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Title: Suffrage snapshots
Author: Harper, Ida Husted
Language: English
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SUFFRAGE SNAPSHOTS
_By_
IDA HUSTED HARPER
_Have a smile with me_
WASHINGTON, D. C.
1915
------------------------------------------------------------------------
These random paragraphs are a few of many which
have appeared in _Judge_ to express the lighter
side of the so-called “woman question.” This
centers in the suffrage movement but woman’s
quest of the vote is not a joke. It means a
great deal of hard work, many anxious hours,
some keen disappointments, yet those who are
not in the thick of the fray will never know
the good times they have missed. Flashes of
fun have been scattered all along the way like
flecks of sunshine on a shaded path. It will
seem very dull for a little while after the vote
is won and women get their rights, but they
will soon be able to make things lively again
and contribute as always to the gayety of the
nation.
Copyright, 1915
BY IDA HUSTED HARPER
Original matter copyrighted by _The Leslie-Judge Publishing Co._ and
used in its present form by their courtesy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miss Jane Addams in her suffrage speeches insists that men have nothing
to fear, for the women will vote right. That very fact gives some of
them everything to fear.
* * * * *
Edison says, “the movement for woman suffrage is just plain morals.”
Maybe that’s the trouble—they’re too plain. Dress them up fashionably
and see if the lady “antis” won’t accept them.
* * * * *
A new Chicago policewoman has qualified as one of the best shots on the
force, 92 out of 100. Does she vote because she is such a good shot or
can she shoot so well because she is a voter? What is the connection
between shooting and voting anyway?
* * * * *
Annie Riley Hale, a prominent “anti,” says that women want the suffrage
in order to establish polygamy throughout the United States. If she can
prove it will have that effect the women can take a rest and the men
will carry on their campaign for them.
* * * * *
It looks as if one recall, one defeat and then another election had
started wings on Mayor Hi Gill, of Seattle. After the tragic close of
his first term his chief of police and alleged partner in sinful
practices was sent to prison. The women gave Hi another chance and now
he has appointed as chief of police the ministers’ candidate for mayor
and is trying to live up to his chief’s standard. Meanwhile the women
are standing by with their spectacles on and a recall petition handy.
* * * * *
If Mr. Bryan writes the next Democratic platform it is safe to wager
there will be one plank in it which he flatly refused to put in the last
one.
* * * * *
Why don’t the “antis” get a sewing society somewhere to pass a
resolution against woman suffrage? It is growing terribly monotonous to
have all the women’s organizations in the country declaring in favor.
* * * * *
It is said the Ohio Board of Administration is appalled at the number of
imbeciles in the State. We thought there must be quite a lot of them
when 528,295 votes were cast against the woman-suffrage amendment
recently.
* * * * *
Women have voted for over twenty years in Colorado and twenty-one judges
of districts courts have sent letters to United States Senator Shafroth,
testifying that they never have known a case of divorce because of
political differences between husband and wife. Another anti-suffrage
bomb failed to explode!
* * * * *
Dear, dear, how times have changed! Once a woman was not considered a
person by law and a wife and husband were one and he was it. Now the
highest court in New York has decided that a wife is not only a person
and an individual in her own right but she is a family! “A childless
widow or a deserted wife without children is included in the term
family”—those are the very words. From nobody to a whole family—what an
evolution!
* * * * *
A Chicago girl swam two miles to shore from an overturned boat, dragging
her escort who couldn’t swim. Now the delicate question arises, Which
shall do the proposing?
* * * * *
The High Court of Great Britain has decided that a woman cannot practice
law because she is not a “person;” but she can be a Queen because a
Queen does not have to be a person—at least that is all anybody can make
out of the decision.
* * * * *
Mr. Hugh Fox, secretary of the United States Brewers’ Association,
assures the women that it will make no organized opposition to the
pending suffrage amendments. Maybe not—but there is something mightily
suggestive in that name.
* * * * *
“Tariff reform, fiscal policies, large international relations are
foreign to the consciousness of the average woman,” says Mrs. Dodge,
president of the anti-suffragists. Maybe so, but it seems as if she
might have sense enough to put a mark on a ballot opposite an eagle, a
star or a moose’s head.
* * * * *
A man was excused from serving as juror in a murder trial in New York
lately because his wife wouldn’t allow him to convict any one of murder.
Out in Oregon a juror was challenged the other day because his wife had
already been accepted and it would be impossible for him to give an
unbiased opinion. What makes people think that under equal suffrage
wives would all vote as their husbands do?
* * * * *
The women voters of Arizona have started in on so many reforms that the
men can almost feel their wings sprouting.
* * * * *
The president of the New York State “antis” says, “Suffrage is going,
not coming.” Well, it sure does seem to be going some these days.
* * * * *
It seems as if, when not only State courts but the United States
government itself forbids the use of aigrettes, women would give up
trying to wear them; but the Injun in ‘em dies hard.
* * * * *
A French naturalist has discovered that the female oyster is far more
palatable than the male. This is the case with all animals that are used
for food. It is a common remark about a woman that she looks good enough
to eat, but did anybody ever say that about a man?
* * * * *
It seems as if the suffragists have come not to bring peace but a sword
into the world. When Mrs. Chapman Catt, the international president, was
sailing across the Pacific homeward from her little trip to organize the
world for woman suffrage, all was calm and serene until she was called
on for a speech. “Before this,” said one of the men voyagers, “we were
all at peace with one another; but after that woman spoke, everybody was
fighting over the suffrage question.” This is a hint to hostesses: When
your guests seem bored to extinction, just get somebody to say woman
suffrage, and then watch the sparks fly!
* * * * *
It is said that in England whiskers are again to be the style. One thing
is certain—if they become the fashion in this country, our women will
set their faces against them!
* * * * *
The dress skirt this fall is to be narrower than ever, and a noted
tailor says the only question is, “Can a lady wear it?” Perhaps a lady
can, but a modest woman won’t.
* * * * *
And now they say President Wilson is about to reverse his position on
amending the Sherman anti-trust law. When he gets ready to back track on
the woman-suffrage question he will have no difficulty in establishing a
precedent.
* * * * *
In the debate in the North Carolina senate on a bill to permit women to
act as notaries public it was objected to because women write a
“vertical hand” and wear slit skirts. That shouldn’t disqualify them as
notaries, but it is as strong an argument against giving them the
suffrage as one often hears.
* * * * *
The New York City board of education dismissed a woman fireman from one
of the public schools, on the ground that it was not suitable work for a
woman. It’s all right for her to get up at home winter mornings and make
the fire but whenever there is a salary attached the work becomes
unwomanly. Strange that women cannot see these things without having to
be shown so often. There ought to be little sign-boards set up along
their path, saying, “Public salaries are only for voters.”
* * * * *
“Yeast,” a new suffrage play, is just being tried out. It is sure to
cause a rise among the “antis.”
* * * * *
A bill is before Congress to annex the North Pole as United States
territory. Bet it comes in with a Votes for Women flag on the end of it.
* * * * *
If the suffragists and the “antis” don’t quit writing letters to members
of Congress the latter will raise the rate of postage instead of
lowering it.
* * * * *
Recent census reports show that 86.7 of all persons over twenty-five
marry. That is quite enough—the other 13.3 are needed to show the
married what they escaped.
* * * * *
The woman-suffrage question in this country has been settled. The
Colonel did it in his whirlwind tour of New York’s East Side. “How about
votes for women?” called out the unscareable Maud Malone. “Madam,” said
Mr. Roosevelt, “I have asked that you women be allowed to vote to
determine whether or not you shall vote.” Just that; he never told whom
he had asked, but the mere fact that he had asked was enough. All the
women have to do now is to keep still and wait till somebody “allows”
them to vote whether they want to vote. If one over one-half of the
twenty-four millions says “yes,” then they can all go right out and
vote. But if one over one-half says “no,” then the 11,999,999 that want
to can’t. Beautiful plan—so simple, so statesmanlike! But it seems to
lack provision for a recall and a new deal.
* * * * *
Two women card sharps on a big ocean liner are said to have relieved a
number of the male voyagers of all their ready cash. Another flagrant
instance of woman’s usurping an occupation that rightfully belongs to
man!
* * * * *
Vice-President Marshall can’t do anything for woman suffrage because his
wife doesn’t believe in it. That might be a sufficient excuse for Mr.
Marshall as an individual but it is rather thin for the Vice-President
of the United States.
* * * * *
“Bachelors are much more likely to become insane than married men,” is
the decision of the Massachusetts Mental Hygiene Conference. Yes, the
mere fact that they choose to remain bachelors shows a mental twist.
* * * * *
A New York paper sagely remarks, “Under any system we shall not get a
government of cherubs until we become cherubs ourselves.” That’s too
long ahead. Men have always told women they were angels, so why not
begin with woman suffrage as the first step?
* * * * *
“All the blessed creatures have to do,” said Representative Adamson, of
Georgia, in his speech, “is to intimate in a gentle way, in their
charming tones and pleasing manner to the lords of creation that they
wish to have the privilege of voting.” How much that reminds one of
Heflin, of Alabama—it’s so different!
* * * * *
“Women of New Jersey,” said ex-Assemblyman Matthews at the legislative
hearing, “if you want to improve the conditions of public life, I beg
you to keep on being women.” As they felt that conditions very much
needed improving, and for various other reasons, they adopted a
resolution to keep on being women.
* * * * *
For the fourth year in succession a woman has won the prize of $1,250
offered by an English publishing house for the best first novel. It is
bad enough that there are a million more women than men over there,
without having them add to the offense by such performances as this.
They’ll never get the vote.
* * * * *
The president of the Pennsylvania Anti-Suffrage Society asks its members
to “write to all the United States Senators, except those from the
suffrage States, and tell them that the great, silent majority of women
do not want the vote.” She was very kind to omit those gentlemen—they
might laugh themselves to death.
* * * * *
The Anti-Suffrage Association claims the credit for defeating the
appointment of a Woman Suffrage Committee in the lower house of
Congress. The only question voted on in the Democratic caucus was that
“woman suffrage is a State and not a Federal question,” but this will
not disturb the complacence of the “antis.” They will simply claim that
they originated the doctrine of State’s rights.
* * * * *
The Texas preacher who asked all the women of his congregation on Easter
Sunday to take off their hats had St. Paul beaten to a frazzle.
* * * * *
The “antis” are failing to scare the suffragists by warning them that
they will get the worst of it when they “rouse the brute force in men.”
As long as they are gradually getting everything they ask for they will
never believe that men are brutes.
* * * * *
Englishmen are howling because, under the new income-tax law, the wife
can find out how much property the husband has. But didn’t she know
already, as he promised at the altar, “With all my worldly goods I thee
endow”?
* * * * *
There seems to be some anxiety lest the new women internes at Bellevue
Hospital may not be able to jump on a speeding ambulance. Some
encouragement is given by the news from Vassar that one girl has just
thrown a basketball seventy-five feet and another has “smashed the
broad-jump record” with a jump of over nine feet. Give the new internes
a chance.
* * * * *
A man in the audience of State Senator Helen Robinson, of Colorado,
called out that as there was only one woman and thirty-four men in the
Senate, this showed it was a place for men. She answered that as there
were eighty-seven women and eight hundred men in the State penitentiary,
this evidently showed the same thing. Doesn’t she know that men won’t
love her if she talks like that?
* * * * *
Why are there so many more widows than widowers? Because a man finds
marriage such a nice institution that he gets right back into it, while
a woman—well, she doesn’t.
* * * * *
Ex-Speaker Cannon says that as women can now vote in Illinois it is a
good time for handsome men to run for office, and that is why he ran.
But Illinois women can’t vote for Congressmen and that is why he was
elected.
* * * * *
The women of Alaska, at the first election since they were enfranchised,
elected an entire non-partisan ticket. It is no wonder the old party
machines put on speed and try to run over a woman-suffrage amendment.
* * * * *
According to the latest medical discovery, love causes an intoxication
of the nerve centers which may lead to insanity. That is probably why
people who are in love are said to be crazy about each other—their nerve
centers are on a spree. Cynics might call marriage a jag cure.
* * * * *
The anti-suffragists say that the suffrage movement is driving women
away from marriage and “the feminist movement is turning marriage into a
trade for alimony,” and yet that the two movements are one and the same.
But how can a woman make an alimony bargain if she has not been married?
It really seems as if those “antis” had set out to prove the charge that
the feminine mind is incapable of logic.
* * * * *
If the anti-suffragists would observe their Golden Rule, that “a woman’s
place is at home,” it would not be half so easy for those other women to
get the ballot.
* * * * *
Outside of the South only two States voted solidly against the woman
suffrage amendment in the lower house of Congress—Vermont and Delaware.
Please excuse them, they’re such little ones.
* * * * *
Virginia suffragists have discovered that in 1829 her women petitioned a
constitutional convention for the franchise. That was only eighty-six
years ago, and petitions from women are seldom acted upon in so short a
time as that.
* * * * *
At the legislative hearing in Massachusetts, the other day, one of the
opponents said she did not believe women ought to vote but thought
one-half the Legislature should be composed of women. Just as her sister
“antis” always have done, she keeps one eye on the offices.
