Life — January 12, 1911 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

132 “LIFE: Priscilla Recovers From Christmas ELL, girls, I suppose you're all as tired as I am of trying to make thirteen dollars and forty cents buy handsome Christmas presents for twenty-seven people. And as though that wasn’t enough, I had to take two days from Suf- fragetting to tic cach one up in tissue paper with colored ribbons and then see that it was delivered to its proper address. I tell you, girls, when we get Votes for Women all this Christmas nonsense will stop. It used to be a joyous occasion for familics and children. Now Christmas is run for the benefit of the de- partment stores, the florists and the mes- senger-boy companies. When we women get the vote we'll pass laws putting a stop to Christmas presents that are bought in the stores and show the tyrant men how little they know about running the govern- ment, so as to save us all from letting tradespeople turn a perfectly good senti- ment into an annual nuisance and imposition. When this reaches your eyes, dear sisters, the Legislature will be in session at Albany and whole flocks of the brave sisters will be taking turns at trying to make the dear Sena- tors and Assemblymen pass the laws we want to give us the ballot. 1 wish it was possible for the sisters to play the same kind of trick on them that our predecessors, the Suffragettes in Athens, did more than two thousand years ago. Aristophanes tells about it in his play called “ The Ecclusiazusz.” It seems that our Athenian sisters had the same hatred of the tyrant man that we have, and were quite as sure as we are that they could run the government better. So when their husbands and sons and fathers were asleep they stole their ‘clothes and themselves donning the garments went into the public assembly and voted themsclves into all the public offices. The women took charge of the government and proceeded to turn things upside down, Of course, Aristophanes, who wrote this, was himself a man, so he describes the results as being ridiculous in the extreme. He more than intimates that women in politics are only laughable, and that there was some- thing about the Athenian woman, brilliant as she was in in- tellect and scholarship, which made her lacking when it came to the conduct of public affairs. I don't care how brilliant and intellectual the Athenian women were, they were cer- tainly not the equals of our own peerless leaders of the American Suffragettes. It is shown by the fact that to-day no one ever hears a word about the Greek Suffragettes. With us it is almost impossible to pick up a daily newspaper with- out reading something about our leaders and what they are doing. KNOW all the girls will be glad to see this por- trait of Mr, Willie Sissington, the best known of the gentlemen Suffragettes. He is doing yeo- man’s work for our sacred cause and can always be relied upon to tack up signs, get glasses of water for our speakers at corner mectings and do other im- portant services of the same kind. Willie is something of a hero, too. One evening last fall, when we were trying to defeat Mr. Artemas Ward for election to the Assembly, he was sitting on a grocery wagon, from which the girls were making speeches telling the voters what a bad man Mr. Ward was and how unfit to help make laws for our superior sex. Willie saw a rude boy un- screwing a nut from the axle of the wagon, his idea being to pull off the whcel and let the whole wagon-load of dear girls drop into the gutter. If he had succeeded we girls might have had broken arms and—well, limbs—and been kept from Suf- fragetting for weeks at the most critical time of the campaign. But what did Willie do? Without a moment's hesitation he just leaned over the side of the wagon and slapped that rude hoy on the wrist. Three cheers for Willie Sissington! The Bright New Silver Dollar I offered as a prize for the best suggestion of an idea to keep up the waning public in- terest in our cause has so far drawn forth only one plan, which the contestant outlines as follows: Why would it not be a good idea for Mrs. Bel- mont, Miss Inez Milholland, Mrs. Catt and others of the leaders to get large cloth signs bearing in big let- ters the legend, “ Votes for Women,” and each one ing fastened the sign to her back take turns every day at the noon hour shinning up the flag-pole on the Singer Building? There are crowds on Broadway at that time and they would all stop, look and have the great principle firmly impressed on their minds. Be- Sides that, the daily newspapers would simply have to take notice and print the names of the ladies who made the effort in behalf of the cause. Their hero- ism would gain publicity for themselves and for Votes for Women from one end of the country to the other. I am afraid. this would not do. It would doubtless have the effect the competitor for the prize describes, but it would be extremely dangerous. Heroic as our leaders are in the way of exposing themselves to notoriety, we must not let them endanger their precious lives. Try again, sister. The prize is open to all—even men. . AM hopping mad. Some idiot—a man, of course— has had the imperti- nence to write me a letter asking my hand in marriage. He says he has fal- len in love with me through seeing my portrait and through reading what I write. His idiocy consists in making it a condi- tion that I stop writing in behalf of downtrodden wom- an and give up Suf- fragetting for good and all. I call it a downright bribe in- tended to weaken our cause. I wonder what sort of a Suffra- gette he thinks I , am! I have given up my life to the work and I will not desist until every woman in America has the vote and the right to have her name in the newspaper as often as she wants to. I’m no ailly fool of a woman with ideas about a home and children. Suffragetting is far more noble and interesting. Besides, he didn’t give his name and address. Priscitta JAwBonss, comicbooks.com