Part 30

Establishing a state home for Dependent, delinquent, and dependent children, three of the incorrigible children fully five members of the board of provided for by State Juvenile control to be women. A juvenile court and probation officer court with houses of detention in system. Child placed in care of each county with population over parents, probation officers, 100,000; probation officers in industrial school, or a counties with population over charitable association as the 25,000. Court sees best. Houses of detention in every city of first and second class, managed by board of five members, two of them women.

Requiring three of the six Visitation periodically by State members of the county visitors to Board of Charities and Board of be women. Visitors of all agencies having custody of delinquent or dependent children.

Making mother joint guardian of If husband unfit, wife has same children with the father. rights over child as father would have had. If wife helps support child, she has equal rights with husband; judges decide fitness of parents where question of it arises.

Raising the age of protection for Age of consent or protestation, girls to eighteen years. sixteen years.

Requiring one woman physician One female physician in each on the board of insane asylums. state hospital or asylum with female inmates; provision for women members of board of visitors of lunatic asylums; female attendants, paid by counties or poor districts, for all insane female persons in transit; police matron in Philadelphia county prison.

Establishing parental and truant Provision for institutions and schools; a state industrial home societies for delinquent and for girls, three of the five dependent children, also for members of board of control to be Houses of Refuge in Philadelphia women. and Western Pennsylvania; complete system of industrial schools, besides industrial education in public school system; provision for maintenance of children committed to industrial schools. Women eligible as one of two overseers of the poor in each county.

Making Colorado humane society a Humane societies throughout the state bureau for child and animal state for child and animal protection. protection.

Compulsory education for Compulsory education for all children, between 8 and 16, children of school age. Parents except those who are ill, or are and guardians failing to comply taught at home, and those over with school attendance law are 14 who have completed the punishable for a criminal eighth grade, or whose parents offense. need their help and support, and those children who must support themselves. [Are not some of these exemptions loopholes in the law? Ed.] Providing for examination of eyes, ears, teeth, and lungs of school children.

Making father and mother joint Father and mother hold by heirs of deceased child. entireties, with right of survivorship, real and personal properties of intestate child.

Establishing state traveling A free library commission library; library commission to created, and provisions made for consist of five women from the free libraries throughout the State Federation of Women's state in cities of first, second Clubs. and third classes and in boroughs, together with public school libraries, a state public library, and law libraries throughout the state.

Employing children under 14 in No minor under 14, and no mill, factory, or underground illiterate minor under 18, shall works punishable by imprisonment be employed in a factory, and fine. Children of 16 and workshop, store, mercantile under forbidden to work more than establishment, and so on. Minors six hours a day and not after 8 under 18 shall not be employed P. M. in any mill, factory, about blast furnaces, tanneries, store, or other occupation that electric wires, elevators, may be deemed unhealthful. Model railroads, vessels, or child labor law passed 1912, "one explosives. Minors over 14 who of the very best in the world." can read and write can be Illiterate workers under 16 must employed only in establishments go to night school. From 14 to 16 having proper sanitation, and in maximum is 54 hours a week, 9 which power machinery is not hours a day. used, or if used is safeguarded. No minor under 16 shall be employed unless employer keeps employment certificates and complete lists of minors so employed.

Meal hours of employed children regulated, as well as meal hours of all other employés.

Male minors under 16 and females under 18 forbidden employment between 9 P. M. and 6 A. M.

No woman shall work more than Seats provided for women employed eight hours a day at work in any establishment. requiring her to be on her feet; that is, in manufacturing, Sixty-hour-week and mechanical, or mercantile twelve-hour-day maximum for women establishments, laundries, and for minors under 16. hotels, and restaurants. Provisions for suitable wash and dressing rooms and lavatories for men and women in all establishments.

Employment of females prohibited Employment of women in and about in coal mines or coke offices mines or coal manufactories except as clerks. forbidden; women and male minors under 16 forbidden employment in mines; women and male minors under 14 forbidden to be employed on outside structures of mines, except for clerical work.

Requiring joint signature of Chattel mortgages do not exist. husband and wife to every chattel Earnings of a married woman, mortgage, sale of household whether as wages for labor, goods, or mortgage of a salary, property, business or homestead. Homestead, whether otherwise, are her own, inure to husband's or wife's, cannot be her separate benefit and are not sold without the consent of both. subject to levy by her husband. No assignment of wages by husband Wife must consent to conveyance is valid without wife's consent. of real estate by husband in order to bar her dower, and a mortgage requires her consent.

Criminal offense to contribute to Criminal offense to contribute to delinquency of a child; law delinquency of a child; penalty raising the delinquency age for of not more than $500 or girls. imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both.

