Judge — August 11, 1917 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

If Women Raise Their Boys to be Soldiers F WOMEN raise their boys to be sol- I diers, then women must soldier on the job, for the story comes that three out of four applicants for the job of soldier boy are rejected. Because they can’t see straight; be- cause their feet are flat; because their teeth are bad: even for such avoidable defects as these are mother-raised boys denied the right to serve in the ranks. Are women such pacifists that they deliberately turn out a product unfit for military service? That seems hard to believe. Then should the fault be charged up to women that our line of national defense is but a fourth of what it might be? Well, as to that, the military gentleman from whom the facts were culled never mentioned mother as the guilty party. He laid it to the school. Joy! The day is passing when every human failure is blamed on to women. That rworked motto “Cherchez la Femme” can be taken down from the wall and thrown in the ash can. “Disfigured and Out of the Ring” T to do my bit in taking the y census of New York State. The polling place was in a barn down a long lane where I had voted on tax stions many times when it had al- ways been filled with men, and the workers received $7.50 a day. But what a change! It now contained baby car- riages with appropriate contents, a line of women busily working for nothing, and the only men were the ones who came to register. The ward committeeman peeped in about closing time, to see how the women were getting on. A policeman came to escort the record to the city hall. I went unescorted up the long, dark lane back to a home I had deserted just at supper time. I was but one of a large army of women. My deserted husband and kitchen were but samples of thousands. Yet we listened in vain for the howl of protest from the myriads of men who had voted “no” on the woman suffrage amendment because they believed that the polling place would contaminate women, and that if women voted, hus- bands’ dinners would be uncooked. Not a sound. These men had disappeared from the face of the earth as completely as a sum on a slate over which a wet sponge has been passed. The women received nothing but prans of praise, and incidentally must have saved the state about a million dollars. But one or more ancient and honorable anti-suffrage arguments are lying “dis- figured and out of the ring” in the back ally of some millions of minds. What Women Bring to Politics N New York State where a voter is relieved of all responsibility on elec- tion day; where a paid worker in a glass hack will collect him and tote him both to the registration place and the polling place if necessary: even so to get the voter in sufficient numbers to carry a party ticket sometimes takes barrels of money. This being so, imagine the plight of the political parties in Arkansas where the voter has to pay a poll tax. There the problem of getting the voter voted is more than the problem of the hour. It is a carking perennial care. Into this political atmosphere loomed IF NEED BE SUFFRAGE FACTS AND FANCIES by Anna Cadogan Etz the women of Arkansas equipped with the right to vote at primaries. The men had troubles enough of their own getting the poll tax out of super-pocketed males. They could not be expected to worry over pocketless females. So it was up to the women who forth- with womanlike made a party out of a perplexity. Man may bea social animal, but woman is past master at the social game. The festivity achieved by the ingenuity of the women was the mock primary, and the immediate result of its first appearance was a registration of one thousand. It charmed alike the poll tax out of the men as well as the women. And if the report runs true, it is now touring the state, a moving illustration of the sort of contribution women can be counted on to bring to politics. Here Today and There Tomorrow T was pleasant to learn, as the suffra- gists did from a member of the Mex- ican Embassy, that the new Mexican Constitution makes no invidious com- parisons between male and female citi- zens; that a person of legal age earning an honest living is a voter; that women not only can, but have qualified; that women not only have voted, but their votes have been counted—which is not always so sure to follow. The deponent yas an eye witness. t that point in the recital, the page of joy reversed itself and became a thing of gloom. Hermila Galinda, the young and beautiful woman so exultantly reported as elected to the Mexican Congress, the fair rival of our Jeanette on the Amer- ican Continent, just missed the goal for which she so gallantly ran. There was once a congressman who became famous for ‘not knowing where he was at.” Alack-a-day, that is the plight of the suffragists to-day. In the grand final rush toward votes for women all over the world, what the press hands over as a hot pancake one day, proves but a cold one the next. If there is one thing more than another abroad in the suffrage world, it is a perplexed advo- cate asking helplessly, ‘Where are we at?”