Judge, 1913-04-12 · page 15 of 24
Judge — April 12, 1913 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two distinct pieces satirizing women's suffrage and feminism from the early 20th century. **"The Esthete" (main lecture text with cartoon):** An anti-suffrage argument claims women lack intellectual capacity, caring only about physical beauty. The speaker argues this superficiality corrupts marriage, motherhood, and even natural selection—women choose handsome but dim husbands and favor attractive children over homely ones. The cartoon shows a woman pushing a man labeled "VOTES FOR WOMEN" off the "HIGHWAY OF DEMOCRACY," suggesting suffrage will derail progress. **"Suffragette Snapshots":** Satirical commentary mocking women's liberation. It describes labor-saving inventions (pneumatic meal tubes, electric cradles) that supposedly eliminate women's domestic roles, sarcastically asking what purpose women will serve if freed from household work. Both pieces use the suffrage debate as a vehicle for misogynistic arguments: women are vain, intellectually inferior, and naturally suited only to domestic servitude. The satire assumes readers will find these claims amusing rather than objectionable.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THES AO DS Lectures The Esthete DEAR SISTERS—If we study life, how often we find that, when we attempt to hike upward into the blue, hanging gracefully to the wabbly tail of a dirigible theory, experience will thrust forth a bony hand, and, clutching us by our $4.98 nether garment, will yank us back to the cold, hard earth of common sense. And 80 to-day I am go- ing to emulate that sensible clutcher and to precipitate to the asphalt those of you who are about to soar up with the great yellow balloon of suf- frage. And I shall first swat your attention with the fatal fact that everything dribbles through woman's poor, sieve- like mind, except her pitiful passion for pulchritude. Every- where we perceive the genus mulier Marathoning after curves, colors and curls, aban- doning duties and diversions to prostrate herself before a tin- seled altar devoted to bloom, brawn and bric-a-brac, What havoc this weakness creates! How it makes the home tot- teron its foundations, marriage and motherhood reel and spin! How it attacks art and lam- basts labor observation will sadly show. Behold how it dances like askeleton upon our hearths! If it would only swoop down upon us, break out in a rash of lace curtains, fringed lamp shades, leather mats and feeble ferns, and then pass on like a pestilence that is spent, we might rejoice. But, alas! my friends, it plunges a reeking saber deep into the very vitals of domesticity and influences the female in her choice of a mate. For, alas! the important decision as to who shall pay the gas bill and put up for porridge and Pills is befogged and befuddled by femi- nine estheticism. Unlike man, who never streaks after the flower face or the fussy figure, but sternly confines himself to the plain and ugly virtues in the choice of a wife, woman demands of ber spouse not common sense, cash, cul- ture or courage, but beauty. And thus of it happens, my sisters, that our fair American homes are gradually being inundated with a flood of Adonises, trans- cendently lovely husbands that dazzle the eye, but daunt the intellect. Such hand- some, close-cropped complexions, such beautiful, hand-made teeth, such ruby lips adorned with nestling cigar butts, Emma FORCING HIM OUT OF THE RUT such exquisite expressions and such fas- cinating figures are seen as to affront the serious and the sensible and cause them to berate woman, whose deep-seated de- sire evoked them into being. But, not content with forcing man through natural selection to become a prize exhibit, woman permits her frivolous fancy to get its clutch on her maternal emotions. Why harp on the mournful fact, my sisters, that she cuddles only the handsome, the husky and the happy of her brood, and consigns to the frigid rim of indifference the deformed, the defective, the doleful and the dunce? Try as we will, it is IA OMA IH Caustic only fatherhood that we can picture pressing with persistent passion to his waistcoated breast the tousled head of his homely offspring, while woman stalks by. cold as the frigid pole. —Orela W. Rasteil. Soffragette Snapshots ‘OME MEN are organizing a pneumatic-tube system, through which, from a central kitchen, hot meals can be shot toany part of the city, day or night. Women are sometimes inclined to wonder whether men intend to leave them any do- mestic duties. About the only thing untouched is the nursery, and a man has invented an electric cradle that rocks itself, 80 woman will have to find some other way to move the world. is] A movement is on foot in Germany to ‘‘conscript’’ all young women into domestic service of a year, during which they must learn cooking, nurs- ing and the care of children, and be prepared for marriage. If it succeeds, Germany should cease from conscripting all her able-bodied young men into the army, making it impossible for illions of women to marry and forcing them into men’s occu- pations for a livelihood. “Government depends more onmen than laws," says a noted mayor of one of the large cities. Quite true as regards those on all social questions. There are enough laws now to bring the millennium if enforced, but they are not enforced be- cause men don’t want them to be. It is not more laws that are needed, but a different constituency —one that will “recall” an official if he does not enforce the laws, instead of recalling him if he does. 0 The Russian police avoid a militant suffrage movement by arresting every person who says, ‘‘Votes for Women!’’ If only those of England had thought of this plan! But now how can they arrest a million? Ida Husted Harper, comicbooks.com