And by the way, is 1 speed actually equally useful as 1 swing damage?
1 cut damage on most weapons typically works out to be worth roughly 1/2 a Power Strike. 1 speed is roughly equivalent to 14 extra wpf in that weapon type, or roughly 1 extra Weapon Master (although you don't get the extra damage bonus you'd get from additional wpf).
So at Masterwork, a typical sword gives you +3cut and +1 speed, which is equivalent to roughly 1.5 Power Strike and 1 Weapon Master. If you could choose say +4 speed instead, that would be worth roughly 4 Weapon Master, which would make it more "powerful" than the +3 cut +1 speed version, at least in terms of equivalent skill points.
I don't think people should get a choice, because the min/maxer type players will always choose speed, and the performance gap between them and the casual players (that would probably pick damage) would grow even larger. Put another way, highly skilled players can exploit very fast weapons to do simply retarded things, and we don't need to further encourage that.