Re:

"With the right to vote, comes receiving of civil rights, from government. It also means that one must work in order to be eligible to receive a benefit under the national trust."

I disagree that one had to follow the other, V.

The right to vote recognizes that women should have a voice in group decisions regardless of whether they can contribute via "work," not in exchange for work. It was a reasonable response to the admission that some women will not be protected by reasonable men -- as you put it in the last paragraph of your post, "for women who can't find a man." Widows, orphans, cripples, women who marry imperfect men, infertile women, transients pushed out of their homes/tribes by war or famine/drought -- they've always been at risk for being cast off and rendered beggars.

The establishment of taxation for the purpose of funding state hand-outs is a whole separate historical thread, by my reading of it. Seeds were planted by Teddy Roosevelt and his ilk and then FDR brought it to fruition. Perhaps you can knit the two together further back but in the U.S. I see the creation of the national trust as you call it an elitist power grab at bottom--old money family with a high opinion of itself found a way to generate populist appeal by "taking from the rich and giving to the poor." This proved so easy that subsequent generations of pols piled on, now pigs like Murtha dare do it right out in broad daylight. Communism played into it by the 30s but that was more the intellectual class than the political class. Not that the former didn't influence the latter, but the pols are opportunists like all parasites; Communism just helped to soften the host.

The suffragette movement was earlier, and for better or worse it tackled the problem of the widow/orphan/infertile woman in post-Industrial society. She is of little value to men--the widow in the Bible signifies the lowliest of the low. In an agrarian society she can glean the olive groves but what is she supposed to do in say Victorian London? The vote gives her a voice, at least. She may be of no value to man but she has value to G*d; she can stand on her own two feet and speak up for herself if there is nobody else to speak up for her.

The woman's suffrage movement didn't *have* to divert womens' allegiance from her menfolk to the state -- that wasn't a given, it doesn't follow logically -- the married woman can use her vote to double her husband's (and the daughter can double her father's; the mother can double her son's) -- the perversion came elsewhere.

I'm a poster child for all this myself. I married badly and will be grateful if I don't end up destitute myself one day as a result. I'd just about kill now for a man who would take pride in shouldering my load too a bit but at my age I have less & less to offer such a man. But even if I had made wiser choices years ago things still could have gone wrong and left me in this same boat -- and I'm worlds better off in America today than I would have been 150 years ago, pre-suffrage, when my choices would have been to become someone's servant or maybe run a brothel if I were canny enough. Oh, or stay with my husband and steal from him to protect our money from his wantonness, I could have done that :-P

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