Life, 1909-03-25 · page 7 of 36
Life — March 25, 1909 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes early 20th-century debates over women's suffrage and social roles. The top cartoon shows an office scene where women discuss business matters, with speech bubbles indicating they're debating whether women should engage in business "because" of unspecified reasons—the humor resting on women's supposed inability to articulate serious arguments. The article below, titled "The Woman Question," presents a common anti-suffrage argument: women don't actually want voting rights; they're content with their current status. The author (Ellis O. Jones) dismissively suggests women "are not ready to forgo the joys in hand and fly to others of which they know not." The cartoons and text together mock both suffragists and anti-suffrage sentiment, positioning women as either incompetent or disinterested in equality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
~e \ are Hil al OUR Buse: THERE'S A REASON — ) BECAUSE ABER aceTCowsRy FLAGS 1912 INTERIOR OP THE OFFICE OF PERKINS, SISTER & CO. The Woman Question HE woman question is assuming enormous pro- portions, It is becoming fair, fat and forty, and no question, at such a period, can be ignored. Nor is the question as simple as it seems at first sight. It can neither be crushed by a con- temptuous cuff nor proved by platitudinous plaudits. But, after all, the whole question lies with the women themselves. We have been telling them all along that they could have any- thing they wanted and we meant it. The truth of the atter is that women do not want the suf- frage. To be sure, some of them want it; yea, bad enough to make speeches about it, just as some men are foolish enough to want to “The Whole Question Lies with give it to them before they are ready. But most women, either subconsciously or otherwise, see that they cannot get the suf- frage without giving up something which they now have and which they now like. The suffrage is not free like salvation. Just now women, by the grace of men, are petted, pam- pered, posied, perfumed and plumed, and they like it. But just as soon as they go in for votes, vim, vigor and vitality, which mean economic independence, their prerogatives as privileged pets are likely to disappear. Of course, all this discussion may be directly in line with rational evolution- ary progress, inuring 10 the ultimate benefit of both men and women. But the present fact is ~ that women are not eer ready to forego the joys in hand and fiy to others of which they know not. the Women Themselves” Ellis O. Jones, 1 t comicbooks.com