* * * * *
During the recent registration in San Francisco, automobiles were
provided for the women, while the men were left to walk, and they rent
the air with their protests. In Washington a jury composed of men and
women had to go to the country to inspect some property. The women were
sent in automobiles and the men in wagons, and their anger could be
heard for miles. As the young woman wrote to her sweetheart, “The
trubble with you is you are jellus.”
* * * * *
Possibly women as well as men may be at their best when fifty, but they
will never give anybody a chance to prove it on them.
* * * * *
Representative J. Hampton Moore, of Philadelphia, is quoted as saying it
will be 20 years before Congress hears any more about prohibition or
woman suffrage. That 0 must be a printer’s mistake, and even the 2 is
fifty per cent. too much.
* * * * *
Indiana women have formed a council to work with the Legislature “for
the uplift of women and children.” Wouldn’t it be of greater benefit to
the State if they would work for the uplift of the legislators?
* * * * *
Anti-suffragists are censuring Senator Helen Ring Robinson, of Colorado,
because she is in the East lecturing instead of at home legislating. But
she can’t unless the Governor calls a special session, as the
Legislature does not meet this year. Those anti-suffrage objections are
such funny little boomerangs!
* * * * *
New Zealand has just been celebrating the twenty-first year of its
equal-suffrage law. To be sure that country is some distance off, but it
seems as if we should have heard of the wrecked homes, ruined families,
declining birth rate, feminized men and general reign of socialism,
polygamy and other things which the “antis” declare will follow woman
suffrage. If they will then they have done it, so let us have a bill of
particulars from New Zealand.
* * * * *
A Chicago lawyer secured a big alimony for his client on the argument
that a man who marries a handsome woman must dress her in a style
befitting her beauty. This ought to put the plain woman several laps
ahead in the matrimonial race—but it won’t.
* * * * *
If the colonel feels a little disheartened at the lapses in the
Progressive party while he was away revising the map of South America,
he can cheer up at the boom in votes for women. There will be more than
twice as many of them in 1916 as when he set out to round them up two
years ago.
* * * * *
The Supreme Court of the District of Columbia has decided that after a
wife has left her husband’s bed and board she may establish her own
domicile wherever she pleases. That is an improvement on the old law,
which did not allow her any place to sleep and eat legally without her
husband’s permission.
* * * * *
Mrs. John Martin, a leader of the “antis,” said recently, in a public
address in New York, “If they dare attempt to force the ballot on us
here in the East, they will find that we are the daughters of the heroes
who fought and bled at Concord and Lexington, who starved at Valley
Forge!” Seems as if we had heard somewhere that those heroes did all
that for the specific purpose of obtaining the ballot. “Descendants” is
a very suitable word to apply to their daughters.
* * * * *
It was a woman who solved the “Million Dollar Mystery” and received the
$10,000 prize; but that isn’t the worst of it—she hasn’t any husband to
take care of the money for her.
* * * * *
The Anti-Suffrage Society forbids its members to say, “Woman suffrage is
coming!” That’s right—it shows a lack of originality to use the same
slogan as the suffragists and how can they expect to raise money for a
campaign against a sure thing?
* * * * *
A rich New Yorker, who has just died, left his fortune for his daughters
in the hands of masculine executors because he doubted women’s wisdom in
business. How did he happen to have so much confidence in men’s honesty
in business?
* * * * *
Speaker Clark is no “neutral” when it comes to woman suffrage. During
the House debate the other day the officers of the Suffrage Association
were invited to occupy his bench in the gallery and have luncheon in his
rooms at the Capitol. Give him the Iron Cross.
* * * * *
A man in Chicago has written a booklet against woman suffrage, in which
he relates that when he was a small boy he and his sister were attacked
by wolves, which his mother drove off with a gun. “If she had been a
suffragette,” he says, “she would probably have been away from home that
night attending a political meeting and Sister Lucy and I would have
been eaten alive.” Sister Lucy might have been a loss to the world.
* * * * *
A wife has recently laughed herself to death at one of her husband’s
jokes. At least there is the consolation that she never will have to
listen to any more of them.
* * * * *
The anti-suffragists say that “feminism and the family are inherently
and irrevocably incompatible.” When we find out what that means we are
going to get mad about it.
* * * * *
Professor Hugo Münsterberg, of Harvard University, after years of
careful research has decided that women form their opinions and
judgments just as rapidly and accurately as men. Thanks for that small
concession, kind sir! It is so unexpected!
* * * * *
The women anti-suffragists have just held their first convention, while
the suffragists have had them by the hundreds. Now let the antis get up
one parade and match it against the more than a thousand suffrage
parades on May 2d, to prove that “the vast majority of women do not want
to vote.”
* * * * *
A speaker at the annual convention of the National Municipal Leagues
takes President Wilson to task because his “History of the American
People” scarcely mentions women. Why single out the President’s for what
is common to all histories? The women ought to get even by writing
histories themselves and leaving out the men. That is almost though not
quite the case in the history of woman suffrage, but the men are
mentioned whenever they vote it down.
* * * * *
“The cause of equal suffrage is so one with civilization and humanity
that I wonder any civilized man can be against it,” is the latest
utterance of William Dean Howells on the question. He was careful not to
say “civilized woman,” because he did not want to hurt the feelings of
the Anti-Suffrage Association.
* * * * *
The president of the Arizona Federation of Women’s Clubs said, in a
recent speech, “It requires courage to be a good statesman and only
nerve to be a good politician.” To apply this formula to suffrage—it
requires only nerve to be a good anti-suffragist, but one really has to
wonder where they get enough of it.
* * * * *
A six-foot woman who has recently been appointed purser on a Hudson
River boat is opposed to suffrage because she does not feel equal to the
burden and she thinks it would tend to make women take men’s jobs away
from them. Her picture in the papers should be labeled “The Typical
Anti-Suffragist, an Unconscious Humorist.”
* * * * *
One member of the lower House of Congress obtained unanimous consent
that another member’s eulogy on his dog should be printed in the
Congressional Record. Worse stuff probably has gone into that Record;
but if two women members of the Legislature in some of those Western
States had been guilty of this performance wouldn’t the country have
rung with their unfitness for office?
* * * * *
The reformers say that when woman is economically independent she will
be free to do the “proposing.” Perhaps then she won’t want to.
* * * * *
A man has started to walk with a donkey from Maine to Oregon on an
election bet. The photographers should label their pictures, “Find the
man.”
* * * * *
Great Britain has solved the race-suicide problem. Hereafter the
parents, where either is insured, will get thirty shillings for each new
baby. What a simple solution! What a magnificent recompense! The little
island won’t hold the infants.
* * * * *
The judge of the Chicago Domestic Relations Court gives six reasons for
the trouble in married life, and one of them is the interference of
mothers-in-law. If it were not for the other five reasons, there would
probably not be so much necessity for mothers-in-law to interfere.
* * * * *
The Anti-Suffrage Association is very desirous of adopting a color for
its very own, but thus far has found that all in the rainbow and out of
it have been pre-empted by the innumerable suffrage societies. The
“antis” over in England had just such a difficulty, but finally decided
on blue and black. Then they had made a button and on it placed the head
of a dear little chee-ild; but when the black and blue infant made its
appearance, it was received by the suffragists with such screams of
laughter and proffers of sympathy that it suddenly vanished and was
never seen again.
* * * * *
In Denmark the men police are going on a strike, because the new women
police are to have a higher salary than men get when they begin. There
is nothing strange about this news, except that Denmark should pay women
such salaries.
* * * * *
A woman office-holder who is getting a $4,500 salary says: “No, I am not
a suffragist. Why should I want to vote? Men have always been mighty
good to me.” Prosperity sometimes does affect people that way—makes them
so nearsighted they can’t see what is happening to their neighbors.
* * * * *
There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason why four or five women
should have been guests of honor at the annual banquet of the Police
Lieutenants’ Benevolent Association, but they just sat up there and
sang, “We’re here because we’re here.” And that isn’t the worst of
it—they’re going to be everywhere else and the men who don’t like it
will have to go to the edge of the earth and jump off.
* * * * *
The president of the New York Press Club in talking lately to a woman’s
society on suffrage said: “Keep within the sex line. I and the men
behind me will never forgive you if you step outside of that line!” Is
it anything like the bread line? And how are women to know if they fail
to toe the mark exactly? They are as far now from what was originally
considered the “sex line” as if it was the equator and they were at the
poles and yet the men seem to have forgiven them.
* * * * *
If the New York women keep on rolling up that big suffrage fund the men
will feel it their bounden duty to take over the management of the
amendment campaign.
* * * * *
A New Jersey woman has been obliged to get a divorce because her husband
was so “inordinately fond of dress” that he spent all his earnings on
his clothes. Vanity and foolishness know no sex.
* * * * *
New York State has 101.2 men to every 100 women. That extra one and
two-tenths of a man ought to make it entirely possible to give a vote to
women without fear of changing the style of sex domination.
* * * * *
Some of the men are angry because the women said they are going to ride
in the Washington suffrage parade with an imbecile, an insane person and
a convict. The men say that the only time a woman should keep such
company is on election day.
* * * * *
With an amendment for full suffrage pending in a certain State, the
opponents believe in nipping any voting tendencies in the bud; so the
district attorney announces that any woman giving a tea party to induce
other women to come out and register for the school election, at which
women can vote, will be prosecuted under the corrupt practices act. Of
course then he will prosecute the ward bosses who round up the men in
the back rooms of saloons to arrange for their registering and voting.
Or is it only drinking tea that is a corrupt practice?
* * * * *
In Missouri there are 141 unmarried men to 100 unmarried women. It seems
as if every woman there ought to be able to get a husband, but perhaps
some of them are particular.
* * * * *
Some of those husbands who stay out late nights are surprised that the
suffragists find it necessary to have so many classes for training
inexperienced speakers.
* * * * *
Winston Churchill mispronounced a Greek word in the House of Commons
lately, to the consternation of its members. Imagine the commotion in
the House of Representatives at Washington if a member should make a
mistake in his Greek!
* * * * *
“Our only problem now,” says the national anti-suffrage president, “is,
Can we make the negative majority large enough to keep the voters from
having to vote on it again for twenty-five years?” No use to waste any
time and money figuring on that problem. The answer is, It can’t be
done.
* * * * *
One of the New York Supreme Court justices, in adjourning a case against
a woman recently, said, “My sex has been deceiving the other sex since
the day of Adam.” There has always been a suspicion that in that little
transaction in the Garden of Eden it was Adam himself who was deceived.
Since then possibly the men have been trying to get even, but it looks
nowadays as if the women were beginning to claim their share from the
tree of knowledge, and deceiving them was not quite so easy.
* * * * *
The only “perfect woman” has been found at Cornell University. To find
perfect ladies visit a bargain counter.
* * * * *
A noted astrologer has seen in the stars victories for woman suffrage in
many States. The “antis” see stars every time there is a new victory;
but when they pick themselves up they never make any forecast of the
future.
* * * * *
Cuban women are organizing for the suffrage and a flourishing society
already exists in Hawaii. Truly the anti-suffragists are kept so busy
these days trying to stem the tide they are obliged to forget that a
woman’s place is at home.
* * * * *
The candidates on the primary-election tickets in New York all had
numbers opposite their names, so that voters who couldn’t read or
remember carried the numbers of their choice into the polling booth and
copied them on the ballot. It almost seems as if women might have
intelligence enough to perform a feat like that.
* * * * *
A tablet has been discovered in Babylonia, recording that the first
world was created by a woman, and the male gods, growing tired of it,
wiped it out by a flood and created another. There is a nice thing about
this record—it has no account of Eve’s eating the apple and bringing sin
into the new creation. This removes one charge against woman and puts it
up to man to account for the large amount of wickedness that has crept
into his world.
* * * * *
That English anti-suffrage mother had no right to feel insulted when her
“militant” daughter sent her a post-card with the one word “doormat”
written on it. Wasn’t it the English writer, Dinah Mulock, who said
women ought to be satisfied to be doormats in their husband’s home?
* * * * *
There seems to be some mild excitement over the question whether a woman
should be allowed to write “Mrs.” before her name when she is really
“Miss.” The chief effect would be on the men, who are much more chesty
before the unmarried women that believe them to be heroes than before
the married, who know they are not.
* * * * *
A Philadelphia clergyman says that “women’s clubs are the instruments of
the devil.” With several million women enrolled in them, His Satanic
Majesty should have a large working force; but it’s odd that every one
of them seems to be trying to improve something or somebody. Maybe the
minister meant to say men’s clubs.
* * * * *
The Business Women’s League of Nashville, with three hundred members,
has united with the Equal Suffrage League to move on the Legislature.
Apparently they have never heard from the lady “antis” what a hindrance
the ballot will be to the working woman but it is not yet too late for
the “antis” to save her from “impending doom,” in the classic language
of their president.
* * * * *
The anti-suffrage women are boasting of the cooperation they receive
from men. Sure—they are playing the game for the men!
* * * * *
Secretary Lane, of the Interior Department, says there will be no Indian
man without the suffrage when he goes out of office. The surprising
thing is that previous administrations have allowed a male of any sort
to escape having it thrust upon him.
* * * * *
The wizard of Hoboken announces that the zodiacal sign of Sagittarius
signifies that woman suffrage will be successful. Yes, all signs point
that way; but is there anything in the zodiac to indicate when?