Making it a misdemeanor to Provisions for support of every fail to support aged or infirm poor, blind, lame, and impotent parents. person unable to work, by his or her relatives, either children, grandchildren, parents, or grandparents; provisions for support of the wife's relatives, either children, grandchildren, parents or grandparents, who are poor, blind, lame, impotent, or unable to maintain themselves.

Abolishing the system of binding Provisions for binding out minors out girls committed to the maintained by charitable industrial school. Separate institutions, asylums, or industrial school for girls corporations, to suitable created. persons, without prejudicing rights of such institutions over the child.

The husband must support his wife If husband neglects or deserts and children under 16 (legitimate rights of trade by filing a or illegitimate); non-support is petition and securing a made an extraditable offense. certificate from the court. Her Parents liable for support of property is then her own children in State institutions. absolutely and exempt from all claims of husband or his creditors. Statute requires husband to support wife, and family; desertion a misdemeanor.

All policies of life insurance or annuities on the life of any person for benefit of wife or children or dependent relative are vested full and clear from all claims of creditors of such person.

Improved employers' liability law Employers' Liability act of 1907 passed in 1912. Assumption of allows recovery from employer for risk abolished except where injuries of employé, doing away remedying defect is employe's with the "fellow-servant" rule as chief duty. a defense.

A married woman has same right as unmarried person to acquire and dispose of property real and personal, with entire freedom of contract; but she may not mortgage or convey real property unless husband joins, and may not become indorser or surety for another.

Dower and curtesy abolished; The widow of an intestate who neither husband nor leaves issue has one-third of the wife may will away more than realty for life and one-third of half of his or her property the personalty absolutely. If without the other's consent; without issue, the widow has wife's will validated. $5,000 worth of real or personal estate, besides the widow's exemption of $300. If estate exceeds $5,000, she has one-half the remainder for life, and one-half the remaining personalty absolutely.

Four deputy factory inspectors Five of the thirty-nine deputy are required, one of them a factory inspectors must be women. woman.

Law providing for the care Institutions for care and of the feeble minded. School treatment of feeble minded and for the Mute and Blind is insane maintained throughout and declared to be an educational by the state. Institutions for institution. care and treatment of the deaf, dumb, blind, consumptive, epileptic, aged, indigent, orphan, pauper, and so on, maintained throughout and by the state, counties or municipalities.

While minor differences exist in this comparison, the picture as a whole does not show that the legislation protective of women and children in Colorado is greatly, if at all, in advance of that in the male-suffrage state of Pennsylvania. The American Vigilance Association calls Pennsylvania's laws on "white slavery" and disorderly houses "good," and Colorado's only "fair." Colorado created in 1913 a Minimum Wage Commission, thus coming abreast of male-suffrage Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania lacks such a commission. But a law establishing a minimum wage is open to the objection that it throws out of employment all who are incapable of earning that wage. It does not protect them in industry, it simply throws them upon the streets, thence to find their way into jails and poorhouses. Designed as a protective measure, it has yet to vindicate that purpose, and it seems to be adopted irrespective of the votes of women. Aside from this it seems clear that if there is any essential difference between the protective legislation of Colorado and Pennsylvania, it must lie in the degree with which the women's votes compel enforcement of the laws.

But just how effective do the suffragists themselves feel the women's vote to be in securing redress for their injuries? Do they trust it? Their chief grievance is the deprivation of the suffrage. The American Woman Suffrage Association says of this, nevertheless, that while woman must have the ballot on every other question, she cannot be trusted to wield it in deciding this most vital question of legal privilege; that only an electorate of men is qualified to decide it. The association is convinced that every improvement in woman's position thus far has been secured "not by a general demand from the majority of women, but by the arguments, entreaties and 'continual coming' of a persistent few." In the association's _Brief History_ of the suffrage movement it contends that the beneficial changes of the last half century in the laws, written and unwritten, relating to women have necessarily come by the influence of a few men and women. "Not one of them would have been made to this day if it had been necessary to wait until the majority of women asked for it," the association says. But that is an argument against the extension of the suffrage, which works only by majorities!

It is a valid argument, and it has historical facts in its support. Massachusetts in 1895 granted woman the right to vote on the question whether the municipal suffrage should be extended without distinction of sex. The suffragists made a vigorous campaign in that state. Only 4 per cent. of the women cared to go to the polls and record an affirmative vote. When human grievances have become intolerable, men have been willing to shed blood for their redress. This grievance of the suffragists cannot be very widespread or keenly felt, when they fail to persuade the women even to signify their protest.

She that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much. Mrs. George, speaking for the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, has presented to the woman suffrage committee of the Federal Senate the record of seventeen years' voting for school committees by the women of Massachusetts. During that time the registration showed but 4.8 per cent. of all the women of the state who were qualified to register and vote, and 2.1 per cent., less than one-half of them, actually got to the polls. Mrs. George obtained from the town clerk of Dedham, Mass., the official list of male and female voters in that town from 1889 to 1912, which shows a steadily diminishing female vote from 154 in 1889 to 1 in 1903; since 1903 not one of the fifty to seventy women registered in Dedham has remembered to go to the polls on Election Day.

