Judge, 1912-11-30 · page 19 of 26
Judge — November 30, 1912 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **satire supporting women's suffrage**. Emma Caustic sarcastically catalogs the arguments anti-suffrage activists ("the antis") used to deny women voting rights: that women were too delicate and physically weak for political participation. The cartoon by Loy Rogers shows a tall, robust woman labeled "A WHOLE HEAD TALLER," visually contradicting the "fragile flower" rhetoric. Caustic's text then systematically dismantles the anti-suffrage position by ironically listing all the physically demanding work women actually performed—factory labor, domestic drudgery, athletics, social organizing—proving they were hardly fragile. The satire's point: if women could handle exhausting manual labor, childcare, and complex social duties, the claim they were too delicate to vote was transparently false. This piece advocates for women's political equality by exposing the hypocrisy of opponents' arguments.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
J HGS :FLO D OBR Lectures THE FRAGILE FLOWER. EAR sisters, to-day we shall con- tinue our crushing of the wo- man-suffrage octopus by delivering verbal thumps with the fragile-flower theory so beloved by that army of protestors — the antis. That our American women are too delicate and ethereal to stand the intense strain involved in lifting a ballot into the ballot box, that they cannot, without fatal injury to their anatom- ies, take an interest in political ques- tions seems to be so evident as hardly to need confirmation. And yet we must assert these truths and prove them, sides in these degenerate days are heard the voci- ferous denials of those refractory creatures who clamor to heap more burdens upon woman's drooping back. So come with me in fancy into the average American home and behold the frail wife of our period. What is she capable of doing? Only those non-muscular and delicate operations known as cooking, sweeping, dusting, scrubbing and sewing, punctuated by countless rushes to answer the ever- ringing doorbell and numerous er- rands to shop and market. Nothing more, my sisters, nothing more. And after her domestic duties are over, she seldom has strength left for more than a three-hour shopping trip, or a four-hour attendance at a church fair, or a rush to an afternoon tea or card party, with perhaps a church sociable, a dance or the theater in the evening. Infirm and languid as she is, how can we expect anything so strenuous as ballot lifting from her? And then think of the mothers that we see. Too decrepit are they t» do aught but go through from time to time the easy and soothing process of propagating the species, bringing up shrieking infancy through croup, whooping cough, measles and human cussedness to useful and respectable since on all o f maturity, and adding all these pas- times to their other domestic and social duties, Shall we invade the unbroken placidity and leisured ease of a mother’s life with the nerve- racking duties of citizenship? And behold our women workers, a mighty army of physical wrecks, only fit to bend for hours over steam- Loy ROGERS A WHOLE HEAD TALLER. ing tubs, guide hot irons over starchy clothes, tend sewing machines, pound typewriters, scrub floors, stand all day behind counters and indulge in all the other reposeful occupations reserved for the fragile flowers of Nor should we forget those fairy-like creatures, the women ath- letes, who play tennis for hours in the broiling sun, who swim in races, skip over golf links, plunge into bas- ketball, row, dive, skate, skee and indulge in all kinds of gymnastics and contortions, demonstrating as no words can their physical decrepitude. And when we add to these the social butterflies whose days and nights seethe and whirl with pleasures and duties, the clubwomen who run madly from meeting to meeting, wrenching the race, IF OMAN Emma Caustic. their attention from Greek art to slaughter houses, from Tennyson to tenements, with furious facility, we have a composite picture of the weak- ness of woman that is calculated to bring pitying tears to the eyes of all. And what a touching picture we can conjure up if we imagine feeble woman devoting the minutes of rest or recreation to political issues! How the pamphlets of parties and candidates would dim the brightness of her eyes, she who is only accus- tomed to gallop through library books! How the pictures of the men scrambling for public office would cause her tremulous heart to beat quicker and her pulse to flutter on account of the gentlemen's pul- chritude, and you all know how sus- ceptible she is to beauty! How she would sit up far into the midnight hours poring over a treatise on the tariff, thus banishing the roses -in her cheeks! And though she often attends a political meeting with hubby now, if she went as a voter, the sense of her responsibilities, the endeavor to understand what the fat gentleman in the yellow waistcoat is screeching about would prostrate her, and she would be borne limp and inert like a withered blossom from the rude and turbulent scenes. Ah, my sisters, it is too awful to con- template! And now I must close by remind- ing you that you can verify all my statements by investigating condi- tions in the Western States, where women now vote and where I under- stand they are fading away into the grave as only fragile flowers can when heavy burdens crush them to earth, —Orela W. Rastell. It is in evidence that the women have realized that the suffrage ques- tion is more of a state than a nation- al issue, for in those states in which they voted they split up pretty well. comicbooks.com