* * * * *
Why is it that as soon as women get the suffrage in any State they are
called upon to clean up the cities and purify politics? As men have
always been held to be so much better qualified to vote than women, the
latter ought to find every city a Spotless Town and the political
atmosphere too rarefied to breathe in safety.
* * * * *
The college girls all marry, according to recent statistics. They have
to pass laws in many States to prevent school teachers from marrying.
You can hardly keep a trained nurse single until her patient gets well.
Stenographers go like hot cakes. The only girls that seem to have
trouble in getting married are the old fashioned, womanly kind that do
the sweetly domestic acts in the seclusion of the home.
* * * * *
At the big dinner given in New York for the Men and Religion Forward
Movement the dean of Yale Theological School said: “The Church must have
men because men are militant.” Go to: isn’t it militancy that is ruining
the Women and Suffrage Forward Movement?
* * * * *
Ex-President Eliot, of Harvard, anti-suffragist, says, “Women are better
adapted to work for the human beings of the future than men are.” Yes,
and as there wouldn’t be any human beings of the future if it were not
for women it almost seems as if they were of enough importance to have a
vote.
* * * * *
Why should the advocates of woman suffrage be criticised for trying to
defeat members of Congress who are opposed to it when all of the parties
do their best to prevent the election of their opponents? If the
suffragists did not try to keep their enemies out of Congress they
wouldn’t have political sense enough to vote.
* * * * *
The corporation counsel of the District of Columbia has ruled that the
new eight-hour law for women applies to those who do mechanical work in
a newspaper office, but not to those who do brain work. He probably
considers that those big, forty-page papers are a greater strain on
hands than brains, and it sure does seem like that when you try to read
them.
* * * * *
“As for me, I defy you women. Come and meet me on the stump.” Such were
the brave words of a New York alderman, and from that moment Ajax
defying the lightning was simply not in it.
* * * * *
All over the country ministers are giving sermons in favor of woman
suffrage. Why don’t the “antis” get some of them to preach against it?
Surely a few can be found who would dare to do it!
* * * * *
Mrs. John Martin, opposed to a vote because it will turn women from
matrimony, says that “soon the only women to marry will be the infirm
and the idiotic.” The anti-suffragists will continue to be eligible,
won’t they?
* * * * *
Ex-President Eliot has come to the front again to declare that there
wasn’t any Garden of Eden or Adam or Eve. All right. Then Eve didn’t eat
the apple and bring sin into the world; therefore that objection to
giving the ballot to the women of the United States is null and void.
* * * * *
Just at the psychical moment when the _Alienist and Neurologist_, a St.
Louis publication, devoted several pages to prove that the “cave man is
the type women adore” and that “the bigger the brute, the more a woman
clings to him,” a New York wife took a 200-pound husband by the ear and
led him to the police station, and one the same size in Chicago had his
wife arrested for cruel and inhuman treatment. It looks as if the women
themselves were trying the role of the cave man.
* * * * *
Have a Father’s Day, by all means, if any of them feel slighted; but
wouldn’t a “night” be more appropriate?
* * * * *
They say that a stenographer is the only woman to whom a man can dictate
these days. Is that the reason so many men marry their stenographers?
* * * * *
The New York suffragists are hunting for some means of moving Senators
Root and O’Gorman to favor their amendment. They might try an
earthquake.
* * * * *
The manager of a large school for the athletic training of girls says he
has a number of pupils who can “heave a weight one hundred and eighty
feet.” It almost seems that if women can do that they ought to have the
physical strength to heave a ballot into a box.
* * * * *
The anti-suffrage ladies mourned over the women’s peace parade because
it showed such a “thirst for publicity.” Yes; those timid, shrinking
creatures themselves wouldn’t do a thing except parade up and down the
streets wearing a big American Beauty rose to attract attention to their
being “antis;” open headquarters in conspicuous places, call mass
meetings and orate from the platform, besiege Congress and Legislatures,
attend political conventions and go before the committees and send their
representatives all over the country to conduct a publicity campaign
against the suffragists. Oh, yes, they’re “shrinking” all right—getting
smaller every day.
* * * * *
“If women go into politics, who will do their work?” wail the “antis.”
The men can do it, as they’ve already taken most of it away from the
home.
* * * * *
How could anybody wish the poor congressmen a Happy New Year when they
had to begin it by voting on woman suffrage?
* * * * *
The churches and the social-uplift societies seem to have almost as much
trouble in stopping the tango as the government does in putting an end
to the snake dances among the Indians.
* * * * *
That new woman fire inspector in New York reported in one week
thirty-seven violations of the law. The next thing she knows she will
lose her job.
* * * * *
A hen at the Agricultural College of Oregon has laid 283 eggs this year,
while the roosters stood around and crowed; and a cow in Michigan has
given 18,733 pounds of milk, while the—but why specialize in order to
prove the superior value of “the female of the species?”
* * * * *
Miss Julia Lathrop, head of the National Children’s Bureau, says, “The
anti-suffragists are like the hypnotized chickens which balk at a chalk
line when there is nothing beyond.” Yes, and after the ballot is
actually given to women they are just like chickens when some corn is
dropped the other side of the chalk line.
* * * * *
French annuity companies have discovered that women live twenty years
longer than men, and now they propose to give women a choice of dying
young or having their premiums raised.
* * * * *
“If my mother-in-law comes to heaven, I’ll leave,” wrote a New Orleans
man, just before he committed suicide. Doubtless she will speed the
parting guest.
* * * * *
It is too bad that members of the European nobility cannot come over
here to hunt grizzly bears without being accused of seeking a rich wife,
but perhaps it is because their graces and lordships have so long
considered American heiresses as game.
* * * * *
Chicago women say that when they had to go to the City Hall before they
got the ballot the officials there were polite but now they are cordial.
In other words women without a vote are tolerated; with it, they are
welcomed. Unfortunately many women don’t know the difference.
* * * * *
Morrison I. Swift, lecturing on the “Humanist Forum,” whatever that may
be, says, “Women are amazingly incompetent to bring up children, have no
special aptitude for it and it is doubtful whether they have any real
liking for it.” So? Well, perhaps men had better try their hand at it
for a while; but any woman who ever left father in charge for a few
hours and remembers the general chaos she found on her return has her
doubts as to man’s aptitude along this line.
* * * * *
“Woman’s closer relation to the machinery of government is inexpedient,”
says the chairman of the New York anti-suffrage press committee. Well,
if she takes out an accident policy she might run the risk of watching
to see that it doesn’t slip so many cogs.
* * * * *
An army of suffragists have just ended a 400-mile walk from Edinburgh to
present a suffrage petition to Prime Minister Asquith. The suffragette
way is quicker—they just wrap it around a stone and throw it through his
window. Both branches of the movement seem to have proved that they
possess the physical strength to cast a ballot.
* * * * *
The health commissioner of New York is determined that all the
restaurants and hotel dining-rooms shall display signs telling how much
benzoate of soda and similar stuff there is in the pastry. It is often
asked why men make so much better cooks than women but no such signs
were ever necessary on the pies that mother used to make.
* * * * *
Irvin Cobb told them at the Kentucky dinner that “the reason woman
suffrage is not a success in his State is that woman can never be man’s
equal because she is always his superior.” That remark has a sort of
“befo’ the wah” flavor. Women accept man’s word that they are much his
superior but when they get the ballot they will try to improve his
status.
* * * * *
A “mere man” complains in a Chicago paper that “men have dwindled in
importance in the eyes of women.” Don’t worry! They are just as
important as ever in their own eyes.
* * * * *
The pugilists of California are so mad because prize fights are
prohibited that they are going to move out of the State to spite the
women who did it.
* * * * *
The Los Angeles woman police officer who is touring the Eastern States
gives as one great advantage of woman suffrage that men no longer have
to go down town to talk politics. A good many men would consider that an
argument against it.
* * * * *
The secretary of state for New York is willing to concede a good deal to
women, but insists on the “physical superiority” of men. Then how do all
life insurance statistics happen to show that women live to a much
greater age than men?
* * * * *
Dr. Forbes Ross, an eminent English physician, has discovered that in
two thousand years the men will have degenerated into gorillas. The
women can save the race, he says, but not if they insist on the vote.
The women will probably answer that they will take the vote now and run
the risk of the gorillas two thousand years hence. And, when one comes
to think of it, after the treatment the suffragists in England have
received from some of the present generation of men, gorillas would have
no terrors for them!
* * * * *
Another English doctor heard from! This one deprecates the present style
of dress because “it does away with the mystery in women, which is
greatly against their own interests.” Let the doctor calm himself—woman
will always be enough of a mystery to keep the men busy guessing.
* * * * *
A Florida woman writes to the National Suffrage Association for
permission to organize a troop of cavalry women, arm them with light
rifles and send them to the Legislature to get a suffrage bill. The
Southern women have been rather slow to get started but when they do
they will go on horseback where the Northern women have gone on foot.
* * * * *
The chivalry of medieval times was of poor quality compared with the
brand they have in Kansas. A man out there was too chivalrous to stand
as candidate for an office when he found his opponent was a woman. This
is a vast improvement on going to war with your lady’s handkerchief on
the point of your spear.
* * * * *
On the adjournment of Congress, when the men who had been fighting each
other for months and using language that had to be expunged from the
_Record_ fell on one another’s necks and wept and sang “Blest be the tie
that binds”—it was then the women in the gallery realized that their sex
is far too emotional and hysterical ever to make the laws for the
nation.
* * * * *
Alexander Graham Bell says in his letter on eugenics, “Always remember
that you are marrying a family, not a person.” Alas, yes; and if you
forget it you are very apt to be reminded of it afterward.
* * * * *
Now that President Wilson has received Colonel Harvey and Colonel
Watterson with open arms he ought to be ready to do the Abraham act with
the suffragists.
* * * * *
It cost $11.40 a piece to register voters in Greater New York for the
spring election. Will those who are clamoring for a referendum of the
suffrage question to women themselves at a special election please state
who will foot the bill?
* * * * *
Dr. Mary Walker is greatly disgusted with the suffragists for making so
much fuss to obtain a right which is already guaranteed to them under
the Constitution. If she really believes this let her try to cast a vote
at the next election. There is always room in jail for one more.
* * * * *
The Anti-Suffrage Association has issued “The Woman’s Creed,” which
says, “I believe in making every effort to protect the good name of our
American men from the attacks of the suffragists.” Bless their soft,
little hearts! One would think from their literator that the suffragists
hadn’t any men of their own that they would fight to the last ditch for
if necessary. What the “antis” should do is to protect men from the
blandishments of the suffragists after their votes.
* * * * *
As man has only fourteen pockets in his clothes the tailors are now
putting in another, a secret one, where he can hide his money from his
wife. As it is only the size of a watch pocket she won’t grudge him the
contents; besides she will know where it is located almost as soon as he
does himself.
* * * * *
An “inspired” article says that there are signs of a revolt among the
wives in nearly all the royal families of Europe and that “it is because
the ideas of Mrs. Pankhurst have permeated the circles of royalty.” If
Mrs. Pankhurst had accomplished no more than this, she would deserve all
the honors her followers claim for her.
* * * * *
The president of a New York club said in her address to the City
Federation the other day, “You neglect culture and buzz around too much;
you should set aside ten minutes every day to meditate on something
refining and ennobling.” Like that speech, for instance; but isn’t ten
minutes a day an awful lot of time to spend on culture?
* * * * *
The 140,000 members of the Woman Suffrage Party in New York City are
balloting for their officers in the different districts. The
Anti-Suffrage State Society announces that it is increasing at the rate
of one thousand a month. This proves that in one hundred and forty
months it will catch up with the city party, provided the latter doesn’t
add any new members.
* * * * *
The most important thing in regard to the candidacy of that woman from
Kansas who is running for Congress is that it shows there is no
constitutional barrier to women members of Congress. All they have to do
is to get elected.
* * * * *
The anti-feminists have always related with great joy that it is the
female mosquito which does the biting, but scientists have now learned
that the reason the male of the species refrains is because he has
nothing to bite with.
* * * * *
At the next registration in Montana after women were enfranchised, there
was a sprinting match to see who would be enrolled first; but sad to
relate it was won by the two leaders of the anti-suffrage movement.
* * * * *
A fashion periodical offers a large salary to a young man who
understands the entire subject of a woman’s clothes and can edit a
woman’s magazine. As has been often remarked, women are invading men’s
domain and crowding them out of their legitimate work!
* * * * *
The first Anti-Suffrage Association in the United States or any other
country was organized in Massachusetts in 1884. It has labored
diligently ever since with the excellent result that both houses of the
Legislature have voted by immense majorities to submit the question to
the electors. If the “antis” will do their level best, it may pull
through at the polls.
* * * * *
Dr. Hugh Cabot, of Puritan Boston, says that “if women want men to
reform, they must cease to tempt them.” Maybe so, the poor things! but
how did they ever happen to be called “the stronger sex”?
* * * * *
The Guidon Anti-Suffrage Club of New York is devoting itself to a study
of the Bible. Nobody needs the consolations of religion quite so much
just now as the anti-suffragists.
* * * * *
That dull thud which was heard in the direction of Springfield, Ill.,
was Senator Shaw, of Decatur, being dropped from his committee
chairmanships because he presented a resolution to repeal the woman
suffrage law.
