Part 6

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Just as the Anti-Suffrage Association issued its bulletin announcing that there was no favorable movement in the South, the Georgia Federation of Labor strongly indorsed the suffragists and the Atlanta _Constitution_ declared editorially, “Success seems about to crown their efforts.” The antis are playing in hard luck; no sooner do they get their type all nicely set up than the other side does something or other that knocks it into “pi.”

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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Almost every organization in the “campaign” States which stands for anything that ought to be stood for has indorsed the suffrage amendment. Will the antis name one which has declared against it—that is, has declared publicly?

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It’s funny how every woman who does anything nowadays, from climbing a steeple to taking the prize at a beauty show, is described as “a leading suffragist.” Don’t the “antis” ever get married or die or have triplets or do anything worth notice?

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One striking difference between the United States Senate and the British House of Commons is that when a deputation of women suffragists make a call the Senators receive them with open arms and the Commoners shout for the police.

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The nurses who cared for Mr. Roosevelt in the Chicago hospital have been so deluged with offers of marriage they have had to go into seclusion. It’s such a very funny way men have of showing their appreciation of a woman by offering to marry her!

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The women in China, it is said, have now advanced so far that they are held accountable for their crimes instead of their male relatives. Here, too. It used to be the law in many of our States that a wife could not be punished for a crime committed in the presence of her husband. Having a husband was considered sufficient punishment for her—or at least that seemed to be just as good a reason as any for the law.

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Captain Amundson, the antarctic discoverer, who comes from Norway where women vote, says of the English suffragettes: “They are quite right, and I’d like to help them in their fight for freedom.” The captain had better confine himself to easy jobs like finding the South Pole.

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The anti-suffrage headquarters in Trenton, N. J., have a big placard in the window, asking, “Why the Increase in Juvenile Crime in Denver?” Because, according to the chief of police, “juvenile crime in Denver has decreased nearly two hundred per cent. in the last ten years”—that’s why. It is amazing how the anti-suffragists manage to acquire so much misinformation.

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In Colonel Roosevelt’s latest pronunciamento on the question of suffrage, he says that he “always believed it exactly as much the right of women as men, but he only favored it ‘tepidly’ until his association with such women as Jane Addams,” etc. Is the colonel quite sure that he was not slightly influenced by those 2,000,000 women out West with the vote already in their hands?

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At the recent suffrage debate in Congress a great deal was said about women “trailing their skirts in the mire of politics” by some of the befo’-the-wah members. Evidently the old gentlemen hadn’t learned that trailing skirts went out of fashion years ago and now the men can’t make the political mud deep enough to touch the hem of the up-to-date dresses.

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The “antis” appeal to the legislators to “listen to logic instead of the dropping of ballots.” Impossible! Compared with the thud of those ballots all other noises sound like utter silence.

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Grand opera was sung to fourteen lions at the zoo in Berlin and they didn’t do any violence to the singers. Audiences in many countries have been just as forbearing.

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A society has been organized in New York to arouse in fathers more interest in their children. Perhaps they have already sufficient interest but in many cases it has to be spread out over such a large surface.

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Miss Dora Keen, the Pennsylvania woman who recently climbed to the top of Harvard Glacier in Alaska believes that she has the physical strength to cast a ballot, but the men of her State insist that she must stay at home and let them protect her from being jostled at the polls.

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All sorts of explanations have been made as to why those Kansas women, when they found they had won the suffrage, built a bonfire and threw their old hats in it. Perhaps they concluded that, now they were voters, they must act as silly as men. Maybe they had such swelled heads that the hats wouldn’t fit. Possibly they thought they could get new ones on election bets. But most likely they only wanted to show that now their hats are in the ring and they are ready for the fray.

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The _Woman’s Journal_ says the devil and the anti-suffragists will be busy all summer. Why both?

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Now 12,000 bakers are going on a strike. It didn’t used to be that way when the nation’s wives and mothers baked the bread.

