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 YorkTribunecongratulates 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 ChicagoAmericanallows 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 YorkTribunesays, “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 RenoGazettein 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 BuffaloExpress, 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 byPunchas 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 YorkTimessuggests 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 AtlantaConstitutiondeclared 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.