Judge — July 21, 1917 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

The D. A. R. Testifies for the Suffragists N CHOOSING its new President- I General from the ranks of the Kansas delegation, the Daughters of the American Revolution has once again rendered service to the cause of woman suffrage. Suffragists have at times been snifiy about the Daughters. They have even compared them despitefully to the po- tato. Not of course in these days when such a comparison would be the hall- mark of great price, but in other days when the humble tuber, like the vaunted ancestors of the Daughters, has been known chiefly by its position under the soil. But the suffrage cause, if it did but know it, owes much to the D. A. R. Many a woman, otherwise perennially housebound, has been lured, thru inno- cent vanity because of revolutionary an- cestors, over the threshold of a life- absorbing domesticity, and her feet set on the road that ended in her endorsing revolutionary principles for live women in place of applauding them in dead men. Opponents of votes for women have harped on the fact that if women are of political equality the bloom would, once for all, be off the feminine peach. The selection of a Kansas woman to lead the most conservative woman’s organization in America puts the lie on that assump- tion. In Kansas political equality for women is a platitude. Yet, with the whole country to choose from, it was in Kansas that, for the D. A. R., the pearl of womanhood was found. The Custard as a Weapon of Assault N THE rush of preparedness for a great war, a jury in New Jersey spent eight hours in deciding whether or not throwing a custard at one’s wife consti- tuted Jegal assault and battery. They decided that it was assault but not bat- tery. Several of the jurors opined that if it had been custard pie, it would have been both assault and battery. In a world in which it is illegal to dun a person on a postal card for fear of im- pairing his financial credit, what right had those jurors to discredit the cooking of their womenfolk as they surely did when they admitted the possibilities of pie as a weapon of offense? A woman's credit as a cook is dearer to her than her standing at her banker's. However, be that as it may, the point to note is the entrance into the law court of a wife asking redress from a custard- or a pie- throwing husband. The pie-throwing husband is no mod- ern product. I myself recall many years ago when my next-door neighbor threw a pumpkin pie in the face of his praying wife. Yet in spite of the offensiveness of the missile and that he struck her when she was down, it never occurred to her, as she wiped the pie from her brow and the floor, that she had any legal redress. She swallowed the pie that struck her mouth opened in prayer as she swallowed the insult, because she thought she must. Those days are past. Courts of Do- mestic Relations have arisen all over the country, like mushrooms in the night, to answer the demand made by women seeking legal redress for domestic griev- ances. The facts are as old as human history; it is the telling that is new. Asa noted sociologist puts it, “The divorce courts are telling us just what granny thought of grandpa but did not dare ex- press.” When granny lived, to resent legally a / } “UNITED WE STAND” SUFFRAGE FACTS AND FANCIES by Anna Cadogan Etz well-aimed custard would have been for her to jump from the frying pan into the fire. In these days it is but one of the ways for women to seek out and find their place in the sun. Indicating One Reason Why PATHETIC little woman came up to the desk in a floral shop to pay for the filling of a cemetery vase. Upon being told that the price had been raised fifty cents, she protested, “Oh, but my husband will never consent to pay it. You see, if it had been for his folks, he might, but it was for mine and that is dif- ferent.” “AML right,” said the kind-hearted cashier and she accepted the old price from the teary little lady. But as she dropped the money in the till she mur- mured, “And people wonder why self- supporting women are a little slow in embarking on the shoals of matri- mony!” Enter, the Silver Pen into Politics NE of the reforms to be expected from the entrance of women into politics ig economy. And it won’t neces- sarily be due to fine financial work on the part of the women either. The mere presence of women will suggest to men that it is unnecessary to spend so much money. Queer thing, but true. What other explanation can be offered of the simultaneous entrance of women and the silver pen? It has been immemo- rial custom for governors to sign impor- tant bills with gold pens and pass them over as trophies to the most prominent boosters of said bills. But in various states that have recently given women presidential suffrage the press has re- ported that the lady boosters received to cherish not gold but silver pens. Just why the governors retrenched automatically in welcoming women into politics is not for us to say. But the fact remains and the silver pens may be taken as augurs of other financial trim- mings and listed in the official book of suffrage arguments on the page headed: Give women the vote and it will cost less, not more, to run the government.