Judge — July 7, 1917 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

Something Martin Luther Never Dreamed HE peerless suffrage leader giving a kindergarten lesson in contem- porary political government to a class of United States Senators at a recent suffrage hearing is a far cry from earlier days in which even so liberal minded a man as Rousseau declared that a woman should know little and that little should be pleasing to man. Nevertheless members of the most august legislative body in the world sat meekly watching while 22 little fags were waved alluringly before them; while they were gently told that in the countries where those tags belonged women had the vote; and while they were subtly asked why, if women voted under 22 flags, they should not under 23. What have we here but a complete reversal of ancient’ status in’ which women were supposed to know little and to know nothing of politics to a state of affairs in which men are not only assumed by women to be ignorant of world potitics, but to be incapable of acquiring information save in small doses presented with symbols in order that the eye may help the mind to un- deestand? Shades of Martin Luther, and Milton, and all their brethren of the spirit who never dreamed in all their philosophy of a world in which women would pre- sume to instruct men; in which, if a woman wanted information she did not hie ‘to her husband as the all-knowing one, in which it was not recognized that man was the glory of God and was made glorious himself by woman re- volving meekly around him! Nothing But His Mother A WOMAN in New York State went with leaden feet to her lawyer to find out how to grant permission to her young son to enlist. Strenuous and per- sistent appeals on the part of the lad had forced her to it. The lawyer smiled and said, “ My dear woman, your name wouldn’t be worth the paper on which it was written. Don’t you realize that you are nothing but his mother?” She blinked in amazement and ex- claimed, ***Nothing but his mother!’ I brought him into the world. I have furnished all the money and the work and the care he has ever had. ‘Nothing but his mother!’ I thought women in this state were equal guardians of their children.” “Forget it!” he scoffed, “now you know just what that amounts to.” She did, but as to forgetting it —hardly. Phe war has opened men’s eyes to the value of women to the state. It is also opening women’s eyes to the small value of women in the eyes of the state. Superfluous: Before and After ORE the war the sociologist: la- mented for England that she had a million and a half superfluous women, meaning the daughters of upper class families and domestic servants. In America we enjoy our daughters and do not dub them superfluous, and we would enjoy domestic servants if we could get any to enjoy. We never think of them as superfluous, but regard them as we do the stars that shine and SUFFRAGE FACTS AND FANCIES by Anna Cadogan Etz twinkle ‘on the milky way—lovely but out of reach. But in England it was not so. When anything went wrong they blamed the superfluous women—even the militant suffrage movement. The press more than insinuated that the shrieking mili- tants who claimed to be shrieking for the vote were in fact, if the truth were admitted, shrieking because they did not have a husband or a job. But the war has changed all that. There isn’t in England a superfluous woman in sight, and the problem for the sociologist has shifted. Now he is worrying -over the problem of inducing 2,000,000 women, after the war, to re- sume their prebellum status of super- fluousness. He shakes his head drearily and mur- murs, “Here are 2,000,000 women hold- ing down 2,000,000 jobs. They will never give them up. The female of the spe looks frail, but she hangs to life like a pup to a root, and her job is her life. The 2,000,000 men who ought to have those jobs will be neither physically nor mentally fit to compete for them.” And a cold chill settles down on his masculine heart, for he sees and dreads the day when to be dubbed “super- fluous” will have become a masculine prerogative and not a female one. Nemesis HE was a beautiful maiden, Innocent, charming and true; I came to her heavily laden With love, as a man should do— Great was her fascination! Her beauty and charm so moved me 1 yielded to swift temptation And told her a lie—and she loved me! She was a womanly maiden Sweet as a maiden can be; Queen of the garden of Aiden: And all that was highest in me The best of myself revealing, Like a bolt from Heaven it cleft me— I yielded to loftiest feeling And told her the truth—and she left me! —T.L. M. comicbooks.com