* * * * *
The wife of Congressman Taylor, of Colorado, says the women of that
State have found that it does not take as long to vote as it does to
match a piece of silk. It is to be hoped not or the worst fears of the
“antis” as to the neglect of the home and family would be more than
realized.
* * * * *
Sir Almoth Wright says that women ask for the suffrage because they
“have not been taught the defects and limitations of the feminine mind.”
This is not because Sir A. W. and men of his stripe haven’t wasted a
good deal of more or less valuable time pointing them out; but in
another chapter he says, “Failure to recognize that man is the master
lies at the root of the suffrage movement,” and to this the women plead
guilty when they can stop laughing.
* * * * *
The French courts have decided that a married woman may spend as much on
clothes as the rent of her home. If she lived in New York she could
dress like the Queen of Sheba.
* * * * *
The big council of the Chippewas in Wisconsin recently declared for
woman suffrage. The Indians know what it is to be without a vote; they
are not like the chesty white men, who never did a thing to earn one and
therefore don’t want to share it.
* * * * *
A New York paper said, after the recent primary elections, that “the
people seemed inflexibly determined not to rule.” Before this statement
is accepted give that half of the people a chance who have been trying
to get it since 1848.
* * * * *
Miss Ida Tarbell says, “I don’t take much interest in magazines for
women only, as I am incapable of differentiating women from the human
race.” It is only when it comes to having the right of individual
representation that Miss Tarbell would differentiate women from the rest
of the human race.
* * * * *
At the anti-suffrage headquarters opened in Washington at the time of
the parade they announced that during the first four days two thousand
persons registered. Some of the suffrage mathematicians figured out that
this would mean a registration of more than one person every minute for
eight hours of every day—a manifest absurdity. It seems sometimes as if
the sole object of the suffragists was to be disagreeable.
* * * * *
The Sir Almoth Wright who has recently written a book on woman suffrage
which can’t be mentioned in good society is the same individual who last
year put forth a treatise against taking a bath; but really he should
have allowed an exception after reading his book.
* * * * *
The “antis” say that when legislators favor woman suffrage because they
think the women will vote for them, they forget the women who don’t want
it and will vote against them to get even. True, and they don’t take
into account what a tremendous power these women are already with their
“indirect influence.”
* * * * *
The egg crop is said to be worth as much to the country financially as
the cotton crop and far more than the wheat crop, and women to be
responsible for nine-tenths of the poultry crop. It might also be said
that the hens are responsible for all of it but they don’t belong to the
sex that does the crowing.
* * * * *
What are the women coming to? A man jumps up in the midst of an eloquent
speech by the president of the National Suffrage Association and asks
her to marry him, and she answers that she would rather have a vote than
a husband! The time was when a woman would rather have a husband; but
then she never had had a chance to know the value of a vote.
* * * * *
According to the society notes our women will now have to wear gowns
made by American dressmakers: All right; it doesn’t matter who makes a
woman’s dress if only they will make enough of it.
* * * * *
Sensible women are terribly mortified sometimes as they look at the
fashion illustrations in the Sunday papers, but when they turn to the
next page and see the baseball pictures they feel that in the ridiculous
women have been outclassed.
* * * * *
Mrs. Havelock Ellis, an English woman lecturing in this country, advises
all women to refuse to kiss their husbands until they get the suffrage.
This would be somewhat risky, as getting the suffrage is a slow process
and meanwhile the husbands might go elsewhere for their kisses.
* * * * *
“Let us, oh, let us hold fast to monogamy!” wail the “antis.”
“Scientists believe it is the normal and natural relationship of
humans.” Then don’t be alarmed, for even woman suffrage cannot entirely
destroy what is natural and normal. One husband, one wife. All right.
Now let every “anti” catch a husband—if she can.
* * * * *
The leader of the suffrage forces in Chicago says that “to appeal to
American men’s sense of justice is all women have to do in order to
obtain fair dealing,” and the Indianapolis _News_ comments: “That’s the
way to get results—flatter the brutes!” Yes, the Michigan women recently
tried it and they got results all right.
* * * * *
No, the public has been too thoroughly hardened by the present styles in
women’s dress to be frightened at anything that may happen if hoop
skirts come in again.
* * * * *
Boston’s new mayor has dismissed all the women employes from the office,
on the ground that “it is not a fit place for women.” Probably he knows
what kind of a place it is going to be from now on.
* * * * *
In a temperance play running in New York the husband asks, “Where is my
wandering wife tonight?” The answer of course should be, “At a suffrage
meeting,” for women never neglect their homes for any other purpose.
* * * * *
A good many people always seem to be in doubt, along at inauguration
time, as to how the great Jefferson got up to the Capitol. It is to be
hoped the gentleman himself knew whether he was afoot or on horseback on
that auspicious occasion.
* * * * *
The anti-suffragists have issued a ton or so of literature to show that
the constitution of women can never endure the nervous strain of voting.
Now the presidents of the State medical associations in all the States
where women have been voting from two to forty-five years have signed a
statement that if anything has happened to their constitutions their
family physicians haven’t discovered it. The “antis” are playing in hard
luck—every time they start out a nice little theory it runs up against a
fact and is smashed to splinters.
* * * * *
Some time ago the women of Larned, Kan., met and resolved to use
horsewhips on the professional gamblers if they did not leave the town.
Now they have not exactly turned their spears into pruning hooks, but
they have exchanged their horsewhips for ballots, and when they tell the
gamblers to leave town they will gather up their outfit and go.
* * * * *
Some men are making an effort nowadays to scare women out of their
independence by letting them stand in the street cars; but the women
answer that they are better able to stand than many of the men they see
sitting down, and that, according to statistics, a woman has a good many
more years to ride on street cars than men have.
* * * * *
“We stand for an economic system which will enable every man to support
a family so that women need not go outside the home to work,” say the
Socialists. A good idea; but suppose some men wouldn’t use their
earnings that way, and some women would rather work outside and support
themselves than to do the same amount of work inside and have to be
supported?
* * * * *
“The action of the Federation of Clubs at their biennial, indorsing
woman suffrage,” says Mrs. Dodge, national president of the “antis,”
“was a clear case of gag rule in a packed convention.” Well, if the
suffragists could “pack” a convention to the extent of ninety-eight per
cent. and “gag” two thousand delegates they are certainly almost clever
enough to vote.
* * * * *
The woman who recently climbed to the top of Harvard Glacier in Alaska
is a strong suffragist. Seems as if it would have to be a cold day when
she was not able to go to the polls.
* * * * *
New York’s Alderman Quinn objects to woman suffrage because it would
make monkeys of the men. Don’t worry—a lot of them haven’t waited for
woman suffrage.
* * * * *
A young “efficiency expert” in Chicago tells his audiences that because
a woman’s heart is in matrimony she is and always will be a failure in
business. Give her a chance, son! Business is a matter of the head.
* * * * *
Under the English poor law medicine cannot be supplied to a sick wife
unless her husband makes application for it, and if he can’t or won’t
support her the almshouse will not receive her unless he will come
along. To understand the reason for the suffragette movement over there,
read the laws.
* * * * *
Those clever antis! What wonderful research work they are doing! Having
discovered that woman suffrage has led to polygamy in Wyoming, Colorado,
Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, Montana
and Illinois, they have now found, according to their official
statement, that it means “the deliberate return to savagery.” Alas, yes!
one can hear the war whoops even now—they sound like the suffragists
celebrating a victory!
* * * * *
Frenchmen often express great sympathy for the wife-ruled American
husband, but they can’t point to a case over here where wives have a
quarrel and then stand their husbands up to fight a duel in order to
settle it.
* * * * *
Congress treats women better than their forefathers did, for rather than
pay taxes they destroyed the women’s favorite beverage—tea—and held onto
rum; but Congress has taxed beer and whiskey to the limit and left the
women their soft drinks.
* * * * *
The New York _Tribune_ congratulates the country that the American woman
is not trying to be a man. The very idea! As if women, having almost
reached the top step, would deliberately turn around and tumble to the
bottom!
* * * * *
The-anti-suffragists have declared officially that they “recognize man
as the head of the nation’s household.” All right, he is welcome to sit
at the head of the table; but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the
family must not have anything to eat.
* * * * *
The Chicago _American_ allows the women to get out a “suffrage” edition
and they clean up a neat little profit of $15,000 for the “cause.” The
New York Hippodrome gives the suffragists a benefit performance and
their treasury can’t hold the profits. Seems as if we never hear of any
anti-suffrage special editions or theater benefits. Wouldn’t anybody buy
or go?
* * * * *
All the pilots and captains on the Panama Canal are now required to be
teetotalers. Pretty soon they will be forbidden to swear, and then
Colonel Goethals will have to get women to run his boats.
* * * * *
President John Adams is said to have declared that “politics are the
devil’s own,” but that was when “they” belonged entirely to the
masculine half of the population.
* * * * *
A London physical-culture professor has announced that it is possible
for every woman to have as perfect a figure as the Venus de Milo. If it
is to be so common as that, the most of them would prefer to look like
somebody else.
* * * * *
They do say that out in those Western States husband and wife frequently
vote the same ticket to avoid discord in the family, but it is not
always the ticket which the husband thought he was going to vote when
they began discussing the matter.
* * * * *
A number of States have enacted a law that men who are physically unable
to get to the polls may send their ballots by mail. This should dispose
of the objection that the franchise must not be given to women because
so much of the time they would not be well enough to go to the polling
place. Incidentally, if men are not able to get to the polls, they are
not able to fight, and therefore, if women must not be allowed to vote
because they cannot fight, then these incapacitated men should be
disfranchised.
* * * * *
The National Women’s Anti-Suffrage Association announces that it spent
less than $10,000 in the seven campaign States last fall. Why should it
waste even that much good money when the other branches of the
opposition were amply able to furnish hundreds of thousands and did so?
* * * * *
“Oh, suffragists, do you know that if you succeed the future men will be
one-sided mongrels in nature and education, having had two fathers and
no mother?” (Anti-suffrage document.) Good gracious! Just to think
they’ve got ‘em like that in those Western States, and the rest of the
country doesn’t even know it!
* * * * *
When the women of a certain church in Brooklyn ask for a voice in its
affairs they are told that St. Paul commanded women to keep silent in
the churches; but when they take up the calendar Sunday morning they
find a request from the deacons to take off their hats. They are now
insisting that Paul and the deacons come to an understanding.
* * * * *
Leaders of the anti-suffragists insist that women shall not be
enfranchised against their protest, but when all the big organizations
of women in the country are asking for it, who is making the protest?
What is the matter with that ninety per cent. the antis claim to
represent that they can’t speak up? Ninety per cent. can make a great
deal more noise than ten.
* * * * *
President Wilson said the last session of Congress accomplished so much
simply by “sawing wood.” He was careful not to add, “and saying
nothing.”
* * * * *
John Redmond and his followers want home rule for Ireland but they don’t
intend that those who rule the home shall have any part in it.
* * * * *
The entire State of Kansas is quarantined because of the foot-and-mouth
disease. This is the strongest argument against woman suffrage that the
“antis” have been able to find for a long time.
* * * * *
“Persons who try to stop the woman suffrage movement,” said a Chicago
elections commissioner, “are in the position of a man throwing himself
in front of a locomotive.” Well, they always expect that the bosses who
run the political machines will apply the brake.
* * * * *
The latest government report from New Zealand, where women have voted
twenty-one years, shows that, while the population has doubled in thirty
years, the number of men in prison has increased only from 631 to 853,
and the number of women prisoners has decreased from 94 to 64. It seems
from these figures that woman suffrage in New Zealand did not double the
criminal vote and did not produce a reign of anarchy and crime. Perhaps
it is only in the United States and in those of the States where it has
never been tried that it will have this effect. Still the “antis” should
bolster up their charge with a statistic or two.
* * * * *
The Keith and Proctor circuits forbid any burlesquing of the
suffragists. That’s right, and the anti-suffragists give their own
continuous vaudeville performances.
* * * * *
One little woman in the big Woolworth Building in New York manages the
electrical apparatus for running twenty-eight elevators—and yet some
people think a woman hasn’t nerve enough to drop a ballot in a box.
* * * * *
Gertrude Atherton says, “Women politicians will be just like men
politicians—no better, no worse.” We knew, of course, that they couldn’t
be any—well, we had hoped they might prove to be a little better.
* * * * *
“Young women,” said Representative Bowdle, of Cincinnati, in the
suffrage debate, “will beware of this movement, which positively
destroys all feminine charm and deters young men from marriage.” (Loud
applause by the sixty-seven married members from the twelve States where
women vote.)
* * * * *
Before and after taking was strikingly illustrated by the Missouri
Legislature in its action on the woman-suffrage amendment. The senate
adjourned to the assembly chamber to hear the women present their case.
The committee reported unanimously in favor. Both houses adopted the
report by large majorities. Then St. Louis suddenly got busy and the
Legislature rescinded its action! It heard its master’s voice!
* * * * *
By a new law voters in Nebraska can send their ballots through the mail
when necessary. This answers the question, Who will care for the baby
when mother votes? Mother will and Uncle Sam will deposit her ballot.
Anti-suffs knocked out again!