If women cannot be expected to look after the interests of their children's schooling, how can they be expected to be faithful in the general field of politics? The Massachusetts State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage has compiled the total vote cast in the Presidential election of 1912 in the six woman suffrage States of California, Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho, and Utah--1,521,590 out of a total possible vote of 3,200,152--showing that only 47-1/2 per cent. of men and women in those states cared to go to the polls for the most interesting of all elections; comparing this with the 1,587,984 male votes cast out of a possible 2,295,119 votes--69 per cent. of the total--in the six non-suffrage western states of Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, Nevada, South Dakota, and Missouri. Now if 69 per cent. of the men voted in the woman suffrage states in 1912, then only 17.8 per cent. of the women voters in those states actually cast their ballots. At any rate, it is certain that the extension of suffrage to women results in a notable decrease of the actual voting strength of the electorate, as compared with the more healthy interest in voting shown by the electorates of the non-suffrage states. In that same Presidential election of 1912, Secretary of State Jordan of California reports that 802,000 men and but 180,000 women registered to vote--over 93 per cent. of the men, and a trifle over 27 per cent. of the women who were qualified to register and vote. In the election in Pasadena on March 20, 1913, deciding bond issues, some of them for parks and playgrounds, only 4,672 men and women cast ballots out of a voting population of 16,324; in Los Angeles four days later, the Citizens' Committee's vigorous campaign advocating the carrying of certain propositions and defeat of others ended in a vote of 31,000 men and women, while 130,000 qualified voters of both sexes stayed away. Although 45,665 women registered out of 121,000 women qualified to register and vote in San Francisco's local option election in 1913, the votes of only 15,087, both men and women, were cast in favor of the amendment. In all the elections of which there are records of men and women voting, the women manifest less interest both in registering and in voting than the men.

This fact has its vital bearing on the question of law enforcement. If elected officials fail to enforce the law, the only corrective is the ballot. Dr. Abbott and Professor Breckinridge, answering Miss Bronson's statement that thirty-nine states compel employers in stores, factories, and shops to provide seats for female employés, say that in most of the states where voteless women have got such laws they have never had the means of enforcing them. But if the extension of the elective franchise to the women of these states should mean the lowering of the total vote from 69 per cent. to but 47-1/2 per cent. of the possible vote, what prospect is there that the laws will be better enforced under woman suffrage? Judge Ben B. Lindsey of Colorado, himself a suffragist by propinquity, testified in 1910 that his battle with "the Beast" and "the System" in that state was begun without the help of the women leaders who at national meetings had been telling how much the women had done for the juvenile court in Denver. They dared not help him, Judge Lindsey said, and women like Mary C. Bradford and Mrs. Lafferty, a member of the Legislature, "took the platform against me and supported the System." He added:

If anyone believes that woman's suffrage is a panacea for all the evils of our political life, he does not know what those evils are. The women are as free of the power of the Beast as the men are, and no freer.... In a typical American community such as ours, where the Beast rules, the women are as helpless as the rest of us.... Their leaders in politics are politicians; when they get their nominations from corporation machines they do the work of the corporations; and there is almost no way under the Beast to get a party nomination except from a corporation machine. Women in politics are human beings; they are not "ministering angels" of an ethereal ideality; and they are unable to free us, because they are not free themselves.

Mrs. Nora Blatch DeForest has tried to show by tables that woman's voting benefits women and children in the passage of laws fixing the "age of consent" for girls; in fixing the age under which the consent of parent or guardian is necessary for marriage; the age below which employment of children in factories is prohibited; the maximum length of a day's work for children, and the hours within which women may work in factories. The tabulation includes the more recent suffrage states of Arizona, California, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington, in which most of the beneficial laws enumerated were passed under male suffrage. In them and in Utah--excepting the four other suffrage states where there are no limiting laws for women's work--the average day's labor for women is 9.2 hours in the ten suffrage states as against 9.9 hours in the nineteen partial suffrage states, and 10.1 hours in the nineteen non-suffrage states. The maximum day's work for a child is 8.6 hours in the suffrage states, 9 hours in the partial suffrage states, and 9.5 hours in the non-suffrage states, while the ages for prohibited child labor are 14.3 years, 14.1 years, and 13.3 years, respectively. In the same order, the ages at which the consent of parent or guardian is required for marriage of young women are 18.9 years, 19.3 years, and 19.1 years, respectively, and the ages at which girls may consent to their own ruin are 17.5 years, 16.6 years, and 15 years in the three groups of states.