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A National Desertion Bureau has been incorporated to try to settle all the domestic quarrels in the country. There won’t be enough of that bureau left to kindle a fire on a marriage altar.

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“Women must not have the suffrage,” says an authorized document of the antis, “because Max Eastman’s wife goes by her maiden name.” Where does she “go?” That is much more to the point, if she is to decide the question.

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“On one side,” says a Pennsylvania official in the Anti-Suffrage Association, “are the mother and the home; on the other the woman seeking the place man occupies as the framer of constitutions and the administrator of civil-government.” Seems as if we know of several men who don’t frame constitutions or administer any kind of government, and a good many women who can’t stay on the side of the home because they have to go out and earn the money to have a home. Men and women can’t be divided like goats and sheep, and if they could, there is no valid reason why the voting booths should all be on one side of the line.

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There is a great cry in Washington about retiring the superannuated clerks for the good of the service. What is impairing the service is the large number of inefficient chiefs of departments who are drawing big salaries while their poorly paid women assistants do the work.

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For the second time a Radcliffe girl has won the $100 prize open to students of all colleges for the best essay on municipal government. Oh, yes, women may be very good on the theory, but only men have the practical knowledge. Just observe what a shining success they have made of city governments!

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The way women will lose the respect of men when they get a vote was illustrated in Arizona, where as soon as women were enfranchised the men nominated the president of the Suffrage Association for State senator, and she received six hundred more votes than any other candidate on the ticket.

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_Votes for Women_ says that the Peers, when they argued against woman suffrage, should have been clothed in skins with feathers in their hair, and Lord Curzon, when he moved the rejection of the bill, should have begun by dancing around the woolsack and singing an incantation. We must protest against this libel on the American Indian; he would scorn to take an Englishman’s attitude against the rights of women.

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The State of Washington has the lowest death rate of any in the country; New Hampshire the highest. Moral—Go West, where women vote.

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There have been but four “champion” typewriters, and three of these were women. As soon as the machine was invented women were at the keyboard, and yet you hear men operators complaining that women have “usurped” their positions!

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When that International Congress of Women Voters meets in San Francisco next summer, there will be a fine chance to observe how the suffrage has unsexed women and destroyed the feminine instincts in at least nine countries.

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Whenever anybody issues the edict that women have not the physical strength to vote some of them immediately shin up a flagpole on a fifty-story building and take a header off the Brooklyn Bridge for a moving-picture show, loop the loop in an airship and climb the highest mountain in the world.

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Civil Service Commissioner McIlhenny says the women government employes may march in the suffrage parade as individuals but not as clerks. Thanks Mr. Commissioner! That is what the suffragists are asking for—to be considered as individuals instead of belonging to somebody or something. But they can’t join a suffrage club, he says. As the man in prison answered his lawyer who said, “They can’t put you in jail for that”—“They already hev.”

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An anti-Tammany bureau of a thousand speakers is being organized in New York to talk the “tiger” to death. Right there is where they need the help of women.

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Medical statistics from Paris announce that men show most brilliancy from forty to fifty-six. This holds out a great deal of hope for a lot of men we know who are under forty.

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“There is no reform legislation in any suffrage State which is not duplicated in those where women cannot vote,” says the “antis.” If that is so they will have to find some other excuse for beating the suffragists to the polls as soon as they get a chance.

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The United States Senate has made an appropriation to erect a splendid memorial in Washington in recognition of the service rendered by women during the Civil War. By all means; and then don’t deny the franchise to women because they cannot serve their country in time of war.

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The Women’s Political Association of Australia has called upon its national Parliament to protect the political rights of the women of that country, who become disfranchised the moment they take up a residence in any other part of the British empire, while men continue to vote. Here, too! Help for the women voters of twelve States, who, when they go to live in any of the other thirty-six, are reduced to the political level of the idiots, insane and criminal.