* * * * *
The doctors are now admonishing the women that if they keep on with the
present style of tight-fitting hats and headbands nothing can save them
from baldness. Women have been listening to this kind of prophecy for
several generations and yet have kept their hair on; but when they look
about they observe that nearly all the men are baldheaded.
* * * * *
Representatives of nearly all the organizations of women in Chicago are
demanding that places shall be given to women on the boards of
education, of parks and of libraries. How can they do it when they see
how splendidly all matters connected with the municipality are managed
by men? Women don’t seem to be showing that old-time admiration and
trust which used to be their greatest charm.
* * * * *
The Simple Life and Open Air Exposition in London is exhibiting the
Fully Furnished Man, who carries on his person all the necessities of
life except food. That is nothing to be proud of. All the other animals
have done this ever since they ceased to belong to the vegetable
kingdom. The only difficulty will be to keep this new kind of man out of
civilized society.
* * * * *
Why try to get acquainted with the people on Mars, when we have so
little time to give to those we know on earth?
* * * * *
It is charged that 46,000 men have deserted from the regular army during
the last ten years. Should women who are willing to fight but can’t be
disfranchised on that account, while men who can fight but won’t are
freely granted the vote?
* * * * *
One of the Western railroads has placed a woman in charge of its dining
car and the customary howl at women’s usurping the work of men is now in
order. To be sure having charge of a dining-room has always been
considered a woman’s business but that was only when there was no salary
attached.
* * * * *
“We must abolish everything that bears even the semblance of privilege,”
is the Wilson slogan. Thanks, Mr. President. Will you kindly get
yourself into a state of mind where you can see that the possession of
the suffrage by only one-half the people is about the most iniquitous
privilege that could exist?
* * * * *
Mrs. Dodge, president of the Anti-Suffrage Association, wants to go into
the fight against suffrage in the next presidential campaign with
500,000 women at her back. All right; she will need every one of them.
But what is to become of the half-million families while the wives and
mothers are marching on to victory behind Mrs. Dodge?
* * * * *
“Bustles” for women are to be the fashion this spring. Thanks for the
prospect of even that much relief to the helpless onlookers.
* * * * *
Mr. Croker’s Indian bride says she cannot be a “squaw” until she is a
mother. Oh, yes; first a squall then a squaw.
* * * * *
“The pay here,” said Mayor Curley, of Boston, in dismissing all the
women in his office, “is quite sufficient to maintain a man.” Then how
on earth did women ever happen to get the jobs?
* * * * *
“Behind the skirts of suffragism,” says an official statement of the
“antis,” “Mormonism goes to the polls, socialism marches red and rampant
on the streets, and feminism stalks and swaggers in our homes.” The
old-fashioned thing—to wear skirts so wide as all that!
* * * * *
The Alimony Club of divorced husbands in New York are howling loud and
long because the court has ruled that they must continue the payment of
alimony even though they are kept in prison and can’t earn a dollar.
Another crowd who are out of jail are rending the air because they have
to pay alimony just the same after their former spouses have wedded
again. The fair divorcees answer that since only men are considered
competent to make the laws or even to elect the lawmakers, they have no
right to kick against the results. Its awful the little respect women
show nowadays for the superior wisdom of men!
* * * * *
It is rather late in the day to warn women against being “jostled at the
polls.” That is about the only place where they would not get jostled.
* * * * *
Paris is tired of the tango. Public opinion caused it to be danced too
respectably. It may hold on awhile in the United States, we can stand a
considerable amount of respectability, but not too much when it becomes
unfashionable.
* * * * *
No, Ethelyn, Lu Lu Temple is not the name of a woman suffrage
headquarters. It is the rendezvous of an ancient and honorable body of
men in Philadelphia, where they think women are too frivolous to vote.
* * * * *
Arkansas has now been added to the list of “dry” States by action of its
Legislature and Wisconsin requires a health certificate from would-be
bridegrooms. No woman suffrage in either State. Really the men are
getting so good nowadays there will be nobody for women to reform when
they obtain the ballot.
* * * * *
The superintendent of public schools in Cincinnati will start “a six
months’ course of study for prospective brides,” and besides all the
usual housekeeping stunts they will be taught to calk a water pipe, put
up shelves, mend door knobs, etc. If he isn’t careful he will create a
prospect that will scare all the girls away from matrimony. Women can be
so many things nowadays besides carpenters and plumbers.
* * * * *
The New York _Tribune_ says, “Another ten years and the clinging vine
will be only a moist and tender memory.” What a fortunate thing for the
oak!
* * * * *
The sphygmograph is the invention of a woman doctor and the person who
wears it cannot tell a lie, even to his wife. Something of this sort was
bound to happen when women were permitted to enter the medical
profession.
* * * * *
“Feminism is the process of putting father out of business,” is a
specimen anti-suffrage epigram. If feminism means that able-bodied young
women shall earn their own living, perhaps father will have a chance to
get something ahead for his old age.
* * * * *
The Reno _Gazette_ in its fight against the suffrage amendment said that
when a straw vote of the women was taken in 1895 in Massachusetts, they
declared against enfranchisement 38 to 1. Suppose they did—what has that
to do with the women of Nevada in 1914? The fact is, however, that the
women voted in favor of it 25 to 1. Next!
* * * * *
And so the anti-suffrage ladies are going into the thick of the
congressional fray to help elect the men who will promise not to give
them a vote! It is now in order for them to get up a street parade and
then the suffragists won’t have a thing on them—they will have done
everything they were afraid they might have to do if enfranchised and
they haven’t got the ballot as a compensation for doing it. The joke is
on them.
* * * * *
The ancient question, “Could women voters work out their road tax?” has
been answered by two in Iowa. They did worse, for they won two out of
three prizes offered by the county for work on highways. It was all
right for them to do the work but very wrong for them to win the prizes.
* * * * *
“Women never could serve on the police force,” an anti-suffragist rushes
into print to declare. “Could frail woman withstand, year in and year
out, the severe climatic changes constantly occurring?” Well, several
million of her do, as they start out each morning to earn their daily
bread.
* * * * *
The “antis” are dreadfully vexed at the suffragists because of their
reported attempts to convert the women public-school teachers, the women
in the government departments, the women wage-earners and women in
divers other capacities. Putting it mildly they are like the schoolboy
who wrote, “To sum up Daniel Webster’s character—it is one which I do
not approve!”
* * * * *
Some awful things are promised in the season’s styles for man. They are
to be more expensive, which will require him to owe his tailor more than
ever. Evening trousers are to be very loose so that he can perpetrate
the tango and turkey trot without accident. For the rest of the day the
clothes are to be very tight so as to show the natural form, and this is
where the public will start a suffragette movement.
* * * * *
Do not criticise Mr. Bryan because he said nothing new in regard to
woman suffrage. Everything that could be said was said long ago but
until recently the political ears were very deaf and very long.
* * * * *
In Chicago, before the women took a hand, the disposal of the garbage
cost the city $4,000 a month; now it nets a profit of $2,000 a month,
and yet people wonder why the grafters are so dead set against votes for
women.
* * * * *
The various parties seem to be having a hard time with the “political
uplift.” Some day it will occur to them that until women lend a hand
they will be trying to lift themselves by their bootstraps.
* * * * *
They opened a big hotel in Los Angeles a few months ago for men only,
and already they announce that henceforth women also will be welcomed as
patrons. Funny, isn’t it, when hotels for women only are flourishing all
over the country, that the men couldn’t flock alone in a single one?
* * * * *
Before the last committee hearing on woman suffrage in Washington, Mrs.
Dodge, national president of the “antis,” announced that the members of
Congress had been sufficiently bored, so to speak, and her forces would
not appear. The love of the limelight was too strong, however, and there
they were in the center of the stage, singing the old, sweet song,
“Woman’s place is at home in the bosom of her family.”
* * * * *
The turkey trot and bunny hug have been replaced by the goose waddle,
which is really much more indicative of those who dance it.
* * * * *
“Love is a disease,” says a Chicago doctor, “called anaphylaxis—lack of
resistance.” This is merely a trick of the profession to increase the
number of their patients, but the Chicago girls dare them to try to cure
it.
* * * * *
A booth was built in New York City in a district where only three men
voted, yet members of the Legislature object to giving suffrage to women
because it would require more voting booths. Who helps to pay for those
the men use?
* * * * *
The anti-suffragists have been so busy during the campaign running
political headquarters and making speeches for the candidates they
haven’t had a minute to tell the suffragists that a woman’s place is at
home and that women are wholly unfitted for politics. It will be
somewhat embarrassing for them to resume business at the old stand and
hear the suffragists jeer.
* * * * *
When United States Senator Burton, of Ohio, landed from a trip to Europe
not long ago and was asked the inevitable question about woman suffrage,
he said, “I do not care even to express an opinion on such a subordinate
issue.” Now he says that of course he is going to vote for it in his
State. It is taking a mean advantage for reporters to corral a great
statesman on the dock before he finds out what has happened in his
absence.
* * * * *
The Rothchilds are said to have given $15,000 to the British
Anti-Suffrage Association. The vote in the hands of women would prove a
strong factor in preventing the wars of the future.
* * * * *
Colonel Henry Watterson declares that he has “written more times and at
greater length against woman suffrage than any other editor.” Maybe he
has and maybe that is the reason it is making such rapid progress in his
own State.
* * * * *
California University girls eat ten tons of candy a year, according to
reports; but the boys of that institution can’t prove that they are the
sweetest things on earth until candy statistics from the other colleges
come in.
* * * * *
Women’s place is at home. Wives must make the home so attractive that
husbands will never want to go out evenings. Children must be kept off
the street. All very good; but how is the whole family to stay at home
at the same time in a city flat of the average size?
* * * * *
The moving-picture shows are making a specialty of films depicting the
newly enfranchised women of the Western States in the act of going to
the polls and voting, but strange to say there is not a single
illustration of the awful things that were going to happen when this
catastrophe took place. It seems odd that after the terrible predictions
of fifty years the scene should look much like a procession going to
church—except that there are more men in it.
* * * * *
“How To Be ‘Smart’ Though Middle-aged” is the title of an article that
is going the rounds. The smartest thing the middle-aged can do is to
recognize that they are middle-aged and act accordingly, and this
applies to men as well as women.
* * * * *
No woman nowadays makes the promise to obey in the marriage service with
the slightest intention of keeping it, so why compel her to prevaricate
to the minister? Let her reserve that privilege to use with her husband.
* * * * *
The courts of Missouri have decided that a husband cannot be arrested
for burning up his wife’s clothes, as they are his, not hers; but after
his wife learned of this decision the man soon found himself in jail for
disturbing the peace.
* * * * *
“Man is the natural protector of woman,” shouted several thousand of the
species as they attacked the suffrage parade in Washington. “Man is the
natural protector of woman,” echoed the policemen as they turned their
backs.
* * * * *
The “antis” ask why the suffragists are not afraid to trust men with the
musket in time of war, but are afraid to trust them with the ballot?
Bless you, nobody wants to take the ballot away from them; but the
suffragists can’t see how a man can represent more than one person with
one ballot, and, besides, some of them haven’t got any man, and they
think it isn’t fair to be deprived of both the man and the vote.
* * * * *
Recently, at an anti-suffrage meeting in one of those wonderfully
progressive towns for which Connecticut is noted, forty ladies signed a
remonstrance against giving other women something which this immortal
forty did not want for themselves. Where was Ali Baba with his oil can?
* * * * *
When the women watched that crowd of men in Madison Square Garden cheer
and howl and whoop and yell an hour and a half for one candidate, and
the next night a similar crowd go through the same performance the same
length of time for another candidate, they fully realized that women are
too emotional for political life.
* * * * *
A great editor criticises the Washington suffragists severely because
they reserved so many rooms for the out-of-town paraders that the
inaugural committee couldn’t find enough for its marchers. “They lost a
great opportunity to win the new administration by unselfishness and
sacrifice,” he said, and the women haven’t quit laughing yet.
* * * * *
The president of the Woman’s Club at Boise, Idaho, where they have had
equal suffrage for nearly twenty years, says that “nothing puts the fear
of God into the hearts of men like the ballot in the hands of women.”
Yes, a certain class of men feel much more comfortable to know that
women are using the beautiful, indirect influence of prayers and tears.
* * * * *
Sir Almoth Wright says the advocates of equal pay for women do not know
the commercial value of having the employe work shoulder to shoulder
with the employer. Yes? No? What about the good-looking stenographer?
* * * * *
The President of France is considering the proposal to decorate with the
Cross of the Legion of Honor the mother of twenty-two children.
Something that could be exchanged for twenty-two pairs of shoes would be
more appropriate.
* * * * *
Seven girl students of Leland Stanford University have just been elected
to Phi Beta Kappa and not one of the boys, although they outnumber the
girls two to one. Comment would be impolite, not to say unfeeling.
* * * * *
New York women have announced that the day for women’s “auxiliaries” is
past, and Chicago women have given notice to the men of that city that
they will not serve on any more “sub” committees. Really, that
Declaration of Independence of 1776 begins to seem like rather a weak
document.
* * * * *
Perish the thought that a minister of the Gospel—and especially a
woman—should contest with a horse race! But when the Rev. Anna Shaw,
president of the National Suffrage Association, began speaking from an
automobile behind the grand-stand at the Wisconsin State Fair, the whole
crowd climbed down to hear her and forgot all about the races.
