Judge — March 31, 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 Why Suffragists Worry IME was when nothing was cheaper T or more tranquilizing than to bea votes-for-women booster, but that calm day has passed never to return. It was twenty-four years after woman suffrage carried in Wyoming before it won in Colorado. In 1896 women voted in four states and it was thirteen years before they voted in five. In those peace- ful days suffrage maps and leaflets could be ordered by the million and the in- formation on them remained authentic season after season. But in these days nothing is more expensive or more thrilling than to be a woman suffrage promoter. Suffrage cel. lars are filled with tons of suffrage lit ture waiting to be carted off. Some of it got out of date while the ink was drying. id speakers work Suffrage writers under constant nervous strain due to the fact that the words they speak or write are in danger of turning to lies before they strike the ears or the eyes of the listening or reading public. Suffragists face a new day, in which nothing in particular is scheduled to hap- pen, only to go to bed with Ohio waiting to be engraved on the suffrage map. Suffragists haul out the map but stand inert before it, not daring to insert Ohio cause perchance Indiana also may have alk about the high cost of living! ‘Talk about the nervous strain of Ameri- can life! Ask the suffragists. They can tell you all about it. Talk about the probabilities of victory for woman suf- frage! It is proving disconcertingly swift. War and the Dot N the midst of the junk pile swept up by the war, it may be there will be found the French custom of dowering daughters, as a lure to desirable husbands. A dotless girl in France has been as hope- lessly out of the running, matrimonially, as a noseless girl in Amei In America the advocates of birth con- trol say that one well cared for girl is bet- ter than ten underfed and thinly clad daughters. But in France, the home of birth control par excellence, they say that one well dowered girl is better than sev- eral for whom no husbands can be se- cured because no dot is possible. But after the war the dotless girl will be almost the only girl. She will not only be dotless, but she will be economically independent as a wage earner. And the young man with matrimony in his mind will not be setting his parents in search of the girl with the biggest dot. He will be much more apt to appear himself meckly before her, not asking what she can bring him in money, but whether she will be willing to put up with a man who will be thankful to get her on her own terms. : The World Does Move, But Passing Slow F you believe that at one fell swoop votes for women will make woman the equal of man, I cite you the Colorado preacher who declared from his pulpit that old maids should be sent to some lonely isle, because worthless to the world. Women have voted in Colorado for twenty-four years. If you believe that these are days of dangerous progress towards the emanci- pation of the sexes from the thrall of matrimony, I cite you the editor of a city daily in New York State who in the year of our Lord 1916 thought he was voicing the opinions of his readers—and he prob- ably was—by writing a half-column WANT ANY HELP, UNCLE? leader in defence of old maids as more to be pitied than censored, as the victims of a fate thrust on them against their will, and never to be confused with the crim- inal classes. The world does move, but it will never be arrested for breaking the speed limit. Mother Goose Up-to-Date HEN a flossy girl comes along the street granting alike to the inter- ested and the uninterested a sight of sev- eral inches of white stockings above her high boots, one’s mind harks back to dear old Mother Goose, and the woman who went to market her eggs for to sell. The parallel is not exact, for the flossy girl is very much awake and she certainly does not shiver when she looks in the store window which reflects to her the fact that her petticoats are cut off up to her knees or thereabouts. It must be admitted that she is rather pleased than otherwise. Now for the suffrage moral: There are many persons who sec in the absurdities of women’s clothes an unanswerable ar- gument against women’s votes. The wife of a vice-president of the United States is included in this not-to-be- sneezed-at group of people. But it is a fact that the flossy girl is no more to blame for the tremendous abbreviation of her petticoats than was the old lady who fell asleep on the king’s highway. If you doubt it, listen to the shoe men in convention assembled at the opening of the spring season facing. as an impor- tant trade contingency, the fact that every inch added to the skirts of women meant a loss of ten million dollars to the shoe trade. Whereupon they gravely put their heads together to devise ways and means to avoid such a calamity to a great industry. Bear in mind that this is but one of many instances which shoy that a woman is just as completely disfranchised at the spring millinery opening as she is at the polls in November. And the next time you sce a flossy female—who ought to be arrested for art’s sake if not for her mor- als—know her as the victim of a situation that, if she had the vote, she might help improve. She certainly could not make it worse. comicbooks.com