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 Buffalo _Express_, 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 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.
* * * * *
“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!
* * * * *