* * * * *
First fruits of woman suffrage! A San Francisco wife has just been
granted a divorce because her husband talked too much!
* * * * *
Dr. Mary Walker advises girls to put on trousers. They might not be so
pretty but they would certainly be more modest than those things women
are now wearing.
* * * * *
The scientific world is highly excited over the report of the birth of
an atom. Its chief interest to women is the effect it will have on their
getting the suffrage, as the public insists on connecting this in some
way with the birth rate.
* * * * *
The Buffalo _Express_, commenting on the public schools teaching boys to
sew, says: “Quite necessary! For how will the women of the future get
their gowns, if men do not learn to sew?” They can get them just as they
do now—from the male dressmakers who got onto the woman’s job as soon as
there was any money in it.
* * * * *
Women have a good deal to learn about politics. There was the woman
candidate for mayor of San Diego, who announced that her first act if
elected would be to put through an ordinance taxing bachelors. Naturally
the bachelors all voted against her; the benedicts did the same because
they didn’t want the bachelors to feel that there was such an easy
escape from marriage, and the women turned her down because they thought
she was quite capable of levying a tax on spinsters.
* * * * *
The public has borne with some fortitude the close-fitting garb of
women—it has had its compensations; but now that the National
Association of Clothing Designers has decreed that men’s clothes also
must be tight fitting—well, if the police fail to do their duty the
common people must rise up.
* * * * *
The Supreme Court of Illinois has decided that the women of that State
may vote for President but not for county commissioners. If they had a
choice, they would much prefer to vote for the commissioners, whose work
comes a great deal nearer home to them; but the party “bosses” would
rather trust them to vote for President as there is no local graft in
that office.
* * * * *
The national anti-suffrage president says, “The extent to which suffrage
agitation detracts from charitable enterprises is appalling.” How can
this be when that lady herself assures us that the suffragists represent
less than ten per cent. of the women? Ninety per cent. surely ought to
be sufficient to do the charitable work, if they can spare the time from
chasing after the suffragists.
* * * * *
Some men are organizing a pneumatic-tube system through which from a
central kitchen hot meals can be shot to any part of the city day or
night. Women sometimes wonder whether men intend to leave them any
domestic duties. About the only thing untouched is the nursery, but a
man has invented an electric cradle that rocks itself, so woman will
have to find some other way to move the world.
* * * * *
A Kansas City judge has ruled that under certain circumstances wives may
lie to their husbands. The latter never waited for any judicial
decision.
* * * * *
From the fuss made about Dr. Anna Shaw’s shaking her fist during a
suffrage speech one would think it was the size of a sledgehammer, while
really it is about as big as a little red apple.
* * * * *
A record has been unearthed in London, showing that women used to be
plumbers in 1500. Very likely; but that was before the business became
so profitable that only men were competent to engage in it.
* * * * *
The manager of the largest vaudeville circuit in the country has issued
orders that there must be no more jokes at the expense of the
woman-suffrage movement. Lovers of humor need not be discouraged,
however, for the literary bureau of the Anti-Suffrage Association will
still continue to issue its bulletins.
* * * * *
Dr. Geisel, president of Shorter College, Georgia, says that
institutions of higher education interfere with women’s natural destiny.
Chancellor Day, of Syracuse University, says if college women don’t
marry it is because their marriage standard is higher and they are not
finding men fitted for fatherhood. As all the colleges can’t be
abolished in order to lower women’s ideal of marriage, it looks as if
something will have to be done to bring men up to the new standard.
* * * * *
Husband applied for a divorce because his wife was “absolutely
independent.” Judge granted it and he started off to find a dear little
dependent who would give him a sort of manly feeling.
* * * * *
King Alfonso is said to have become an advocate of woman’s rights under
the influence of his British Queen. Can’t she be spared long enough to
go home and try her hand on Cousin George?
* * * * *
Young and impecunious members of the nobility may now be rented out for
afternoon tea in London. This is not a bad use to make of them, but they
could command a higher price in New York and Washington.
* * * * *
Is one reason why so many men oppose woman suffrage because they are
afraid their wives would obey St. Paul’s injunction to ask of their
husbands at home when they wanted information and questions on political
issues might prove embarrassing?
* * * * *
At the suffrage hearing before the Massachusetts Legislature the “antis”
evidently got their Irish up, as Molly Maguire called equal suffrage
“the most deadly menace that ever faced the State,” and Joseph Murphy
said, “I am one of a family of fourteen children and my mother didn’t
need any vote to do it.” Perhaps it wouldn’t have been safe, as she was
such a “repeater;” but Pa Murphy’s chest must have swelled with pride
when he went to the polls on election morning and represented sixteen
people with one ballot.
* * * * *
“The Silent Woman,” an ancient play, has been resurrected, perhaps as a
reminder of something gone forever. The anti-suffragists used to claim
that title, but if they are not making as much noise as the suffragists
nowadays it is only because there are not nearly so many of them.
* * * * *
At the recent election in Louisiana the men voted down a constitutional
amendment to allow women to serve on school and charity boards, and the
election officers in New Orleans were so afraid it might slip through
that seventeen were indicted for “padding” the returns against it.
Doubtless they intended this simply as an act of chivalry.
* * * * *
Governor Marshall, of Indiana, said recently to the Council of Women in
Indianapolis, “There is not a working woman in this city doing an honest
work who is not more important to this State than the Governor.” Funny
he should talk like that when the women there can’t vote; but he only
confirmed the suspicions they had had for some time.
* * * * *
The Anti-Suffrage Association sends out a press bulletin saying, “We
object to being called away from uplifting the world through the old
channels of education and religion to assist in uplifting it by the
doubtful channels of the ballot box.” They need not leave their job for
it is such a big one that if derricks are erected in both channels it
will still be necessary to call for outside help.
* * * * *
Prime Minister Asquith is caricatured by _Punch_ as Mona Lisa with the
smile that won’t come off. To the suffragists he looks more like the cat
that swallowed the canary.
* * * * *
“The clinging-vine type of women will continue to multiply,” we are
assured by those who claim to know. Well, that is a very good business,
since they don’t seem to be able to do anything else.
* * * * *
In all the New York public-school gymnasiums the number of girls exceeds
the number of boys. This does not indicate that the girls are preparing
to be militant suffragists but only that the boys would rather smoke
cigarettes and shoot craps.
* * * * *
Secretary of State Bryan says he wouldn’t feel sure of the support of
women as they did not vote for him when he was a candidate; but he must
remember that he hadn’t discovered then that he was in favor of woman
suffrage.
* * * * *
Admiral Chadwick’s recent assertion that “women teachers develop in boys
a feminized, emotional, illogical manhood” is receiving some support
from great editors. It is very peculiar that mothers have always been
taught that their finest work is to train their boys for the highest
duties of citizenship, and yet if these same boys spend a few hours each
day in school with women teachers they are ruined for life. Is it only
when there is a salary attached that a woman’s teaching becomes
dangerous?
* * * * *
That ancient skull found in England proves conclusively, so the
anthropologists say, that man had reason before he spoke. Well, well!
What a revolution has taken place since those prehistoric days!
* * * * *
A Paris jeweler has invented a ring to be worn by the divorced—two
marriage rings intertwined in the form of a cross. Very inappropriate,
when the wearers have just laid down their cross.
* * * * *
A Russian woman has just started to explore an Arabian desert of
thousands of miles, which no European has ever entered. How thankful she
should be that the heavy burden of casting a ballot has not been imposed
on her!
* * * * *
The first thing the women of Oregon did with their brand-new ballots was
to cast them against letting foreigners vote on their “first papers,”
which they had always done. Did somebody remark that women are too
radical to be trusted with the suffrage?
* * * * *
A Baptist minister in Chicago has opened in his church a school of home
training to make women more desirable for wives. That school had better
be closed by the authorities for women are so “desirable” already that
school boards, theater managers, telegraph and telephone heads, even the
government, are requiring those they employ to guarantee that they will
not marry within a specified time. A school to make women less
desirable—that is the need of the hour.
* * * * *
A Cincinnati legislator has introduced a bill for a commission to
“prescribe the fashions to be worn by women in the State of Ohio.” One
good thing about it would be that when it came to appointing officials
to enforce the rules not an office-seeker in the State would be left
without a job.
* * * * *
New York’s commissioner of corrections suggests that the one hundred and
seventy-five wife beaters on Blackwell’s Island be put to making
creosoted paving blocks. Good idea! The perfume will remind them of what
awaits them after their exit from this world of inadequate punishment.
* * * * *
That Englishman who was put into jail because he had no money to pay the
taxes on his wife’s property must have a poor opinion of the law-making
ability of his sex. Women couldn’t do any worse, unless they condemned
the poor husband to death.
* * * * *
The Norwegian Parliament first gave municipal suffrage to women
taxpayers; then gave them the Parliamentary franchise; then it removed
the taxpaying qualification for the municipal vote. Its next step was to
make them eligible for all political offices. Then it granted them the
right to speak in the State church, but would not allow them to preach;
now it proposes to let them hold the Church offices. Lastly it gave the
complete franchise to all women. There are only a few more inches to cut
off and the State is bearing up as well as could be expected.
* * * * *
The young men of Cairo who have returned from European universities have
begun a crusade to “emancipate” the Moslem women from the veil. Let us
believe they are wholly disinterested.
* * * * *
A woman who kept a grocery wanted to decorate her show windows in the
anti-suffrage colors but she had no American Beauty roses, so she put in
a lot of red lobsters. To make it still more appropriate she should have
added some clams.
* * * * *
The English government has just raised the pay of the men clerks in the
post-offices and reduced the pay of the women clerks to half that
received by the men. To be sure hatchets are no argument but sometimes
they express people’s feelings better than logic.
* * * * *
“Since the Prince of Wales left his mother,” say the press dispatches,
“he has become a ‘man’ in the best sense of the word. He drives his car
beyond the speed limit and is rarely seen without a pipe in his mouth.”
How fine! It shows that he is rapidly developing the qualities necessary
for a great ruler.
* * * * *
Seven men in one precinct in a Kansas town had to get the election
officers to mark their ballots, and all voted against the woman-suffrage
amendment. Those officials were still more obliging in some of the
Michigan towns, it is said, for they gathered up all the ballots that
were left over and voted them against this amendment.
* * * * *
The anti-suffragists opened their campaign at Sherry’s, in New York, the
other day; but this does not necessarily imply that they used a
corkscrew.
* * * * *
In many places the liquor sellers are complaining that the
moving-picture shows, where a man can take his wife and children for
five or ten cents, are ruining their business. Anything that keeps a man
with his family is an enemy to the saloon.
* * * * *
The latest census report shows that there are about thirty thousand more
divorced women than men in the United States. This seems to indicate
that the men get back into the married state as quickly as possible but
the women know when they have had enough.
* * * * *
The wild outcry of the anti-suffragists against “feminism” indicates
that they prefer masculinism for women. Let them have it, for luckily
they are not of enough importance for all womankind to be judged by what
they do and say, as is the case with the suffragists.
* * * * *
The California papers congratulate the State that, “whereas it was in a
ferment of suffrage meetings two years ago, now there is not the
slightest turmoil but all is peace.” This should be a lesson to other
States where the turmoil is getting worse every day and there is just
about as much peace in sight as there is in Europe.
* * * * *
Help, help! The pastor of the First Spiritual Church in Worcester,
Mass., has to appeal to the police for protection from “lovesick maidens
and scheming mothers.” He’d better go West, where there is not such a
scarcity of men and women can be more particular.
* * * * *
People used to object to letting women vote because of the publicity it
would give them; but nowadays when one sees the public stunts of the
suffragists trying to get the ballot and of the “antis” trying to
prevent it, he devoutly wishes that they might all be made voters at
once so they could retire to the privacy of their homes and families.
* * * * *
That big New York hotel that had to change its dainty, esthetic liquor
buffet for women into a common bar for men, because the women would not
patronize it, seems to prove two things; first, that the stories of the
drink habit among women are greatly exaggerated; and, second, that it’s
always safe to start another bar for men.
* * * * *
The Anti-Suffrage Society of Washington passed at vote of censure on the
Young Women’s Christian Association of that city because it allowed the
delegation of working women who called on the President to have a
paid-for luncheon in its headquarters. The members of the association
felt so badly about it that they immediately proceeded to give a circus.
* * * * *
South Carolina has employed three policewomen. Well, if the men insist
on electing an individual like Cole Blease for Governor, it’s up to the
women to protect the State.
* * * * *
The new Socialist member of Congress says he will try to have a law
passed that no workingman shall marry a wage-earning woman who has not a
union card. Wouldn’t a marriage certificate be a union card?
* * * * *
“For six thousand years men have been trying to run the world,” said
Speaker Clark, “and some people think they have made a bad mess of it.”
If it had been for only that brief space of time women might be willing
to let them keep on trying awhile longer.
* * * * *
The favorite newspaper paragraph now in referring to the cheap
suffrage-parade hats assures women that if they will wear
forty-eight-cent hats all the year round they can have anything they
want. Well, the first thing they want is for men to set the example by
wearing hats at the same price.
* * * * *
The Denver police records show that married men are far more law-abiding
than unmarried, and the New York City superintendent of schools says the
married women teachers are much more amenable to discipline than the
spinsters. There seems to be no doubt that marriage is the best known
means of saving grace for the unregenerate.
