Part 2
“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.
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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.
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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.”
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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?
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The reformers say that when woman is economically independent she will be free to do the “proposing.” Perhaps then she won’t want to.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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!
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“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.
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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.
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The only “perfect woman” has been found at Cornell University. To find perfect ladies visit a bargain counter.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The anti-suffrage women are boasting of the cooperation they receive from men. Sure—they are playing the game for the men!
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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!
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Have a Father’s Day, by all means, if any of them feel slighted; but wouldn’t a “night” be more appropriate?
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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How could anybody wish the poor congressmen a Happy New Year when they had to begin it by voting on woman suffrage?
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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.
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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.
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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?”
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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