Judge — March 24, 1917 — page 18: 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 Somebody Should Send Flowers YMPATHY should be extended to the woman who feels the urge to joining the Housewives’ League to the end that her eggs may fall in price, or the Women Taxpayers’ League so that she may know what becomes of her tax money anyway, and yet has retained with her grand- father’s clock her grandmother's horror at the mere idea of votes for women. Be the meeting what it may into which she furtively sidles, she finds the suffrage idea hitched onto every proposition of her daily life, when even the expression Votes for Women fills her with cold disgust. In despair she feels within her the instinct to smash something or some- one, yet what can she smash save her prejudice against woman suffrage? And it is exactly to that that she clings with the desperation born of despair. She would if she could, and she could if she would and there you are—or rather, there she is—a person who needs more pity and gets less than any one afoot. An Old Tale Retold OME time ago, so the story goes, a woman named Mrs. Morton lived in the great State of Pennsylvania. Mr. Morton got drunk from sun to sun while she in the meantime toiled as long and more. They were each indefatigable in their chosen pursui In time he got a red and saw snakes. In time she, by piecing bed quilts and selling eggs and chickens, got a hundred dollars in gold. Then God took to himself the soul of Mr. Morton and according to law the hundred dollars should be taken to the pocket of Mother-in-law Morton, as in those good old days wives neither owned their earnings nor inherited from intestate husbands. But Mrs. Morton failed to turn over the money, and, as Old Lady Morton failed to proceed against her, the law, like Br’er Fox, “said nothin’.” But when Old Lady Morton finally died, the law called on Sister Morton to cash-up, as the money belonged to the estate of the late Mrs. Morton. Gold was then selling at a premium and, adding the premium to the accumu- lated interest, poor Mrs. Morton had to pay over a thousand dollars as a penalty for her industry in saving a hundred. Please notice: At the time that Mrs. Morton was pursuing her anything but primrose path, the general public in her state was quite satisfied that a woman did not need to own her wages or her property; that a husband sufficed for all the legal needs of the wife. And every effort to modify the laws which worked such disaster to the unfortunate Mrs. Morton was stubbornly resisted and argued against, with the same resistance and the same arguments that are now advanced against votes for women. All of which should cause one to pause and ponder that as the general public was wrong then, it may be wrong now. Are Women the Favorites of the Law? I * SO, why did the German govern- ment not long ago offer to any Let- tish woman $4.50 for a boy baby with a German father and but $2.88 if it were a A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION If Men Won't Vote, Why Not Let Women? 6¢TNDEED not!” replied the man in an up-state New York county, to the request of the suffrage organizer that he sign her roll. “But why not?” she persisted, and he answered flippantly, “Good Heavens! won’t you women leave the men any ivileges at all?” ay,” she retorted, “how did you leave your friend and model, the dog in the manger? Three thousand men in this very county on last election day were cither too tired or too stupid to do more than vote for Wilson or Hughes and let it go at that. If you men cither don’t know enough or don’t want to have the privilege of voting for cong! men, or state, or county, or municipal off cials, why under the sun won’t you let the women?” Where the Shoe Really Pinches ~P Manitoba last year the women won the vote on the toboggan slide, as it were. ‘Would you wish the vote, dear ladies?” asked the gallant men of that western region. “Take it. It is you But after the legal formalities over and the women faced the situation, to find out what they had and what they hadn't, they discovered that they wei cligible for the honorable but unremune ative position of school trustee, but not for the salaried job of alderman. From which it must be inferred that men are able to tolerate the idea of woman at the polls and in office, but that to let women in on the political plum crop is quite another matter. It Is To Blush IF the American government takes away the right to vote from the women of the Danish West Indies, a right which they enjoyed under the sovereignty of Denmark, then someone ought to voyage over to Bedloe’s Island at once with a pail of red paint, for the Goddess of Liberty will surely wish to blush. comicbooks.com