* * * * *
They say that gymnasium statistics show a steady increase in the size of
women’s waists. In that case something should be done to bring about a
steady increase in the length of men’s arms.
* * * * *
The anti-suffragists are having a good deal of fun because the papers
tell of a California mayor who does the family washing. Maybe he runs a
laundry. Men are doing most of the family washings nowadays.
* * * * *
Andre de Fouquieres, who has come over from Paris to teach American men
how to dress by lecturing at afternoon teas, says, “New York is the
finishing touch of the world.” Glad it looks that way. So many seem to
come over for the purpose of making a finishing touch.
* * * * *
An eminent London scientist asserts that the points which distinguish
the human race from the beasts are more marked in woman than in man.
“For instance,” he says, “her ear is more human than a man’s.” Maybe so;
certainly she doesn’t so often show the length of it.
* * * * *
The Fathers’ and Mothers’ Club of one of the Eastern cities farthest
along in the science of eugenics has issued instructions to young men
contemplating matrimony to study the mother, as the daughter is likely
to be an exact copy. Suppose a girl is advised to study the father on
the same principle—won’t that put an end to marriage?
* * * * *
Now the suffrage societies of Canada have united in a National Franchise
Association and Great Britain will soon have another lot of daughters
who can outvote their mother.
* * * * *
Congress is considering a bill to give the suffrage to the men of Porto
Rico. Can it be that there are any males under the jurisdiction of the
United States without a vote? Shelve all other measures before Congress
until this terrible wrong has been righted!
* * * * *
The women who have been running for office in those Western States have
drawn the line on kissing babies, saying that they are too well versed
in hygiene to commit that crime. As has been remarked, women are
entirely too much given to sentiment to be allowed to vote.
* * * * *
Anti-suffrage literature declares that the enfranchisement of women will
“efface the natural differentiation of function between the two sexes.”
Oh, no, it won’t! Nature can’t be effaced and the differentiation will
go right on differentiating just the same.
* * * * *
What a queer way they have in Great Britain of encouraging matrimony!
There are about a million more women than men, but when the Canadian
government begged that some of the women might be sent over as wives for
the English immigrants, the authorities in England vetoed it because the
women were needed to work in the cotton mills.
* * * * *
Perhaps in the U.S. women should not vote because they cannot fight but
the man in England who said this would have to run to cover.
* * * * *
“We believe that political equality will deprive us of special
privileges hitherto accorded us by law,” cry the anti-suffragists. How
very sad! Will they please name one or two special privileges that the
women have lost in those States where they can vote?
* * * * *
The government is closing all the saloons on the reservations to protect
the Indians, and the Southern Legislatures are passing drastic
temperance laws to protect the negroes. It seems to be left to the women
to demand measures for the protection of the white men.
* * * * *
A Missouri legislator has introduced a bill that the buttons on the back
of a woman’s dress shall be as large as a silver quarter. Some time when
those women legislators out West cannot find anything else to do they
will introduce a bill that men shall cease wearing any buttons at all on
the back and cuffs of their coat.
* * * * *
The Anti-Suffrage Association is to be congratulated on the latest
contribution to its literature by Abdul Hamid, the deposed Sultan of
Turkey. There is such a similarity between his opinions on woman
suffrage and Mrs. Humphry Ward’s that it certainly is either a case of
plagiarism or two souls with but a single thought.
* * * * *
Harvard University has taken off the ban and allowed a speech on woman
suffrage within its sacred walls. If the ban had remained on a little
longer it would not have been necessary to take it off.
* * * * *
Almost the last words of Baroness von Suttner before she sailed for home
were that there never would be peace here until the women had a vote.
The men could have told her that as soon as she landed in the United
States.
* * * * *
For many days before Easter, the dispatches said, the Cleveland
suffragists trimmed hats to be sold for the “cause.” Go to! It would be
utterly impossible for a woman to believe in suffrage and know how to
trim a hat.
* * * * *
Kansas women say that they have long been accustomed to masculine
chivalry, as they have had the municipal vote for a quarter of a
century; but since they got the full suffrage they are so overwhelmed
with attentions from the men that they can hardly resist a political
flirtation.
* * * * *
Strange, isn’t it, how Government offices, public schools and the rest
penalize matrimony, and then when women ask for the suffrage the
opponents shriek aloud that it will destroy the desire for marriage?
Doesn’t it ever occur to them that the loss of all these business
opportunities might have this effect? Husbands are nice, but oh, you
salary!
* * * * *
Beatrice Harraden learned at a recent legislative hearing in Westminster
that “the women impressed the statesmen but the statesmen did not in the
least impress the women.” We have always seen this in our country but we
never let the “statesmen” know it.
* * * * *
The belated action of the New York anti-suffragists, in opening their
little headquarters on Fifth Avenue a few days before the big suffrage
parade “to offset any impression it might make,” recalls the careful
housewife, who exclaimed when she saw Niagara Falls, “Oh, that reminds
me—I left the kitchen faucet running!”
* * * * *
It is perfectly proper for mothers of wealth and social position to
employ nurses and governesses for their children; but when a business or
professional woman does the same, society at large goes into hysterics
over her poor, neglected offspring. If the mother is off playing bridge
and attending “teas,” it is all right; but if she is away earning a
salary it is all wrong.
* * * * *
When women wanted to be customs inspectors the authorities said they
could never, never climb the ladder on the side of a ship. Strange to
say the two women who demonstrated that it could easily be done were
both daughters of Presidents. It is odd how many obstacles can be placed
in the way when a woman wants a job with a salary attached!
* * * * *
Amherst College is to establish a chair of common sense. Great pity that
college isn’t co-educational!
* * * * *
“When women are elected to Congress, there will be no more secret
caucuses,” says a great daily. Since when have there been any of that
kind?
* * * * *
School inspectors in Russia have issued an order that no married woman
teacher can have more than two children. They have heard about the New
York board of education and gone them two better.
* * * * *
“Suffrage was begotten in Utah and Idaho by Mormonism,” says a syndicate
article sent forth by the Pennsylvania “anti” association. Oh, no; it
was “begotten” in Wyoming, when there wasn’t a Mormon in the Territory.
* * * * *
His name is Abnel—a German doctor who has made a discovery. “The world’s
well-being is threatened by the adoration of suffragists for dissolute
men. The clinging, domestic women are naturally attracted to strong
men.” Of course—the men would have to be strong to support their weight.
“But the women politicians have lost the selective instinct,” he says.
“They flutter toward the Don Juans like moths and are consumed before
they realize their own folly.” Yes, people notice this in those Western
States—a perfect holocaust as soon as women get the ballot. That is why
the Don Juans always vote against it—they would feel so dreadfully
helpless with all the women politicians fluttering toward them in order
to be consumed.
* * * * *
Which is likely to do more damage to the sweetly feminine character—to
stand at the polls all day and hand out coffee to voters, or to deposit
a ballot and then go home and attend to woman’s legitimate business?
* * * * *
A cardinal in Venice denounced the tight skirts women are wearing and
ordered them to do penance. They hastened to church the next day for the
purpose, but were obliged to perform their devotions standing!
* * * * *
The New Thought devotees have thought out a new kind of marriage—“a
mating of harmonious vibrations.” But that has been the trouble with
marriage in late years—the parties have vibrated among too many people.
* * * * *
A Chicago suffrage club has just been formed, to which only young,
unmarried women are eligible. It seems only yesterday that girls were
solemnly admonished that if they advocated woman suffrage no man would
marry them, but they can’t be scared that way now.
* * * * *
Richard Le Gallienne has gone Omar Khayyam’s “a loaf of bread, a jug of
wine and thou, singing in the wilderness underneath a bough,” one
better. He will be perfectly satisfied “if only she and I can go,
walking forever through the snow.” Maybe he would, but we think the lady
would want something warmer even than Richard’s poetry.
* * * * *
There was an increase of fifteen per cent. in marriages in Chicago the
first six months after the Legislature granted woman suffrage. That may
not have been the cause but if the figures had gone the other way there
would have had to be a special session to repeal it.
* * * * *
The New York _Times_ suggests that “the suffragists have the right of
petition and by exercising it in a proper manner they may advance their
cause.” They have been doing this for sixty-five years. If there is any
new style in petitions they will be very thankful for a diagram and a
paper pattern.
* * * * *
Anti-suffragists are protesting against having that vote for suffrage at
the biennial called unanimous. All right; say that twenty-one hundred
votes were cast, and seventy of them were negative—thirty in favor to
one opposed—and that is just about the way the woman’s vote would stand
throughout the country.
* * * * *
Pittsburgh is to have a saloon exclusively for women, as they have been
crowded out of the others by the men. Promoters of the new idea should
go to New York and inquire at the Hotel Vanderbilt, which started out
with a beautiful “bar” for women, but a month later it was closed for
lack of patronage and reopened as a much needed annex to the large and
flourishing bar for men.
* * * * *
Prof. Spencer Baldwin, of Boston University, is an anti-suffragist. He
doesn’t like the new woman—“androgynous hybrid,” that is what he calls
her. It’s up to the professor to find an anti-toxin.
* * * * *
In the United States the women say they won’t pay their taxes if they
can’t vote and in London they say they won’t pay their rent. Our
government can compromise with them by giving the suffrage but what is
their landlord to do?
* * * * *
The head of the “vocational bureau” in Boston thinks the time may come
when graduation certificates in fathercraft and mothercraft will be
issued by the public schools. But if the holders don’t get aboard the
matrimonial craft what good will these do?
* * * * *
Hampton Court has been closed to the public for a long time through fear
of the suffragettes; but the government has at last evolved a scheme—it
will open the palace and charge a shilling admission! How clever! But
suppose a suffragette should be able to borrow a shilling?
* * * * *
Woman suffragists campaigning in Wisconsin came across a man whose wife
has supported the family for years by walking the tight rope, and he
announced that he should vote against the suffrage amendment because a
woman’s place is at home. There are a vast number just like him there,
judging from the election returns.
* * * * *
Under a woman school superintendent in Rowan County, Kentucky, the
number of illiterates in two years has been reduced from 1,152 to 23,
and these are physically incompetent. One of the great dangers of equal
suffrage is that women might aspire to hold office!
* * * * *
The women of Nevada have been holding a “sacrifice week” to raise money
for their suffrage campaign, as also have women in the neighboring
States to help them. By the way, can anybody recall any special
sacrifice to earn the right that has been made by the men who are now
doing the voting in the United States?
* * * * *
A Johns Hopkins professor says that in twenty years’ experience with
over a thousand graduates of both sexes he has failed to discover the
inferior brains of women which he hears so much about. He should apply
to the anti-suffragists, who not only can tell him all about them but
can furnish him with plenty of specimens.
* * * * *
Secretary Daniels declares that “bachelors are encumberers of the earth”
and offers the use of the United States navy to scatter their ranks. As
the most of them are land animals the services of the War Department
would be more effective. Meanwhile it is safe to say that few bachelors
pass the age of fifty without the inner consciousness that they ought to
be blown up or sent to the bottom of the sea.
* * * * *
At the next election after California women were enfranchised, the vote
of the State increased 313,883. As has often been remarked, women
wouldn’t use the suffrage if they had it.
* * * * *
“The men are to put on their clothes with a shoe horn,” is the latest
fashion edict. We shall not believe it till we see it, and even then we
shall look the other way.
* * * * *
Some “bootleggers” who are to be tried before a jury of women in
Colorado are said to be feeling very anxious. Why so? The objection to
women as judges and jurors has always been that they are too sentimental
and emotional to mete out justice.
* * * * *
The illogical minds of women cannot comprehend why it is, when a
congressman’s constituents indicate that they don’t want him to
represent them in the government any longer, that same government
immediately puts him on the pay roll in another place.
* * * * *
The male editors of the two leading fashion magazines are using columns
of space in argument whether the women of this country shall adopt
American or French styles. The National Association of Master Bakers, at
their recent convention, adopted a resolution in favor of woman
suffrage, giving as a reason that if women go into politics they won’t
have time to stay at home and bake bread. It is really outrageous the
way women are crowding into the fields of labor that belong to men!
* * * * *
“It is a wise child that knows its own father,” but in France they have
just passed a law which will permit the mother to make some inquiries.
* * * * *
The new invention of making rubber tires out of a substance extracted
from whiskey suggests that it would be an excellent thing on most of the
“joy” rides if the whiskey was in the tires instead of the automobile.
* * * * *
The public-school teachers who want the suffrage have raised the cry,
“Can disfranchised teachers train citizens?” Of course they can, so long
as they can be had for half the price that a man would charge for the
job.
* * * * *
A Democratic candidate for congressman-at-large in Illinois, who is an
anti-suffragist, is making his canvass on the platform: “A husband and a
home for every woman.” As over twenty-five hundred husbands in Chicago
alone last year abandoned their wives, he should add another plank that
if he is elected all husbands will stick to home and family.
* * * * *
Just as the Anti-Suffrage Association issued its bulletin announcing
that there was no favorable movement in the South, the Georgia
Federation of Labor strongly indorsed the suffragists and the Atlanta
_Constitution_ declared editorially, “Success seems about to crown their
efforts.” The antis are playing in hard luck; no sooner do they get
their type all nicely set up than the other side does something or other
that knocks it into “pi.”
