Judge — July 5, 1913 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

Another Invasion N AGITATED gentleman, relieving his mind in a New York paper, has complained that the suffragixts have dared to shove some of their sex inside the sacred palings labeled ‘Oratory for Pub- lic Schools,’’ and has asked pathetically, “Is nothing to be free from inva- sion by these women?"” Who could help feeling sympathy for such chivalrous indignation, es- pecially when it is so well placed? Why, one-half, if not three-quar- ters, of the graduates of our public schools are girls! Shall we ruth- lessly remove them from the elo- quence prescribed by hoary-headed Tradition and cobweb-cowled Cus- tom? Shall we deprive them of listening at commencement exer- cises to patriotic exhortations to become warriors, shot over their heads at their brothers by military gentlemen corralled for the occasion by male principals? Shall we piti- lessly rob them of the tasteful allu- sions often made to their facial per- fections and their possibilities of catching husbands—talk especially edifying for maids of fourteen? Or shall we keep from them the thrill they experience when a coat- tailed speakerlikensthem toSphinxs which so paralyze him that he can- not even ‘cast a few quotations in theirdirection? No, letusdevoutly hope not! Why, the suffrage ora- tor might take especial notice of the girl graduates; she might even fill them with a pride of sex and a be- lief that motherhood is as great an avocation as that of soldiering; and, hor- ror of horrors! she might inspire them to help to better civic conditions by tak- ing an active interest in public questions. By all means keep her from the stage where the male orator shines with a glory all his own. Prosaic Push [NSTEAD of waiting with delicate de- corum for 1915, when the woman- suffrage amendment will be submitted to the voters of New York State, the irre- pressible workers for the cause are mak- ing efforts to extend the political organi- zation that now exists in New York City throughout the State. Soon in every THE MODERN WOMAN assemby district there will be a leader, an organized band and hundreds of en- rolled sympathizers. Alas, that we should behold ethereal and poetic women abandoning the perfumed note, the verbal prayer, the tearful tremor and the silent wait for practicality and push! Are all the subtle and potent weapons of the sex —the smile, the simper, the whine and the nag—to be lost to the world? I fear so, for even now in hamlet and. town the THRE SPIRIT silence of the balmy evenings is shattered by the voice of the woman orator holding forth from soap box and automobile, and the sun-baked days behold calvacades of canvassers storming the stoops of our fair American homes. It is a situation to make the anti long for an antidote. Suffragette Evolution I" used to be the spinning wheel Which made contentment grow; But now it is the winning spiel— The other was too slow. Using flour as an argument has not bred any more cordial relations between the crusty English government and the doughty votes-for-women element. CarsTin bs 6: ae Suffragette Snapshots By IDA HUSTED HARPER WOMAN in Colorado City has been elected to fill the office of clerk, audi- tor, treasurer and police magistrate. It seems as if she couldn’t soldier on that job. Representative John Henry Kirby, of the Texas Legislature, is not going to have the wives and mothers of that State ‘dashed from the high pedestal on which Southern manhood has placed them and dragged down to the level of men in the doubtful domain of or Politics."" John Henry evidently knows the depths to which men have descended in politics, the only thing in the country which they have tried to run by themselves; but women have been engaged for a long time in lifting men up, and they might as well try their hand at pulling them out of the political slough. As to their being dragged down to men’s level, just let John Henry mention it to the men in the States where women vote and see what he gets. Meanwhile, as the Legisla- ture has adjourned, let him study the laws for women in Texas and see whether Southern manhood has put them on a pedestal or in a hole in the ground! o The editor of the Arizona Blade- Tribune fought the suffrage amend- ment throughout the campaign, on the ground that the best women would not vote. After it carried, he boasted in headlines that his wife was the first woman in the county to register, and bragged of the great influence which the moth- ersof the State would now exercise with their ballots. It is to laugh! “Ten thousand pieces of anti-suffrage literature were daily distributed, largely in the saloons, and about fifteen thousand buttons were given out,’’ says the Detroit Journal, of the recent Michigan campaign. The suffragists had to pay postage on their literature and hand out their own buttons. o Women have been elected to offices throughout the length and breadth of the Western States, Kansas City alone elect- ing five to important positions. This proves one of two things—either that the women voters stand by their own sex or that the men want women in office. comicbooks.com