Part 5
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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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!”
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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.
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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!
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Amherst College is to establish a chair of common sense. Great pity that college isn’t co-educational!
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“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?
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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?
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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!
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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?