* * * * *
One of those gifted male lecturers who know everything says, “We have
new models of automobiles every year; we should work out new models of
the antiquated family machine.” Go ahead; women have no objection as
long as they are permitted to sit at the steering wheel.
* * * * *
“Marse Henry” Watterson says he has found only three classes of women
who want the suffrage: “Those who wish to exploit their own interests,
those who are soured on life and the brainless sheep who think it is
fashionable.” Maybe it is like that in Kentucky, but the men in some
States have found several other kinds.
* * * * *
The “bachelor tax” which the Montana legislators want to impose varies
from $2.50 to $100 per annum, but the majority think $5 would be about
right. It seems like cruelty to animals to put on any tax at all when
there are more than twice as many men as women over twenty-one years old
in the State and those across the border are in just as bad a fix.
* * * * *
Emile Deschamps tells us in his new book that the American woman cannot
keep her husband’s love because she does not return it. But if she
returned it of course she couldn’t keep it. Funny how many things these
foreigners find out about American women never discovered by American
men, who seem to be well enough satisfied not to go wife hunting in any
other country.
* * * * *
Almost every organization in the “campaign” States which stands for
anything that ought to be stood for has indorsed the suffrage amendment.
Will the antis name one which has declared against it—that is, has
declared publicly?
* * * * *
It’s funny how every woman who does anything nowadays, from climbing a
steeple to taking the prize at a beauty show, is described as “a leading
suffragist.” Don’t the “antis” ever get married or die or have triplets
or do anything worth notice?
* * * * *
One striking difference between the United States Senate and the British
House of Commons is that when a deputation of women suffragists make a
call the Senators receive them with open arms and the Commoners shout
for the police.
* * * * *
The nurses who cared for Mr. Roosevelt in the Chicago hospital have been
so deluged with offers of marriage they have had to go into seclusion.
It’s such a very funny way men have of showing their appreciation of a
woman by offering to marry her!
* * * * *
The women in China, it is said, have now advanced so far that they are
held accountable for their crimes instead of their male relatives. Here,
too. It used to be the law in many of our States that a wife could not
be punished for a crime committed in the presence of her husband. Having
a husband was considered sufficient punishment for her—or at least that
seemed to be just as good a reason as any for the law.
* * * * *
Captain Amundson, the antarctic discoverer, who comes from Norway where
women vote, says of the English suffragettes: “They are quite right, and
I’d like to help them in their fight for freedom.” The captain had
better confine himself to easy jobs like finding the South Pole.
* * * * *
The anti-suffrage headquarters in Trenton, N. J., have a big placard in
the window, asking, “Why the Increase in Juvenile Crime in Denver?”
Because, according to the chief of police, “juvenile crime in Denver has
decreased nearly two hundred per cent. in the last ten years”—that’s
why. It is amazing how the anti-suffragists manage to acquire so much
misinformation.
* * * * *
In Colonel Roosevelt’s latest pronunciamento on the question of
suffrage, he says that he “always believed it exactly as much the right
of women as men, but he only favored it ‘tepidly’ until his association
with such women as Jane Addams,” etc. Is the colonel quite sure that he
was not slightly influenced by those 2,000,000 women out West with the
vote already in their hands?
* * * * *
At the recent suffrage debate in Congress a great deal was said about
women “trailing their skirts in the mire of politics” by some of the
befo’-the-wah members. Evidently the old gentlemen hadn’t learned that
trailing skirts went out of fashion years ago and now the men can’t make
the political mud deep enough to touch the hem of the up-to-date
dresses.
* * * * *
The “antis” appeal to the legislators to “listen to logic instead of the
dropping of ballots.” Impossible! Compared with the thud of those
ballots all other noises sound like utter silence.
* * * * *
Grand opera was sung to fourteen lions at the zoo in Berlin and they
didn’t do any violence to the singers. Audiences in many countries have
been just as forbearing.
* * * * *
A society has been organized in New York to arouse in fathers more
interest in their children. Perhaps they have already sufficient
interest but in many cases it has to be spread out over such a large
surface.
* * * * *
Miss Dora Keen, the Pennsylvania woman who recently climbed to the top
of Harvard Glacier in Alaska believes that she has the physical strength
to cast a ballot, but the men of her State insist that she must stay at
home and let them protect her from being jostled at the polls.
* * * * *
All sorts of explanations have been made as to why those Kansas women,
when they found they had won the suffrage, built a bonfire and threw
their old hats in it. Perhaps they concluded that, now they were voters,
they must act as silly as men. Maybe they had such swelled heads that
the hats wouldn’t fit. Possibly they thought they could get new ones on
election bets. But most likely they only wanted to show that now their
hats are in the ring and they are ready for the fray.
* * * * *
The _Woman’s Journal_ says the devil and the anti-suffragists will be
busy all summer. Why both?
* * * * *
Now 12,000 bakers are going on a strike. It didn’t used to be that way
when the nation’s wives and mothers baked the bread.
* * * * *
A National Desertion Bureau has been incorporated to try to settle all
the domestic quarrels in the country. There won’t be enough of that
bureau left to kindle a fire on a marriage altar.
* * * * *
“Women must not have the suffrage,” says an authorized document of the
antis, “because Max Eastman’s wife goes by her maiden name.” Where does
she “go?” That is much more to the point, if she is to decide the
question.
* * * * *
“On one side,” says a Pennsylvania official in the Anti-Suffrage
Association, “are the mother and the home; on the other the woman
seeking the place man occupies as the framer of constitutions and the
administrator of civil-government.” Seems as if we know of several men
who don’t frame constitutions or administer any kind of government, and
a good many women who can’t stay on the side of the home because they
have to go out and earn the money to have a home. Men and women can’t be
divided like goats and sheep, and if they could, there is no valid
reason why the voting booths should all be on one side of the line.
* * * * *
There is a great cry in Washington about retiring the superannuated
clerks for the good of the service. What is impairing the service is the
large number of inefficient chiefs of departments who are drawing big
salaries while their poorly paid women assistants do the work.
* * * * *
For the second time a Radcliffe girl has won the $100 prize open to
students of all colleges for the best essay on municipal government. Oh,
yes, women may be very good on the theory, but only men have the
practical knowledge. Just observe what a shining success they have made
of city governments!
* * * * *
The way women will lose the respect of men when they get a vote was
illustrated in Arizona, where as soon as women were enfranchised the men
nominated the president of the Suffrage Association for State senator,
and she received six hundred more votes than any other candidate on the
ticket.
* * * * *
_Votes for Women_ says that the Peers, when they argued against woman
suffrage, should have been clothed in skins with feathers in their hair,
and Lord Curzon, when he moved the rejection of the bill, should have
begun by dancing around the woolsack and singing an incantation. We must
protest against this libel on the American Indian; he would scorn to
take an Englishman’s attitude against the rights of women.
* * * * *
The State of Washington has the lowest death rate of any in the country;
New Hampshire the highest. Moral—Go West, where women vote.
* * * * *
There have been but four “champion” typewriters, and three of these were
women. As soon as the machine was invented women were at the keyboard,
and yet you hear men operators complaining that women have “usurped”
their positions!
* * * * *
When that International Congress of Women Voters meets in San Francisco
next summer, there will be a fine chance to observe how the suffrage has
unsexed women and destroyed the feminine instincts in at least nine
countries.
* * * * *
Whenever anybody issues the edict that women have not the physical
strength to vote some of them immediately shin up a flagpole on a
fifty-story building and take a header off the Brooklyn Bridge for a
moving-picture show, loop the loop in an airship and climb the highest
mountain in the world.
* * * * *
Civil Service Commissioner McIlhenny says the women government employes
may march in the suffrage parade as individuals but not as clerks.
Thanks Mr. Commissioner! That is what the suffragists are asking for—to
be considered as individuals instead of belonging to somebody or
something. But they can’t join a suffrage club, he says. As the man in
prison answered his lawyer who said, “They can’t put you in jail for
that”—“They already hev.”
* * * * *
An anti-Tammany bureau of a thousand speakers is being organized in New
York to talk the “tiger” to death. Right there is where they need the
help of women.
* * * * *
Medical statistics from Paris announce that men show most brilliancy
from forty to fifty-six. This holds out a great deal of hope for a lot
of men we know who are under forty.
* * * * *
“There is no reform legislation in any suffrage State which is not
duplicated in those where women cannot vote,” says the “antis.” If that
is so they will have to find some other excuse for beating the
suffragists to the polls as soon as they get a chance.
* * * * *
The United States Senate has made an appropriation to erect a splendid
memorial in Washington in recognition of the service rendered by women
during the Civil War. By all means; and then don’t deny the franchise to
women because they cannot serve their country in time of war.
* * * * *
The Women’s Political Association of Australia has called upon its
national Parliament to protect the political rights of the women of that
country, who become disfranchised the moment they take up a residence in
any other part of the British empire, while men continue to vote. Here,
too! Help for the women voters of twelve States, who, when they go to
live in any of the other thirty-six, are reduced to the political level
of the idiots, insane and criminal.
* * * * *
Shall women propose? Well, they have a good deal of nerve nowadays, but
hardly enough to say to a man, “Please take me and support me for the
rest of my life!” They must first be financially independent and then
somehow they seem to lose interest in the matter.
* * * * *
When Utah’s electoral college met to cast the vote of the State for
President and Vice-President, its members selected the one woman elector
to carry the result to Washington. Those Western States are constantly
giving just such examples as this of the way men lose respect for women
when they can vote and hold office.
* * * * *
In all of the Eastern cities thousands of children are kept out of
school because there are no seats for them. Does any one believe this
would be the case if women handled the school funds? A good many useless
officials who are now holding down chairs would stand up and the school
children would have seats.
* * * * *
Another English woman heard from! “American men,” she says, “are
arrogant snobs, who think they are the salt of the earth.” That is a
much more alluring description than to call them spiritless creatures,
entirely dominated by women—the usual English idea. Whatever they are,
they suit American women and the English women can’t have them.
* * * * *
Mayor Mitchel ought to take it out on the powers that advised him to do
it. How was one so young to know that a gun could have such a powerful
back action?
* * * * *
Kansas suffragists declare they are not going to ask men for a penny to
carry on their campaign. Maybe not but husbands had better go to bed
with their clothes on.
* * * * *
A woman who has just returned to earth after a trance reports that she
saw some male angels but they had no wings. Possibly they had at one
time but found them inconvenient and passed them on to women, just as
here on earth they did with skirts.
* * * * *
“Do women realize,” says a writer in an anti-suffrage paper, “that as
they become self-supporting they deprive men of the right to support
them?” Don’t worry; men can always find women who are willing to be
supported—some of them find too many.
* * * * *
The National Women’s Trade Unions’ League and its various State
auxiliaries and all kinds of working women’s organizations are
continually passing resolutions for woman suffrage. On the other hand,
Dr. Katharine Bement Davis, superintendent of the Bedford Reformatory
for Women, says that her charges, almost to a woman, are opposed to it.
If a person is to be judged by the company she keeps, one hardly feels
like getting acquainted with the members of the Anti-Suffrage
Association.
* * * * *
It’s all right for the Kansas Legislature to have a woman
sergeant-at-arms, but it seems that her name ought not to be “Effie.” By
the way what does the sergeant have to do with her arms.
* * * * *
In the States where women can vote they have not exactly turned their
swords into plowshares but they have transformed their suffrage
societies into civic clubs, and instead of their begging men to give
them votes, the men are begging women for the votes they already hold in
their lily-white hands.
* * * * *
The Legislature of Alaska enfranchised women and then enacted a statute
declaring that “all laws which impose or recognize civil disability on a
wife that do not exist as to the husband are hereby repealed.” As the
“antis” are fond of saying, “Women must accept the suffrage at a
terrible sacrifice of the privileges they have enjoyed.”
* * * * *
History repeats itself. The Ceres Ladies’ Society, fifty years old—the
society, not the ladies—admitted a few men as a compliment and now has
filed an ouster against them because they usurped all the offices. Sixty
years ago Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed a women’s
temperance society and were persuaded to admit men, who at the first
election, got control of the offices. The two women walked out of the
society and out of the temperance movement straight into that for woman
suffrage. Men should have a care!
* * * * *
They say that such a crop of eels never has been known. It’s always like
that during the season of candidates.
* * * * *
According to the decision of the New York board of education, no woman
is fitted to teach children after she has had a child herself. Masculine
logic!
* * * * *
The latest scientific discovery is that on the right kind of food a hen
will lay a hundred per cent. more eggs. If she does the rooster will
crow himself to death.
* * * * *
The papers have given wide publicity to the Arkansas farmer who offers a
large porker to any one that will find him a wife. There is often an
exchange of that kind in marriage, and the wife gets it.
* * * * *
The “antis” have announced that in their New York headquarters they
“will overcome the yelling of the suffragists with exquisite music on
the harp and other stringed instruments.” At the same time the Illinois
hospital for the insane announces an arrangement to cure their patients
with music. There must have been collusion between the two. The methods
and talk of the antis for a long time have indicated that they thought
they were dealing with the feeble-minded if not the dangerously insane.
The experiments will be watched with interest but the antis should hurry
up, as the number of suffragists at large is rapidly increasing and it
will require a lot of music.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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