Judge — December 30, 1916 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

SUFFRAGE FACTS AND FANCIES by Anna Cadogan Etz An Ounce of Experience ELATIV from Chicago ** blew in’ the other day at the home of an eastern woman torn with curiosity to know how votes for women affected the home. If she could be shown that, if she voted, her stock would fall in her hus- band’s affections, she intended resigning forthwith from the local suffrage club. For what is home if your husband does not love you? She intended, after waiting a decent interval, to ask for information on the vexed question from this uncle and his young wife and abide by their opinion. Decent interval! Waiting! There was none. Tales of politics bubbled from the lips of the young wife unceasingly. She declared that in the spring they must move into a larger apartment, one large enough for political mectings. She told endless incidents of her ward club; of its bi-weekly dinners at which the greatest men in the city appeared and asked for the help of the women; of how the women heckled them; how one woman said, “How do we know that your man will make a good assemblyman merely be- cause he has proved a fair alderman?” of how another one said, “Indeed, we won't work for your candidate—we know exact- ly how poor an alderman he has bee! “That is all very well,” thought the hostess. “I can understand how a young woman, with only a city apartment to care for, can find life made fuller and richer if she has anything so vital as the interests of her city to help manage, but the question is: How does her husband like this endless prattle of politics?” So the first minute she secured alone with the husband she asked, “Well, uncle, how do you like to have your wife so absorbed in politics?” “Like it?” he answered, “I am crazy over it. It is the most wonderful thing that ever hap- pened to he and he grinned as he added, “Gee! but I’m glad she is a Re- publican and Lama Democrat. We have heaps more fun than though we thought the same things, and belonged to the same party!” If this extremely intelligent man liked to h the domestic discussion range away from the kitchen range; if he liked associating with a political equal instead of a political incompetent, it indicates at least that there may be many men just like him and many more homes in Chic: go which have become centers of inter- est to husbands as the result of women in that city having the right to vote. straw showing which way the wind is blowing, it is much more valuable as data than the sour prophecy of the moody old mossback who travels up and down the states, where women have to win the right to vote, shaking his fist at the suffragists—of course figuratively —and saying, “If you get the vote there is one thing you can bet on: The men won't love you.” The Only Cure for the Evils of Woman Suffrage in the West KNOW a man in my town who voted for woman suffrage last year but who now “Never, no more!” And when asked “why?” he says, “Because the women voters of California elected Wilson.” One of our leading citizens walked gaily up the street on the morning after election adorned with a large yellow chrysanthemum and when asked to ex- plain his decoration he replied, “B I am now a suffragette. Never have I been one before, but since the women carried California for Wilson, I am for- evermore to be numbered with the suffra- gettes.” All over the East the sons of Adam are chuckling or grumbling (largely grum- bling) and blaming the election returns on to the women vote Just for the sake of argument, let us accept the diag- nosis of the political situation made by THE RIGHT OF WAY the men and admit that “the women voters did it.” What, then, is the situa- tion, and what the cure? Horrid predicament, is it not, in which the proud anti-suffrage men of the East find themselves? They must accept a President chosen for them by women and by women over whom they have no con- trol. They are denied the satisfaction of making faces at the women, for the women would not sce them. They can’t call them names, because the women would not hear them. They can write mean things about them, but the women don’t care. All the men the Western women care about are Western men and the Western men are not feeling sore at Western women on account of the election, In Mlinois a bibulous male struck his wife when she returned from an carly trip to the polls where she had voted for dry town. But no man in the an arm long enough to reach the women voters of the West, no matter how much he feels like it. There is really but one thing under the sun that the disgruntled men of the East can do to save them from being governed by the women voters of the West, and that is to give the vote to the women of the East. Even if votes in the hands of Eastern women failed to rescue men from petticoat government, men would at least have the satisfaction of “getting at” if not ‘getting even” with the offende Man is now in much the same predic ment in which a man at the breakfast table finds himself when he discovers that his coffee is cold and looking up to men- tion it to his wife finds that she has left the room not to return. To sum up the situation, which scems to be vexing so many men: If, Men of East, if you don’t like having your party platforms and your presidents chosen for you by the women voters of the West, then neutralize thosd voters by women voters in the East. Then, if you can’t browbeat, cajole, or argue the east- em women into electing your favorite candidate—well, it will be, will it not, the latest application to politics of that most respectable principle, The Survival of the Fittest? comicbooks.com