedy for all the laborer’s ills must be sought through legislation, there are, nevertheless, many fallacies still received, even by the laborer, that have the direct tendency to degrade labor and to elevate the position of…
One of the principal of these is a false monetary basis, a false representative standard of values, which is arbitrarily imposed upon the people, with no positive and absolute value within itself, except that which such arbitrary law gives…
It does not matter how this plain statement may be twisted and bent by the alluring sophistries and glittering generalities of the protectionist; a plain statement, viewed with clear light, needs no authoritative sanction to determine its…
Charity, with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a multitude of sins.