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Shall women propose? Well, they have a good deal of nerve nowadays, but hardly enough to say to a man, “Please take me and support me for the rest of my life!” They must first be financially independent and then somehow they seem to lose interest in the matter.

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When Utah’s electoral college met to cast the vote of the State for President and Vice-President, its members selected the one woman elector to carry the result to Washington. Those Western States are constantly giving just such examples as this of the way men lose respect for women when they can vote and hold office.

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In all of the Eastern cities thousands of children are kept out of school because there are no seats for them. Does any one believe this would be the case if women handled the school funds? A good many useless officials who are now holding down chairs would stand up and the school children would have seats.

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Another English woman heard from! “American men,” she says, “are arrogant snobs, who think they are the salt of the earth.” That is a much more alluring description than to call them spiritless creatures, entirely dominated by women—the usual English idea. Whatever they are, they suit American women and the English women can’t have them.

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Mayor Mitchel ought to take it out on the powers that advised him to do it. How was one so young to know that a gun could have such a powerful back action?

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Kansas suffragists declare they are not going to ask men for a penny to carry on their campaign. Maybe not but husbands had better go to bed with their clothes on.

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A woman who has just returned to earth after a trance reports that she saw some male angels but they had no wings. Possibly they had at one time but found them inconvenient and passed them on to women, just as here on earth they did with skirts.

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“Do women realize,” says a writer in an anti-suffrage paper, “that as they become self-supporting they deprive men of the right to support them?” Don’t worry; men can always find women who are willing to be supported—some of them find too many.

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The National Women’s Trade Unions’ League and its various State auxiliaries and all kinds of working women’s organizations are continually passing resolutions for woman suffrage. On the other hand, Dr. Katharine Bement Davis, superintendent of the Bedford Reformatory for Women, says that her charges, almost to a woman, are opposed to it. If a person is to be judged by the company she keeps, one hardly feels like getting acquainted with the members of the Anti-Suffrage Association.

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It’s all right for the Kansas Legislature to have a woman sergeant-at-arms, but it seems that her name ought not to be “Effie.” By the way what does the sergeant have to do with her arms.

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In the States where women can vote they have not exactly turned their swords into plowshares but they have transformed their suffrage societies into civic clubs, and instead of their begging men to give them votes, the men are begging women for the votes they already hold in their lily-white hands.

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The Legislature of Alaska enfranchised women and then enacted a statute declaring that “all laws which impose or recognize civil disability on a wife that do not exist as to the husband are hereby repealed.” As the “antis” are fond of saying, “Women must accept the suffrage at a terrible sacrifice of the privileges they have enjoyed.”

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History repeats itself. The Ceres Ladies’ Society, fifty years old—the society, not the ladies—admitted a few men as a compliment and now has filed an ouster against them because they usurped all the offices. Sixty years ago Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed a women’s temperance society and were persuaded to admit men, who at the first election, got control of the offices. The two women walked out of the society and out of the temperance movement straight into that for woman suffrage. Men should have a care!

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They say that such a crop of eels never has been known. It’s always like that during the season of candidates.

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According to the decision of the New York board of education, no woman is fitted to teach children after she has had a child herself. Masculine logic!

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The latest scientific discovery is that on the right kind of food a hen will lay a hundred per cent. more eggs. If she does the rooster will crow himself to death.

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The papers have given wide publicity to the Arkansas farmer who offers a large porker to any one that will find him a wife. There is often an exchange of that kind in marriage, and the wife gets it.

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The “antis” have announced that in their New York headquarters they “will overcome the yelling of the suffragists with exquisite music on the harp and other stringed instruments.” At the same time the Illinois hospital for the insane announces an arrangement to cure their patients with music. There must have been collusion between the two. The methods and talk of the antis for a long time have indicated that they thought they were dealing with the feeble-minded if not the dangerously insane. The experiments will be watched with interest but the antis should hurry up, as the number of suffragists at large is rapidly increasing and it will require a lot of music.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors. 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.