Judge — January 25, 1913 — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

J HS-WO D Lectures of Emma Caustic. The Ignoramus. D®FA8 sisters, it was with blinding tears in my eyes that I read, a few days ago, what an ancestor of the antis wrote about the education of women when the world was all agog with the question of books or beaus for Bessie. Said this noble soul, ‘*Why teach woman the alphabet? She'll only use it to spell out the verb amo.’’ Ah, what touching faith that old-time pen pusher had in woman—a faith that the years would have rudely shattered! For, far from sticking to love lessons, the unruly sex, forget- ting that it was man who per- mitted the spectacles of learning to perch on their pert noses, have since deciphered the driest of pages in the stuffiest of vol- umes. And, not content with this, to-day we hear a swelling chorus of soprano and contralto voices demanding that woman be permitted to peer into the mighty from expressing their opinions, and au- thors so self-sacrificingly abandon the ink bottle and the pen that the average voter comes to his conclusions and deci- sions only through the exercise of his vast reasoning powers. And where the bulge of reason ought to be in woman's cranium there is a depressing hollow. Let her, therefore, feel awe and not an- guish at her exclusion from the deep thought circle of the male ballot clutcher. But, say the perverted ones, woman's experiences make her knowing enough to be a voter. Behold her knowledge of tome of politics. Alas, my sisters! the poor, de- luded creatures think that, because floods of girls pour out of our high schools, because feminine chatter echoes through sober college cloisters, because the female pedagogue is abroad in the land and the feminine pill giver well known, because lecture halls are packed with petticoats, libraries mobbed by skirts and multitudes assemble at the tap of the gavel, woman knows enough to vote. But ‘tis not so. Through reading and study woman may absorb a wide range of subjects, from pie to pedagogy, from spanking to Sparta, from music to mi- crobes; but how will facility at poring over the printed page help her to eluci- date the intricacies of politics? Do we not all know that only the mighty male mind can grasp a political situation, be- cause that mind must acquire informa- tion through original research alone? Political parties shrink so meekly from publicity as regards their platforms and principles, candidates are so painfully modest concerning their lives and mer- its, newspapers so heroically abstain ALMOST SNOWED UNDER the kid’s mental spasms, her ability to wrestle with the grub question, her po- sition as chief stretcher of the almighty dollar, her public and professional stunts —all these fill up the cracks in her gray matter with useful thinks. But, oh, how ashamed they ought to be to com- pare such inferior knowledge to that ac- quired by Charlie Pink, the clerk at the ribbon counter, by Billy Bun the baker, and Mr. Slaughter the butcher. Man's avocations, no matter how seemingly menial and prosaic, have the educative power recessary for the voter that woman can never acquire. And, moreover, there is one reason mighty enough to squelch woman's pre- tensions without the help of any others. Where, I ask, in stentorian tones, are the women Shakespeares, where the women Michael Angelos, where the women Mendelssohns? If women knew enough to vote, they would certainly have acquired some geniuses during the centuries. But they haven't. And we all know that men have not only raised intellectual watch towers all along the WA OMA ages, but that to-day the average male voter is chock full of genius himself. This constitutes one great reason why he is enfranchised. Let women produce a female Milton and a petticoated Her- bert Spencer, and straightway the whole sex will become so irradiated with wis- dom that the ballot will be thrown broadcast among our wives and mothers. And now, in closing, let me say the average woman doesn’t know anything about the practical part of politics, can’t even give her election district, never attended a primary. You may urge that it hasn’t been her business to learn; but behold how man learns even what he doesn’t use, such as dressmaking, cooking and the marcel wave! Poor, feeble wom- an mind! Letitstick toits easy duty of rearing the race and leave the big things of life to men. —Ormis W. Haskell. Suffragette Snapshots, The flight of those women from the Turkish harems to the freedom of countries to the West is typical of the longing of the women of the world for liberty and the turning of their faces to the newer civilization of the West to find it. The Norwegian Parliament first gave municipal suffrage to women taxpayers; then it gave them the parliamentary franchise; then it removed the taxpay- ing qualification for the municipal vote. Its next step was to make them eligible to all offices; now it has granted them the right to speak in the state church, but will not ordain them to preach. Next year it promises to give the com- plete franchise to all women. There are only a few inches more to cut off, and the state is bearing up as well as could be expected. The United States is the only country where women cannot get the suffrage except by permission of a majority of the men. A question of human rights should never have to be submitted toa plebiscite, and a voice in one’s own gov- ernment is a human right. Ma Husted Harper. comicbooks.com