Judge — September 8, 1917 — page 19: 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 What the World Would Like to Know N the Council of Sixty-One in Russia sits one lone woman, a feminine oasis in a desert of masculinity: Schischkina Yavein. In the House of Representatives in the United States half way around the world sits one lone woman also forming a femi- nine oasis in a desert of masculinity: Jeanette Rankin. Are they more scared than glad; more humble than proud; borne-down or borne-up by their responsibility in thus blazing the trail for other women? If an X-ray could reveal their hearts’ deepest feelings, wouldn’t all the world lend a listening ear! Vote Wanted as a Thoroughfare Not as a Goal HE vote in itself may not be much, but it is because of what it is hitched up with that women want it badly enough to go to jail for it. Women may not and which little could beseen or heard. Urgent petitions through indefinite years have availed nothing to let in the light or the sound. But, presto! almost with the same breath with which the House of Commons passed the bill enfranchising English women, it set in motion to abol- ish the grill. Look the world over and thisis what you will find: The minute men give women the right to vote they immediately pro- ceed to throw in the trimmings, namely— the rights and privileges of Freemen. Voting and Wages JX the East, woman suffrage is a theory. In the West, it is a condition. Complaints are rife in the educational world in the East that the West is taking all the trained teachers because the West pays higher wages than the East, extends to mere female trainers of the young idea. Listen and you can hear some one say- ing every minute of the waking day, “Voting has nothing to do with wages.” But the fact remains that teachers are usually women and in the West women are usually voters. Slumbering Suffrage Arguments N 191g the anti-suffrage rooster emitted a crow of triumph because election returns had marked North Dakota for his own to the tune of about fifty thousand votes. In 1917 the anti-suffragists in that same state started cut with proud and confident mien to secure eleven thousand names to a petition for a referendum on the limited suffrage granted women by the legislature. They disbanded without returning to headquarters, as it were, for, mildly speaking, it was a fiasco. In 1911 California gave full suffrage to women and the antis lost no time in taking the road to secure its repeal via arefcrendum. Thirty-two thousand sig- natures would suffice and there were a million and a half per- apparenily do not want to buy a drink as often as men do, but women resent being segregated with children and re- fused the chance. Hand in hand in France with the dis- franchisement of wo- men goes forth © the official edict: ‘Men may buy a drink only at meal-time. Women must not buy one at any time.” And why do we sus- pect, do you ask, that if women got the vote in France they could also buy a drink if they wanted to? Listen: Over in Eng- land the ladies’ gallery in the House of Com- eS © mons has always been a latticed prison in Mrs. Golitely—Why don’t you marry, Mr. Old-bach? Mr. Old-bach—Because | can find no better haif. sons cligible to sign and who had, as the antis claimed, had votes for women rammed down their unwilling throats. Be that as it may, it proved impossible to get thirty-two thou- sand to admit it by signing the petition, and the waste basket claimed that paper for its own. Other suffrage argu- ments can be hit in the eye by facts that make one at least pause and consider, but election returns and referendum petitions furnish argu- ments that admit of no explanation save that the march of democracy is treading over the frightened souls of its opponents.